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HQ Player for Mac/OSX requires a Network Audio Adapter

 

...not anymore. There's a beta now with support for CoreAudio. I'm expecting to have first non-beta in August.

 

OK, what is an NAA? How is it implemented? Is it software for OSX, or is it a separate Linux PC.

 

It is either Linux PC or some other Linux based computer, like CuBox-i, with my small software module.

 

Would a MAC Mini with a 2.7GHz core i7 and 8GB of mem be sufficient to do DSD256, upsampled or native, to an exaSound e22 DAC?

 

It should work, at least with the -2s filters. But there's a free trial to find out.

 

If the NAA is a separate Linux box, what are you fellows using, software and hardware wise?

 

There's wide variety of possible hardware, I provide the "networkaudiod" package for x86, armel and armhf architectures running Debian (Wheezy) Linux. (plus one package x86_64 architecture running Debian Jessie)

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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I reported it... however in my case I only get the left channel with MONO tracks, which is interesting as it had me baffled for a minute when playing a Bill Evans album on which only a couple of the tracks are mono takes.

So I checked several other albums which have mono cuts on them and sure enough sound only comes from the left channel !

 

There's no mix-down or mix-up, so a file with one channel of audio plays out from left channel. With pro-audio interfaces you can usually route this also to the right channel.

 

But where on earth do you find such files (except test tones)? Only mono content I have is from CDs and those always just have the same data on two channels.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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3.4.0beta2 did fix the 10.8 device name issue, but it still plays only the left channel.

 

If I change channel offset from 0 to 1, both channels are silent.

 

Strange... Does this version help?

http://www2.signalyst.com/bins/HQPlayerDesktop3.zip

 

...has one change for this channel issue based on wild guess...

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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- If I tell HQPlayer that the max PCM sample rate is 384kHz, will it upsample everything to that rate?

 

It will try to default to that rate. If the filter doesn't allow conversion to that specifically, then it will pick next lower rate that is possible. For example some filters don't allow conversion from 44.1 to 384, in such case 352.8 would be picked. It is also useful for cases where S/PDIF output supports 192k, but for example DAC it is connected to supports only 96k. Then the default selection can be limited to 96k.

 

- Is conversion of PCM to DSD available to unregistered users of the beta? (My apologies if this has been answered and I did not see it). If so, how does one set up HQPlayer to do this? (I guess that's three questions.)

 

Trial version is fully functional, it is limited with a nagging message and per-run time limit. You just need to enable DoP in Preferences to make SDM (DSD) output option appear in the main window. (With ASIO it is not necessary to make such selection, because ASIO driver can tell whether it supports DSD or not)

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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This time I used a test track with spoken identification of the left and right channels. The left channel of the recording was correctly routed to the left channel of the DAC, but the right channel was silent.

 

OK, thanks. I guess the driver either advertises only single channel, or the channel layout is somehow strange. Does the LIO control/mixer panel show right channel going somewhere else?

 

Log file of full application start and playback attempt could be helpful... (over email please, it's at ~/.hqplayer/HQPlayer.log when enabled)

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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Excuse for the bother, can you advise me how to get HQPlayer to play with my W4S Dac-2 DSDse. I am employing Mavericks latest build, iTunes latest build. Everything's latest build. But apparently, I am clueless about what needs to set to enjoy the music and the program's output that so many are raving about. Eager to discover what others see to be able to appreciate.

 

Few short steps... First check that you have "CoreAudio" selected as Backend and your DAC as Device in Preferences, for a DSD DAC you can also select "DoP" as SDM Pack.

 

You can then for example drag-and-drop files from Finder on the player window to add it to the playlist. Also check the volume knob position (when using external volume, I set the range to min=-6 max=0 in the Preferences and then turn the knob to -3 dBFS).

 

Then you can start playing. The selectors in the middle of the main window define wanted output format and how to produce it. IOW, what and how.

 

 

P.S. Notice that supported content is FLAC, WAV, AIFF, DFF and DSF...

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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On a track with no sample overload, can you try with no volume adjustment and let us know what your observations are. Can you do this with both a PCM track for PCM to DSD128/256 and a native DSD64 track to do DSD to DSD128/256 ?

 

Even if your RedBook content doesn't clearly have clipping, it may have been normalized to 0 dBFS and as result may produce inter-sample overs when oversampled. IOW, new sample calculated between two original samples may have higher value than the original samples. For this reason, also many DAC chips internally employ -3 dBFS or similar vs their maximum internal level. Wolfson chips have a configuration option to enable/disable the internal -2 dBFS pad.

 

For this reason I recommend using -3 dBFS which has never produced any overs for me even for heavily clipped content. For many cases -2 dBFS may be enough. You can observe the "Limited" value in main window status area.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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I just sent you my log file Jussi. I can find no setting that will get sound to come from the right channel also. With my Mytek the sound only comes out of the left channel. The result is the same regardless of whether I use a PCM file or DSD file. I hope my log file helps.

 

Seems to be same problem as Metric Halo has, now fixing it became much easier because I should be able to reproduce the problem here...

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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After opening the dmg file, I had to re-install the registered application in the Application folder or the program would open from the dmg file. Also the icon presented as a ? Mark until clicking on the ? Mark icon in the doc.

 

You should just double-click the DMG and then drop the HQPlayer application on Applications folder in Finder, select "Replace" when asked. Then unmount the DMG and start HQPlayer from the Applications folder. Icon should be always displayed correctly.

 

For a time my settings in Preference were saved. But now when I launch HQPlayer, device is default, the SR is 96000, DoP has to be selected, min volume defaults back from -6 to -60. In other words ny Preference settings are not saved. However the volume wheel setting of -3 DBS you recommended remains set.

 

Seems like there is some problem or corruption with your ~/.hqplayer directory. You can try removing or renaming it. It'll get re-created when you start HQPlayer. Just keep your original key file in safe place so you can re-install the key file when needed.

 

I also employed the library tree function such that my music library tree loads in the upper window. I tried to save that library so I can select from it into the window below for playing tracks. Typically I play whole albums. In my case, I have to select Library if I quit the program and relaunch and wait for the tree to assemble. Is there a method for having that tree conveniently added without starting anew each time?

 

It is stored in same place as the Preferences, so this indicates problem with the ~/.hqplayer directory.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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It's hidden on my Mac. You can try to remove the contents.

 

In Finder, from the Go menu select "Go to Folder...". Type ~/hqplayer and click Go. Remove the files in this folder.

 

Note that the directory name begins with dot so it's "~/.hqplayer". On Unix systems directory and file names beginning with dot are hidden by default and this is used for various system files to avoid polluting normal views with unnecessary information. "~" denotes user's home directory.

 

This directory contains at most three files. One way to do it is to open terminal and use for example command "mv .hqplayer .hqplayer.old" to rename the folder and it will be re-created when HQPlayer is started next time.

 

There are two possible reasons for the problem. Either permissions of the directory are wrong for some reason, or the settings file is corrupted for some reason. Settings file (including library data) can be backed up and restored using the Export/Import functions of the File menu.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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Any suggestion?

 

Music seems gorgeous even if it is slightly distorted, so I'd like to solve this problem and enjoy the beta....

 

Is your selected output format PCM or SDM (right-most drop-list in main window)? In case you are using PCM output, I suggest trying to set "DAC bits" to 24 in Preferences.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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After more experimenting today....

- I still get dropouts when upsampling PCM to DSD64 and DSD256, not only DSD128

- I also get dropouts when playing a DSD64 file natively, and when trying to upsample it to DSD128

- I did try one of the OSX optimization scripts, and that didn't help with the dropouts

- I also played with different files formats (e.g. 16/44k FLAC, various AIFF,) to no avail, still have dropouts

 

Which firmware do you have in iDSD Nano? There was a compatibility issue with USB3 ports of my iMac and first firmware revision of iDSD Nano. This was fixed by a firmware update from iFi.

 

Are you playing the files from local HDD or from a network share?

 

Do you have any resident processes/applications that could be hooking to input files or the audio output device? I have tested HQPlayer with Kaspersky and F-Secure anti-virus solutions without problems. But anti-virus software is commonly something that is hooking itself between applications and files on the file system.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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when upsampling to DSD128, the HQP process was showing anywhere from 90% to over 105% or higher. When upsampling to DSD64, the HQP process was fluctuating as well, however it was only in the 40% to 60% range, but dropouts were occurring as well. Is this normal, or is this why I am getting the continuous dropouts?

 

It doesn't sound like CPU load issue... HQPlayer process takes 100 - 150% when upsampling to DSD128 on my Core i5 iMac, without any drop outs using iDSD Nano. Next highest load goes to coreaudiod system process.

 

Would a captured log file help out?

 

It could have some indication, but it may be that I need to add some more log output related to this issue. I will try to make a new beta Wed/Thu with some fixes for Mytek USB / Metric Halo and add some log output about CoreAudio buffer handling.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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  • 2 weeks later...

1/ I need a kind of server somewhere : is this server available for NAS with embedded Linux as Synology ? Can I use a cubox as server pointing to the files on the NAS ? To summarize is there any chance to make this server working on something else than a PC and a MAC ?

 

"Server" is your normal playback computer running normal desktop version of the player. Only difference to local playback is that output goes to a remote networked device such as SMS-100, instead of locally connected DAC.

 

2/ how to control with a iPad ? Every dlna application is ok or some are more recommended than others ?

 

Depending on OS of your player computer, any normal remote desktop control application should work.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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Im experiencing the same problem with beta 3 and 4 for mac, hearing some noise in the speakers's tweeters. (with default settings)

 

Log file of the playback attempt (with beta 4) could be useful for trying to solve this issue. Could you please send me a log file over email?

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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Ok thanks but no hqplayer version available for NAS like Synology ?

 

Those devices don't have enough CPU power for running DSP algorithms. CuBox-i4Pro has just barely enough CPU power for running upsampling to DSD64, but PCM to PCM 352.8/384k works fine.

 

Linux version has the advantage that you can run it remotely in a server and GUI can appear elsewhere (native feature of X11), without need to resort to remote desktop solutions.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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Miska, creating a stereo to binaural plugin doesn't seem to be an easy task and others have solved it already.

 

Easy tasks are boring... ;)

 

However, I have two DSP engines, one for PCM and one for DSD and I want to keep both equally capable. So I want all processing algorithms to support both PCM and DSD processing. I want to have one that works for DSD too.

 

Do you consider adding support for VST plugins to HQPlayer?

 

Yes, but it had some annoying technical limitation, but I don't remember anymore what it was. In any case it doesn't support DSD which is a major problem. Another issue is that I want all three OS platforms to be as much as possible equally capable, so I would need to have support for three different plugin interfaces too...

 

I once considered making my own plugin API that would work on Linux, Windows and OS X and support both PCM and DSD. But probably nobody would use it, so it would be largely wasted effort.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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  • 4 weeks later...
In HQPlayer3 under Library, what is the difference between the default listing and the "Structure only" setting.

 

If you set "Structure only", all metadata is extracted from the filesystem structure and any metadata embedded inside files is ignored. So when it's checked let's say (assuming you are using Windows) you would have:

D:\Music\Pink Floyd\Dark Side of the Moon\05-Money.flac

Then the extracted metadata would be:

Artist: Pink Floyd

Album: Dark Side of the Moon

Song: Money

 

This is useful in cases where the tree is organized of files without metadata in a way many ripping/library management software (including iTunes) arranges the files on a filesystem.

 

For example, under Performer it will list John Denver and under Artist it will list Bill Smith, who the heck is Bill Smith, producer, director ?

 

It is more useful for classical music. For example it could be:

Artist: Gustav Mahler

Performer: Los Angeles Philharmonic / Esa-Pekka Salonen

Album: Symphony No. 8

 

I have spent a lot of hours correcting things under the default listing and if checking "Structure Only" would delete all my corrections and still not give me what I want, I'm afraid to try it not knowing what it would do.

 

Import shouldn't change already existing known items, other than discovering new cover art... But I always recommend backing up your settings / library data using the Export function in File-menu.

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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Just one more thing, will you be getting ASIO working for OSX for the exaSound. It would sure take a load off of our CPU's unlike Apples CoreAudio which beats the CPU to death. And, it really sounds good too.

 

I have it done (blind), but it has not been tested since I don't have an exaSound DAC...

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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