HQ Player

[LewinskiH01]

Hello.

 

It seems most who posted on this thread about the sonic benefits of HQPlayer over other players did so in the context of upsampling PCM to DSD, and most also commented in the context of Mac.

 

How is the sound quality in PCM vs JRiver, in Windows?

 

Thanks!

[LewinskiH01]

This on a very mid fi system, Cambridge Audi 651 amp driving Canton Karat 720.2 DC bookshelf speakers with zip cord speaker cables (cut up PC AC cords ;-)

 

Hey EuroDriver.

Thanks fir the answer. I was cruising all along until this sentence above. I thought you were talking about your 805D setup.

 

Good to see some of your comments were in the context of an e20. I'm considering an e28.

 

So how do you control HQPlayer from a wireless device? I use JRemote with JRiver and have grown accostumed to the convenience...

 

It seems HQPlayer uses a setup along the lines of JPlay, with the "audioPC" here being the NAA, but a simpler/lower power Linux machine. right? Are people using audiophile USB cards on the NAA?

 

Trying HQP with the 30-day period is easy enough. But I don't have a NAA and while I could use an old laptop to try it out, I worry it wouldn't be a fair comparison for HQP since my system is rather optimized for the JRiver setup.

[LewinskiH01]

Talking about noisy PC, on my rebuilt i5 that now has a big CPU cooler, I also connected a 140 mm Noctura fan that is connected to the 5v bus coming from the PICO PSU. The fan is inaudible, but the RF signature of this fan when it is switched on and using about 1 watt power is audible and detrimental to the sound. I was amazed that the fan motor and its electronics could have such a negative influence, and this is to a Exasound DAC that is galvanically isolated. Goes to show that the NAA concept has a big advantage

 

Hello EuroDriver. You could connect a battery to the Noctua and avoid the electrical contamination it's injecting. Something like an Anker E4 would work perfect. You just need an USB to Noctua-plug adapter. I tried the Anker to independently power my OS SSD with 5V, so should work well here too.

[LewinskiH01]

Hello Miska.

 

A few pages back I saw you posted you were going to experiment with an e28 and direct-driving 3 amps per stereo side, then time align the drivers, etc. I actually also have this in mind.

 

I asked Uli, though, and he hasn't been able to get the e28 to work with 24/192 material with Acourate because of drivers (he did get 24/96 to work). Was wondering if you got the e28 working in multichannel and if you are upconverting PCM to DSD, or how are you doing it?

 

I have an e22 that sounds very good when fed DSD upconverted by HQPlayer from a 16/44 file, but it doesn't sound good when fed 16/44...so I can see myself foregoing my stereo pre and venturing into digital crossovers done at the server and feeding an e28 only if this can be done in DSD, as I extrapolate from my experinece with the e22.

 

Cheers

[LewinskiH01]

Sorry if this has been covered before but haven't been able to find it.

 

My system not: Tidal>Roon in machine A, through CAT6 to machine B with HQPlayer convolving into active 3-way stereo and upsampling to 176k PCM , feeding a Lynx Hilo DAC thru USB. Don't use DSD.

 

Now Roon 1.5 allows MQA from Tidal, which opens a lot of options. MQA files played so far are shown exiting the Roon MQA Decoder at 96/24. So I'm wondering what's the recommended approach to use at HQPlayer:

• Upsample or not, upsample to 96 or 192 instead of 176?
• Which are the recommended HQP filters? Currently using poly-sinc-mp and NS9 dither.

Assuming the hardware can handle it, what are the likely better options?

 

Thank you!