HQ Player

[Miska]

18 minutes ago, dericchan1 said:

@Miska I know you have been talking about comparison of ultrasonic, audio band noise, harmonic distortion between DSD256 VS DSD512. How does PCM in comparison? I have pre-ordered a Holo Cyan 2 and would like to know if its even worthwhile to try going PCM 1.524.

 

At DSD256 you will have a tiny bit of uncorrelated ultrasonic noise. That would sound like a hiss if you could hear it (level or frequency wise).  Given that it is random, if it produces intermodulation products, those will also be random. So it would be also hiss, like a tape background noise.

 

At 705.6k you will get fully correlated images in ultrasonic range at some 10 dB higher level than the DSD256 noise. These are the music content in forward (copy of music spectrum at higher frequency band) and backwards frequency spectrum (highest frequencies at lowest frequencies and lowest frequencies at highest frequencies). Since these are not random, but instead correlated with the music, if these produce intermodulation products, those will also be correlated. So it would be like lower level distorted garbled music overlay on below of the normal content.

 

In terms of IMD measurements, the PCM spectrum is "dirtier" while DSD spectrum is "cleaner".

 

At DSD512 vs 1.5M PCM the difference becomes smaller, but is still there.

 

[bogi]

4 minutes ago, Miska said:

At DSD512 vs 1.5M PCM the difference becomes smaller, but is still there.

That's from digital processing (HQPlayer) point of view.
Difference between PCM and DSD conversion stages in Cyan 2 may also affect resulting audio quality.

[Miska]

6 minutes ago, bogi said:

That's from digital processing (HQPlayer) point of view.
Difference between PCM and DSD conversion stages in Cyan 2 may also affect resulting audio quality.

 

No, that is what I have measured with earlier Holo Audio DACs analog outputs. Of course I have not measured Cyan 2 yet since I don't have it yet.

 

I always pay attention to what comes out of DAC's analog outputs, since that's the important thing. Not just what happens in digital domain. That's why I measure things with huge pile of different DACs.

 

[Leduc]

Finally decided to purchase HQ Player after trying the Desktop4 version for awhile. So I uninstalled it from my Mac mini M2 and downloaded the new Desktop 5 version. But every time I attempt to launch it I get an error saying HQ Player quit unexpectedly! I have not been able to get it to open since downloading it so that I can activate the license.

[Theobetley]

how do you switch modulators et all on the fly?

[EMINENT]

1 hour ago, Leduc said:

Finally decided to purchase HQ Player after trying the Desktop4 version for awhile. So I uninstalled it from my Mac mini M2 and downloaded the new Desktop 5 version. But every time I attempt to launch it I get an error saying HQ Player quit unexpectedly! I have not been able to get it to open since downloading it so that I can activate the license.

 

Halo.

 

That bug was happening on Macs a while back. May I suggest uninstall and reinstall and reboot if you have not. 

[EMINENT]

33 minutes ago, Theobetley said:

how do you switch modulators et all on the fly?

You may use HQPlayer client.

[Leduc]

40 minutes ago, EMINENT said:

I deleted the original install and downloaded it again. Same result, now the icon for HQ Player appears for a second on the menu bar at the bottom and then vanishes without even the "quit unexpectedly message!

Halo.

 

That bug was happening on Macs a while back. May I suggest uninstall and reinstall and reboot if you have not. 

[Leduc]

Perhaps the developer can chime in as to what my options are to get this software to load?

 

Leduc

[Miska]

5 hours ago, Leduc said:

Perhaps the developer can chime in as to what my options are to get this software to load?

 

First, before doing anything else, please check that you have downloaded and installed native arm64 version of HQPlayer. If you have accidentally installed x64 build which is for Intel silicon Mac's, it won't work and will crash with illegal instruction exception.

 

If you have correct arm64 build installed but it still doesn't start, in Finder use "Go to Folder..." menu option and put "~/.hqplayer" there as a path. Then move out all files from there to some other location and try to start HQPlayer again. This will reset back to default settings and empty library.

 

[Leduc]

Thanks for that Miska. The arm version download launched and works fine. I originally downloaded what I thought was the "regular Mac OS version" as I didn't know what the arm version was for. I knew there was going to be a bit of a learning curve with this software...but I didn't think it would start with the download! Lol.  Now if I can just figure out how to get Apple Music to play through it? I searched this Forum and saw something about a work-around called Black Hole? Just by the sound of the name I'm a little wary of diving into that! Sorry for all the questions from this Newb poking around in the dark. 

[Apollo]

54 minutes ago, Leduc said:

poking around in the dark. 

If you are poking arou d in the dark, are you sure you are not already in th Black Hole🤔

[Leduc]

I hope not Apollo. I actually came here seeking enlightenment!🌌

[Miska]

11 hours ago, Leduc said:

Thanks for that Miska. The arm version download launched and works fine. I originally downloaded what I thought was the "regular Mac OS version" as I didn't know what the arm version was for.

 

There are two major CPU architectures on the market at the moment. x64 which is what is regularly called "PC", from both Intel and AMD. And then ARM (in three flavors, "armel" aka ARM9, "armhf" aka 32-bit ARM and "arm64" aka 64-bit ARM), which is what is used by Apple for their own silicon, as well as for example Raspberry Pi, mobile phones (SoC's from vendors like Qualcomm and Samsung), as well as various embedded system vendors.

 

macOS applications can come as "universal binaries" which is essentially 2x the size and contains both x64 (Intel) and arm64 (Apple) binaries baked into single set of application files. Or they can come as separate native arm64 and native x64 binaries. And thus size is half smaller since the two architectures are separate.

 

From simplified point of view, building universal binary of HQPlayer would be very straightforward. But it has two major drawbacks. Since the application is rather large, everybody would be downloading 2x the amount of data they actually need. And since HQPlayer is extremely carefully optimized for every single piece inside to squeeze most out of both architectures, making such extreme optimized universal binary would become very complex exercise without benefits.

 

For these optimization reasons, the x64 build doesn't work on M1/M2/M3 through the Rosetta emulation. Good thing in this is that one cannot be accidentally running suboptimal version either.

 

But for example macOS networkaudiod (NAA) binary is shipped as a universal binary. Since it is rather small and simple compared to HQPlayer.

 

11 hours ago, Leduc said:

Now if I can just figure out how to get Apple Music to play through it? I searched this Forum and saw something about a work-around called Black Hole? Just by the sound of the name I'm a little wary of diving into that! Sorry for all the questions from this Newb poking around in the dark. 

 

You need two things:

1) LosslessSwitcher, at the moment it is still a pre-release build you can find here

2) BlackHole loopback driver you can find here

 

And at least HQPlayer Desktop release 5.3.1 or later. Where you can find a small shell script wrapper included in the DMG that you can place for example in your Home folder. You also need to have the hqp5-control utility installed in your Applications folder. In the screenshot on that LosslessSwitcher page you can find how to add that script into LosslessSwitcher. Then configure HQPlayer input side to use the BlackHole device. And also set BlackHole as macOS default sound output device (not for notifications though) using macOS Audio MIDI Setup.

 

Then start HQPlayer playback from the the audio input device like this:

 

And then you can just start Music application and start playing from Apple Music. And HQPlayer will follow the source rate changes as content changes in Apple Music playback.

 

 

P.S. The hardware path is still a bit quicker to react and more universal, but significantly more expensive too.

 

[bogi]

13 minutes ago, Miska said:

LosslessSwitcher, at the moment it is still a pre-release build you can find here

I like that software based solution is being developed. It would be nice if the polling loop approach could be substituted by some event handler. But then ... what could/should send an event on rate changes?

[Miska]

2 minutes ago, bogi said:

I like that software based solution is being developed. It would be nice if the polling loop approach could be substituted by some event handler. But then ... what could/should send an event on rate changes?

 

Preferably CoreAudio, but it doesn't. So it needs such complex hacks to work around the issue. On Windows, WASAPI has exactly same design issues.

 

Both architectures assume that the application doing audio input is the one who defines the sampling rate to be used. Not some unknown external entity (hardware or another application).

 

[Triplefun]

I (topping e50) and a friend (singxer su6 to Holo may)  are having an issue with windows hqp 5,1.3 and roon.  when trying to set sdm (dsd) output hqp keeps reverting to pcm playback. I finally resolved the issue by setting the input to 'none' although when I looked at it after a save it had returned to 'dop'.  Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

[Miska]

29 minutes ago, Triplefun said:

I (topping e50) and a friend (singxer su6 to Holo may)  are having an issue with windows hqp 5,1.3 and roon.  when trying to set sdm (dsd) output hqp keeps reverting to pcm playback. I finally resolved the issue by setting the input to 'none' although when I looked at it after a save it had returned to 'dop'.  Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

 

Did you remember to disable the DAC in Roon Settings -> Audio as documented here in the last bullet point?

https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/hqplayer

(having the DAC enabled in Roon is common reason for this kind of problem)

 

If you are not using the input feature, set the input backend to "[none]".

 

[LoryWiv]

On 12/16/2023 at 12:17 PM, Triplefun said:

I (topping e50) and a friend (singxer su6 to Holo may)  are having an issue with windows hqp 5,1.3 and roon.  when trying to set sdm (dsd) output hqp keeps reverting to pcm playback. I finally resolved the issue by setting the input to 'none' although when I looked at it after a save it had returned to 'dop'.  Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

Although I don't use Roon, I have had this occur too and the solution was to uninstall then  reinstall the DAC of DDI  USB Audio (ASIO) driver. The issue may arise after a Windows update following which the ASIO driver is not recognized, but uninstall / reinstall corrects it.

[Miska]

9 hours ago, LoryWiv said:

Although I don't use Roon, I have had this occur too and the solution was to uninstall then  reinstall the DAC of DDI  USB Audio (ASIO) driver. The issue may arise after a Windows update following which the ASIO driver is not recognized, but uninstall / reinstall corrects it.

 

Also any Thesycon sourced DAC driver (about 90% of all drivers) will behave such way if two applications are accessing the ASIO driver simultaneously. Roon will try to access it if the DAC is enabled in Roon Settings -> Audio.

 

ASIO is supposed to be exclusive access only, but the Thesycon's ASIO driver is not completely so. In normal cases, once one application loads the driver, it should disappear from other applications.

 

[Triplefun]

Disabling the device in Roon Audio fixed the issue. Strange it would work PCM but not DSD. The solution is obvious and was at the front of my settings when first installed. 

[Ozzie]

On 3/10/2021 at 12:44 PM, Miska said:

Those Load/Save/Delete buttons are used to manage matrix profiles on the entry/drop-list on the left of the buttons (and are selectable through player control applications like HQPlayer Client).

 

Hi @Miska, as I am playing around with EQ, I don't know when HQPlayer reads an updated version of the text file. Do I need to keep "browsing" and adding the file or does it re-read the contents automatically with each new song? Or do I have to "Load" through the client? Could you please let me know when exactly the file gets re-read? 

[Miska]

52 minutes ago, Ozzie said:

Hi @Miska, as I am playing around with EQ, I don't know when HQPlayer reads an updated version of the text file. Do I need to keep "browsing" and adding the file or does it re-read the contents automatically with each new song? Or do I have to "Load" through the client? Could you please let me know when exactly the file gets re-read? 

 

Generally, it is read at least when starting playback from stopped state (not idling).

 

...so no need to touch the matrix configuration if you modify those .txt files or convolution .wav's. (note that this applies to HQPlayer Desktop)

[Kalpesh]

Just some itching powder ? (I change settings a lot ; don't we all?) I have been much focused on tonal balance as of lately 

(

) and nowadays I tend to listen to PCM sources at 352.8/384 (768 for 192 sources)/NS5 with my Holo May though I know it might be considered a misuse of HQP and that focusing on details, snap, content of "silence", even snapshots/cues of the real thing I dig the SDM recommendation ; but as a whole I feel more comfortable with the PCM route, crank volume a bit more, prefer the imaging.

 

At least to my ears, SDM vs PCM and different upsampling rates yield different tonal balances. So, could there be a rational in that mastering is (usually/often) rather done at PCM 384 than at DSD 512 ?

[Ozzie]

23 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Generally, it is read at least when starting playback from stopped state (not idling).

 

...so no need to touch the matrix configuration if you modify those .txt files or convolution .wav's. (note that this applies to HQPlayer Desktop)

great! That worked. It also reloads when I reselect it in the client. The switching is so fast that I will never the Roon EQ again because it is wayyyy to slow in comparison. I have also now created a txt file for all of my headphones and added new profiles for each that are just Preamp of 0db for when I get around to it so I never have to touch the pipeline setup again. This is great!