HQ Player

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You can always drag & drop from another player.

"it looks really dated."

 

That's the sight I downloaded my HQ player from two days ago and it's working fine. I'm not too computer savvy so I'm pretty much following the (more simple basic) instructions from the manual and doing no experimenting with the PERFECT sound I'm getting. Hope the Sygnalist guys get back to you soon. I've put JRiver Media Center on the back burner after hearing HQ Player. Only thing, I wish HQP could list music by genre. Oh well, can't have everything. Good luck!

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Has Muso been working well for you? It seems to hang a lot for me and I need to quit both it and HQPlayer.

We discuss it a few pages back. It works nicely, now supports DSF files, and has a function to set up a custom HQPlayer XML config file, if needed.

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/hq-player-20293/index112.html#post439271

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Yes, and I just cannot get past the subscription model. It is too bad...

Roon seems nice (I say "nice" because I have not tried) with its integration with HQPlayer, but it is not exactly cheap for a simple database at a yearly price!!!

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Try dropping down to bit rate to 112xxxxx if you are upsampling redbook and you still have issues after turning off DoP.

I am getting frequent dropouts with HQ Player. I was getting them with windows 8.1 and am still getting them with windows 10.

 

I am using an ifi nano dsd dac.

 

I have a core i7 4790S (quad core) processor and 8 GB RAM.

 

I am attaching a screenshot of my settings.

 

Would appreciate feedback on my settings so I can eliminate dropouts.

 

I am using the lastest version - 3.8.1

 

My buffer settings are "Safe" with a buffer size of 8192 samples.[ATTACH=CONFIG]20114[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks

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FWIW, the raspi has i2s out without a master clock. It could be used by the TP Buffalo DAC or the Soekris r2r DAC. There is no Raspi image, and I am not competent to install it by myself. If I could, I'd give it a go.

I did a little more digging and found this post over on DIY Audio;

 

Building an open embedded audio applicance. - Page 79 - diyAudio

 

so it has been raised before but apparently not progressed. I concur with the sentiment of the poster and bringing together the HQPlayer NAA and the concept of the Botic distribution, removing the need to use USB, would move the NAA towards being a true network audio adaptor.

 

Any thoughts Miska?

 

Ray

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Does anyone else still have this issue? It has gotten pretty bad here to the point where I notice the crackles during the playback, not just at the end. I am not using DoP or xmos, but I am using a Sabre. Settings are: poly-sinc/DSD7/5.6 or 11.2MHz, pipline on, 250mS buffer, outputting 32 bits. Cpu load is 20 or 30% respectively. Playback never stutters, but doe snip the first note of the first track.

 

The crackling is akin to soft lp surface noise and stops at the end of the playlist. Suggestions anyone?

I can second this as well I hear the static crackle at the end of tracks.

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Well, the volume knob is max, but the settings have the range as -3 to -6db. Due to the issues, I moved some music onto an internal 2.5" sata spinner with no OS. The slow starting is inconsistent, and I do have a start up pop. Neither of these bother me much. I am running through Muso too, in the event that it might be an issue.

What is your volume setting in HQPlayer? On what kind of storage the music is stored?

 

 

 

That's strange, for some reason DAC is really slow to catch up because HQPlayer plays one second of silence at the beginning.

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Have you tried reflashing/updating the firmware?

 

Firmware instructions

@Miska:

 

 

 

Thanks again for suggesting Jussi ... As it is my DAC is not that easy to power off - it's got 10 separate battery power supplies that are more or less hardwired to the circuitry so I'd rather not have to power down everything. I've had the DAC fully powered up for almost a year without any issues and checking the voltages this morning indicated that everything appears to be as it should be.

 

However, it was accessible to remove all power from the Amanero combo384 and thus reset this part of the system this morning. I also disconnected and reconnected the USB cable (even if it happens automatically). No change unfortunately - there's still no sound in one of the channels. I've also tried to uninstall and re-install the Amanero driver (1.056), the ASIO driver (?) and it makes no difference - still no sound in one channel.

 

I also tried listening to the headphone output on my laptop both via the foobar 2000 and the HQPlayer (NVidia Codec) and here there's sound in both channels.

 

So I'm puzzled as to what is going on here & what can be done to amend it ... Any suggestions? Might something have gone astray the way HQPlayer (or foobar?) interacts with the combo384 ??? Never had this issue before ...

 

Best regards,

 

Jesper

 

Remembering that I have a P.S. to this post: If I am to buy a faster processor is it then more important to have: 1. More cores (4 vs 2) + 6 MB cache RAM & 2.2 GHz base frequency or 2. Fewer cores (2 vs 4), 4 MB cache RAM & 3 GHz base frequency?

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I am happy to hear that it worked for you!

Just to conclude - it's now been solved ... apparently the first reflash of the combo384 didn't work although the combo384 software indicated that it should have been. A new reflash has brought back the second channel.

 

Jesper

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Maybe off base, but somehow in my network connection properties, HT mode got disabled and I had very similar problems to yours.

Is this what you are referring to (screen shot of Motorola UVerse gateway web interface)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22172[/ATTACH]

 

My home office desktop flashed a notice yesterday that I had an IP conflict but don't see one in my IP device list currently (or is that not where I'd see them)

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Now that you mention it, it would seem so. Sorry for the confusion Ted.

4est, thanks but isn't HT mode a wireless term? I'm wired (at least all my music related stuff is)

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Is anyone getting DSD256 out of a JLSounds I2SoverUSB using Win or OSX? I cannot seem to get it to play in non DoP, and am limited to DSD128. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

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Thank you for your reply Jussi. Linux is not ruled out entirely, but their web site seems to suggest that it should work with OSX at least.

Is Linux ruled out? It should work fine with either with my Ubuntu 14.04 patched kernel or Debian Stretch based NAA.

 

I have the older non-DSD256 variant of the board. Should order the newer version too...

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The website says:

- DSD Audio over PCM frames. DSD64 (2.8224MHz and 3.0720MHz) and DSD128 (5.6448MHz and 6.1440MHz) by method DoP with 0x05/0xFA

markers

- DSD Native DSD64 (2.8224MHz and 3.0720MHz), DSD128 (5.6448MHz

and 6.1440MHz) and DSD256 (11.2896MHz and 12.2880MHz) on Linux

and MAC OS

- DSD Native playback is available on firmware versions 3.06 and above

 

I just received the unit, and am assuming it is using the latest firmware, but have not discovered how to verify it. I thought it would just work out of the box on OSX and that I am doing something stupid. I have read that it may work on Windows as well, and would like to confirm either. I am attempting to use this on a DSC1 in place of an Amanero. It is working using DSD128 and has promise, but I recall the DSC1 as being optimized for 256/512.

OK, for it to work on OSX using DoP, it would need to support 705.6/768 kHz PCM rates... That's easy way to check.

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Thank you Maggio! It would seem a bit of false advertising then. It clearly states the capability. FWIW, I have yet to get an answer from Joro or Lyuben on this issue.

You can't play DSD256 on JLSounds whatever is your Os.

Maggio

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I believe you are getting it to work in Linux, I was looking for Mac or Windows. May I ask what hardware you are running Debian on?

I am listening to DSD256 with an NAA based on Debian Stretch (kernel is V4.2). Very easy install too.

 

Ray

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In the your downloaded HQPlayer folder there is a PDF manual.

I'm new to HQP and have been trying to find a manual more detailed for set up that the quick start guide on the Signalyst web site and can't seem to locate one. Is there such a set up guide for a complete newbie to this program? I don't have anything but a rudimentary understanding of the settings and how to optimize the program to work with all my files (FLAC and DSF mostly). I sent an e-mail to Jussi last week but have not received any reply so I thought I'd try here. Any help finding set up or use guides is much appreciated.

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No worries! If things fail to initiate play, check and recheck your settings. The program will only play if things are set properly. It is a very straight forward but humiliating program that is more than worth the effort!

In the your downloaded HQPlayer folder there is a PDF manual.

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Yeah! I have been waiting to see this after noticing the facebook notice a month ago.

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I too am curious about this, and what it will take to do 2 channel (closed form?) up to 512. For that matter, what are the CPU requirements along with offloading? I'll likely have to buy a dedicated GPU card, and I am wondering how to go about an upgrade.

So I have a Cuda Nvidia card that is listed as acceptable. I checked the box for Cuda offload. I still get very high cpu usage listed in windows 10 task manager. How can I check that it is really offloading to Cuda? Am I to assume that all is not offloaded but only some portion of the computations? I am going to assume if it was offloading all then my task manager would show some very low number when playing dsd. Now it is showing 59% usage which would certainly not have worked before. I am using an I7 cpu.

 

Just for the record I am assuming it is working because I can now play closed form smoothly in DSD 256 which I could not do before. How can I verify it is doing this offload?

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I hate to ask this, but can you elaborate a little on how this interaction takes place. For me the natural implementation for this is on my CAD/CAM station that also presently houses my music files on a Storage Space. It is an older z68 chipset with a i5 2500k. It would max out at using a 3.5 GHz i7 3770k because of it's 1155 socket. I happen to have one that I can transfer to it from another machine.

 

My question then is in a situation such as this, should I look into a GPU that is faster and more powerful to offset the the slower/less powerful CPU, or does that become superfluous and wasted? You spec'd a min of 1Gb of RAM, but does the amount matter or DDR3 vs DDR5 matter over the net Compute Capability score? I ask because there big differences in price on these video cards, and honestly I do not need one for video capabilities. My wait times on that station are minimal. Ultimately if I am wasting my efforts attempting to use this older machine or if I need to spend $800USD on a GPU instead of $400, I'd just as soon learn now as opposed to later. Thank you in advance.

 

Should we perhaps start another thread about hardware for upsampling DSD? It would seem as if there have always been questions about what hardware.

Yes, it depends on how fast the CPU is compared GPU and how many CPU cores are available. Now when using offload it makes sense to use Pipeline SDM also with dual-core CPU because GPU adds more cores to the system.

 

Most notable difference is when doing closed-form filter to DSD256 or using single-pass poly-sinc (non -2s) to DSD256. Both of these will also require relatively fast GPU.

 

My target is to be able to do at least 5.1 channels or preferably 8 channels DSD256 upsampling to exaSound e28. Target hardware being Quadro M4000 and Skylake i7 CPU.

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Thank you! This is exactly the information I needed know- including the K620 reference. I realized this was hardware dependent, but this gives me a guideline to follow. Although I am out of my knowledge base, I was told that a GPU was far superior to a CPU at this type of streaming. Is the lack of larger differences associated with how upsampling works because of the task management or that the CUDA offload is minimal for whatever reason or perhaps it is just that large of a computation?

I don't have an easy answer... It is pretty difficult to spec hardware that can perform X in situation Y without just trying out how certain hardware configuration performs in that situation.

 

Advantage with the offload is that by utilizing GPU you can achieve roughly same using dual core CPU as you could with a quad core CPU of the same clock speed. Some of the algorithms benefit from clock speed and usually if you go over 4 CPU cores the clock speeds go down as function of number of cores. This matters especially for multi-channel systems. Average work split between CPU and GPU is about 50/50.

 

Quadro K620 can help on doing stereo DSD256 with fairly low TDP (consumes 15W average) and decent price. It runs out of steam for some algorithms at stereo DSD512, so about double performance of K620 would be useful in those cases. Amount of RAM above 2 GB matters mostly for multi-channel cases, so the RAM speed and bus width (128-bit/256-bit) matters more.

 

The machine where I'm planning to use Quadro M4000 currently has i5-6600T CPU which is low TDP (35W), 32 GB of DDR4-2133 CL14 RAM (Kingston HyperX FURY) and the PSU has passive cooling, target being fairly acoustically quiet machine (few slow speed fans).

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OK, thank you Miska.

Not really true... GPU is good at some certain tasks that can be massively parallelized, but it is not nearly as flexible as CPU. Some tasks would be very slow to perform on GPU. So now the work split is such that each unit perform most suitable type of work.

 

Increasing precision also slows down GPU exponentially, for example compare single and double precision performance figures here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_900_Series

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#Quadro_Mxxx_Series

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+1

Miska, thanks for your never ending support. You frankly amaze me with your knowledge and your willingness to share. Once you include that feature that shows when CUDA is working it will make this much easier. If anyone has a similar problem to the one I encountered that Toolkit fix I posted will get CUDA working. It may not be elegant but it works.

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FWIW, I tried beta 2&3 in preparation for a new video card I ordered. In both instances, playback of RB>128 or 256 seemed half speed and stuttered greatly. Changing rates did not help. This is into an Amanero card btw. Reverting to 3.11.0 took care of it both times.

 

FWIW, I cannot seem to find the HQP log file in Win 10. Is it relocated, hidden or am I being stupid?