HQ Player

[dericchan1]

On 4/6/2023 at 11:44 AM, bogi said:

@dericchan1 I guess if you would use USBStreamer https://www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/usbstreamer-box instead of HiFiMeDIY DDC automatic rate switching could work (USBStreamer owner can download ASIO driver). Miska for sure knows if that works.

Other thing is how much you are satisfied with Amazon streaming support in wiim environment.

@Miska 

 

hi Miska, I was reading a bit more on the minidsp usbstreamer, I am wondering if this might actually work for automatically sampling rate changes?

 

it has a Thesycon windows ASIO driver, supports toslink in stereo mode recoding up to 24/192, usb class 2.0. And it has an option to use the usb asynchronous internal sample rate clock or the toslink input sample rate clock….

 

https://www.minidsp.com/images/documents/USBStreamer Manual.pdf

[oldfirm]

I use process Lasso and have noticed that HQPlayer has "Below Normal" Priority class and a status of "Restrained " rather than "Running"

 

Are these settings  be expected for the "active Processes"

[GMG]

@Miska

recently there were several discussions about integrating airplay or similar solutions for playing various content through HQPlayer. 
I’ve seen solutions of combining WiiM devices, interface converters and MiniDSP modules. 
Would you consider adding Airplay and Chromecast as embedded services within HQP? I think it would be a rather popular convenience service to many users.  I would not use it as my primary source but would very much like to have that option for occasional fast, quick, easy streaming option of any content from any source. 
I would ideally have separate configuration for this and will probably use direct non oversampling for such content.
 

idealy the experience would be that any device connected to the same network as HQP would see HQP as an airplay/chromcast device and once selected, HQP would auto switch to that as an input and start playing the stream.  Later when a different source starts playing, like Roon, HQP would auto switch to that. 
 

 

[Miska]

12 hours ago, GMG said:

Would you consider adding Airplay and Chromecast as embedded services within HQP?

 

Sure, if Apple and Google would allow such in software solutions. But they don't...

 

[Miska]

12 hours ago, oldfirm said:

I use process Lasso and have noticed that HQPlayer has "Below Normal" Priority class and a status of "Restrained " rather than "Running"

 

Are these settings  be expected for the "active Processes"

 

Such tools don't show anything sensible for HQPlayer. HQPlayer has couple of hundred execution threads, each with different tasks and priorities. There is no single relevant priority class for HQPlayer.

 

So don't touch HQPlayer process.

 

Please also note only Windows desktop editions optimized for multimedia and gaming have the necessary services installed and running by default. Touching running services may break some HQPlayer functionalities and result in suboptimal performance. Many Windows programming interfaces rely on the corresponding services.

[GMG]

56 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Sure, if Apple and Google would allow such in software solutions. But they don't...

 

Oh. 
So how is airplay available on android devices with “airplay” applications that turns the android device to an airplay receiver? Or, how does any other OS (Ropiee, wiim, blueos) do it?

I though it was an somewhat open implementation for cross platforms. 

[Miska]

29 minutes ago, GMG said:

So how is airplay available on android devices with “airplay” applications that turns the android device to an airplay receiver? Or, how does any other OS (Ropiee, wiim, blueos) do it?

 

I guess it is the reverse-engineered AirPlay 1 (ShairPort or similar). WiiM may actually have the official Apple licensed chip for it.

 

29 minutes ago, GMG said:

I though it was an somewhat open implementation for cross platforms. 

 

No, Apple and Google sell hardware chips and product certifications for such. And at least I'm not aware of open and free specifications and/or implementations from Apple or Google for AirPlay or Chromecast. Both have DRM features, so it is hard to see how such could be existing with DRM either.

 

[GMG]

25 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I guess it is the reverse-engineered AirPlay 1 (ShairPort or similar). WiiM may actually have the official Apple licensed chip for it.

 

 

No, Apple and Google sell hardware chips and product certifications for such. And at least I'm not aware of open and free specifications and/or implementations from Apple or Google for AirPlay or Chromecast. Both have DRM features, so it is hard to see how such could be existing with DRM either.

 

I have an Allo USBridge Signature laying around. With RopieeXL and airplay enabled will it work nicely if connected by USB to HQP OS on a NUC?

[Miska]

17 hours ago, dericchan1 said:

hi Miska, I was reading a bit more on the minidsp usbstreamer, I am wondering if this might actually work for automatically sampling rate changes?

 

I can check some time on Windows, I have not tried on Windows so far.

 

But it could be missing the needed features to make rate changes work.

 

17 hours ago, dericchan1 said:

it has a Thesycon windows ASIO driver, supports toslink in stereo mode recoding up to 24/192, usb class 2.0. And it has an option to use the usb asynchronous internal sample rate clock or the toslink input sample rate clock….

 

Yes, it must be set to Toslink clock when being used for input. Otherwise you will have clicks and pops on the sound as the clocks are out of sync. HQPlayer Embedded automatically does this for you.

 

[Miska]

13 minutes ago, GMG said:

I have an Allo USBridge Signature laying around. With RopieeXL and airplay enabled will it work nicely if connected by USB to HQP OS on a NUC?

 

No, NUC doesn't have USB device mode. It has only USB host mode.

 

[dericchan1]

10 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I can check some time on Windows, I have not tried on Windows so far.

 

But it could be missing the needed features to make rate changes work.

 

 

Yes, it must be set to Toslink clock when being used for input. Otherwise you will have clicks and pops on the sound as the clocks are out of sync. HQPlayer Embedded automatically does this for you.

 

Thanks Miska, reason why this came up is because while the wiim pro with usb to toslink adapter set up works fine, some of the tracks with different sampling rate being downsampled to 16/44 by wiim app sound a bit weird compared to simply streaming a native 16/44.

 

not sure if it’s just me suspecting to hear a difference or there is a reason for it

 

i have sent an inquiry to minidsp about the usbstreamer whether it accepts sample rate slaving for windows input device, hopefully will hear from them as well.

 

cheers

 

Deric

[Spacecase]

59 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I guess it is the reverse-engineered AirPlay 1 (ShairPort or similar). WiiM may actually have the official Apple licensed chip for it.

 

 

No, Apple and Google sell hardware chips and product certifications for such. And at least I'm not aware of open and free specifications and/or implementations from Apple or Google for AirPlay or Chromecast. Both have DRM features, so it is hard to see how such could be existing with DRM either.

 

They are using shairplay, yes. It would be neat if HQPlayer could somehow emulate a “device” in ALSA so that any application could just send audio output to it. Not sure if this is even possible though. 

[bogi]

18 minutes ago, Spacecase said:

It would be neat if HQPlayer could somehow emulate a “device” in ALSA so that any application could just send audio output to it. Not sure if this is even possible though.

That's possible, examples are foo_dsd_asio and JRiver. The first one is open source, it acts as ASIO proxy which performs DSP on input stream and outputs to a selected ASIO device.

Miska already answered the point here: https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/19715-hq-player/?do=findComment&comment=1236613

On 3/26/2023 at 1:09 PM, Miska said:

I would have to develop and maintain audio driver for three operating systems. I have some experience with Windows audio device drivers and it is so totally horrible development experience that I don't want to go anywhere near any Windows drivers. I don't even understand how they managed to make it so bad, it requires special skills to make something so bad. Writing such for Linux is walk in the park. macOS a little better, but Apple has extremely good track record in breaking 3rd party drivers on new macOS releases.

 

 

[Miska]

46 minutes ago, dericchan1 said:

not sure if it’s just me suspecting to hear a difference or there is a reason for it

 

Likely the downsampling algorithm is less than great...

 

I also got WiiM Pro once the discussion about it started here. My plan is to feed it's output to RME ADI-2 Pro.

 

46 minutes ago, dericchan1 said:

i have sent an inquiry to minidsp about the usbstreamer whether it accepts sample rate slaving for windows input device, hopefully will hear from them as well.

 

My USBStreamer is unused at the moment, so I'll try to check it out some time shortly. But I'm not very optimistic.

 

[Miska]

36 minutes ago, Spacecase said:

They are using shairplay, yes. It would be neat if HQPlayer could somehow emulate a “device” in ALSA so that any application could just send audio output to it. Not sure if this is even possible though. 

 

ALSA has loopback support built-in. It is just that ALSA doesn't support rate slaving, so no automatic rate switching. But OTOH, I think AirPlay doesn't support it either, so fixed rate should be fine.

 

21 minutes ago, bogi said:

That's possible, examples are foo_dsd_asio and JRiver. The first one is open source, it acts as ASIO proxy which performs DSP on input stream and outputs to a selected ASIO device.

 

On Windows, you get WDM-to-ASIO loopback with ESI audio devices. But it is fixed rate...

 

So far I consider the hardware route most flexible. As you can get both analog and digital inputs, automatic rate switching and you can use it with your vinyl rig, or old CD spinner (no rate switching even needed for such), or a streamer like WiiM. You can also get Bluetooth audio through devices like Pro-Ject BT Box E HD.

 

[dericchan1]

15 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Likely the downsampling algorithm is less than great...

 

I also got WiiM Pro once the discussion about it started here. My plan is to feed it's output to RME ADI-2 Pro.

 

 

My USBStreamer is unused at the moment, so I'll try to check it out some time shortly. But I'm not very optimistic.

 

Actually for downsampling hi-res from Amazon UHD to 16/44.1, I find using Airplay from the Amazon music app to the Wiim pro actually sounded better than using the WiiM app for downsampling, I wonder if Airplay downsampling algorithm is indeed better...

[Miska]

6 minutes ago, dericchan1 said:

Actually for downsampling hi-res from Amazon UHD to 16/44.1, I find using Airplay from the Amazon music app to the Wiim pro actually sounded better than using the WiiM app for downsampling, I wonder if Airplay downsampling algorithm is indeed better...

 

For Airplay, it's the Apple's algorithm. Which is likely better than the WiiM one.

 

[dericchan1]

On 4/10/2023 at 6:08 PM, Miska said:

 

For Airplay, it's the Apple's algorithm. Which is likely better than the WiiM one.

 

@Miska

 

received the following response from minidsp re: usbstreamer, not sure if it’s helpful or not

 

“Hi Deric,

THanks for your interest in our products

The USBStreamer will indeed match the sample rate of the source content. Especially when it's using ASIO. IT will just play the content that is being sent to the unit in bit perfect mode.

We don't know much of HQplayer this being said so can't really confirm how that will work for that specific player. :-)  

 

 

Hoping this info helps and feel free to contact us if you have further questions. 

 

Best Regards

miniDSP DevTeam”

[scintilla]

Would an M2 or M2 Pro Mac mini be able to do convolution for 6-channels of DSD source material and output to 24/192?  

[Miska]

4 hours ago, dericchan1 said:

received the following response from minidsp re: usbstreamer, not sure if it’s helpful or not

 

It is roughly as obscure as I expected. I'm pretty sure they don't know and/or they have not tested...

 

Seems like very few companies have paid attention to this kind of detail.

 

But I will check with miniDSP.

 

[eboy]

@Miskashould I bee worried about cpu bottleneck when using cuda with hqplayer? I’m not a gamer and gamers might loose som fps if the gpu is too powerful for the cpu. I got ryzen 5800x and looking for upgrading from rtx 2080 ti to rtx 3080 ti. Should I do the upgrade or do I also need to upgrade my cpu?

[Miska]

3 hours ago, eboy said:

@Miskashould I bee worried about cpu bottleneck when using cuda with hqplayer? I’m not a gamer and gamers might loose som fps if the gpu is too powerful for the cpu. I got ryzen 5800x and looking for upgrading from rtx 2080 ti to rtx 3080 ti. Should I do the upgrade or do I also need to upgrade my cpu?

 

You cannot have too fast GPU for HQPlayer. But you can have too slow one.

 

For full performance, GPU must be able to finish it's tasks before CPU finishes it's own. If not, CPU will need to stop waiting for the GPU to complete it's work before continuing. If the result is ready before CPU finishes, it doesn't need to wait at all.

 

So faster the CPU, faster GPU it also needs to have to avoid waits.

 

You also need to take into account that offloading to GPU will also make CPU finish it's tasks faster because it has less work to do, so that puts even more pressure on GPU.

 

Of course once the point is reached that the GPU does it's job in time, having faster GPU doesn't really add benefits anymore. Although one benefit still may be that the GPU fans don't need to run as fast and the GPU runs relatively cooler. Since bigger GPUs have also bigger cooling solutions. This is similar to hybrid cooled PSUs like the Seasonic ones.

 

[GMG]

@Miska is there anyway to emulate an a backend in HQP OS?

I have ordered a Denafrips Venus ii and would like to perform some stress tests to see how far I can push my NUC,

Currently I'm am running PCM-->PCM768 with IIR and LNS15

With the Venus I would like to try PCM-->DSD, but my current DAC will not accept DSD so I can't perform any testing

My NUC 10 basically maxes out with Poly-SINC-GAUSS-XLA when upsampling PCM44.1-->PCM768

 

What would you recommend as setting for the Venus ii, based on my current IIR preference and NUC capabilities?

[Miska]

48 minutes ago, GMG said:

@Miska is there anyway to emulate an a backend in HQP OS?

 

Yes, there's Null backend that plays at full speed, so it is not restrained by the sample rate. IOW, it is like fast-forward. You can check how much faster you can process than normal playback speed.

 

48 minutes ago, GMG said:

I have ordered a Denafrips Venus ii and would like to perform some stress tests to see how far I can push my NUC,

Currently I'm am running PCM-->PCM768 with IIR and LNS15

With the Venus I would like to try PCM-->DSD, but my current DAC will not accept DSD so I can't perform any testing

My NUC 10 basically maxes out with Poly-SINC-GAUSS-XLA when upsampling PCM44.1-->PCM768

 

What would you recommend as setting for the Venus ii, based on my current IIR preference and NUC capabilities?

 

You can use the IIR with PCM. Or you can run as high rate DSD you can with EC modulators (no IIR there at the moment).

 

[Hensema]

How is the 2nd stage of the 2s filters processed? Is it a very light sinc filter?

 

Would it be an idea to choose the fs point of the 2s filters? In that way you can match the available cpu/gpu processing speed with the 2s filter.