HQ Player

[ted_b]

Jussi, maybe said a different way: how much is CUDA offloading helping a computer do DSD512, and I ask since you feel comfortable disabling it for beta currently? I've never really a/b'd it in my new i7 6700k-based machine. I know it will come in very handy when I play multichannel to my e28 (via, say, DSD256). Not sure what is technically different (except for more channels of course) about multichannel and the need for double precision floating point vs 2 channel.

[cat6man]

i just downloaded a trial of hqplayer desktop, linux version, and installed it on my ubuntu 16.04 laptop for testing.

i want to target it to a microRendu set up as an NAA.

 

i am able to play music on my ubuntu laptop via alsa but not with the NAA connected to my DAC.

 

in settings, i setup the backend for NAA but no devices show up for selection in hqplayer.

 

my network is

laptop/ubuntu 16.04 ==> wifi AP ==> fios router/dhcp server ==> microRendu ==> TotalDAC D1-dual

 

this configuration works fine with microRendu set for MPD/DLNA or for Squeezelite.

 

any suggestions?

all i'm looking to do now is stream WAV/PCM to compare the microRendu as an NAA versus as a renderer.

i've seen reports that this improves SQ even without filtering or upsampling, and if i can verify this in my system, i'll setup my system around hqplayer embedded linux running on an i5 NUC.

[tboooe]

i just downloaded a trial of hqplayer desktop, linux version, and installed it on my ubuntu 16.04 laptop for testing.

Sorry for being OT, but wondering why you chose Ubuntu? I compared HQP on the same machine (different SSD) running in Lubuntu and Server R2 with Audiophile Optimizer and Fidelizer. The felt Server sounded much better.

 

As for the NAA, it seems a lot people are having issues with the microRendu and HQP. Have you contacted Jesus? I was able to get an NAA running on a Pi3 to work on both my Lubuntu and Server installs. Not sure if it matters but I used fixed IP for both HQP and NAA.

[cat6man]

Sorry for being OT, but wondering why you chose Ubuntu? I compared HQP on the same machine (different SSD) running in Lubuntu and Server R2 with Audiophile Optimizer and Fidelizer. The felt Server sounded much better.

 

As for the NAA, it seems a lot people are having issues with the microRendu and HQP. Have you contacted Jesus? I was able to get an NAA running on a Pi3 to work on both my Lubuntu and Server installs. Not sure if it matters but I used fixed IP for both HQP and NAA.

 

why ubuntu? because i am on an anti-windows/apple crusade, tilting against windmills.

 

i just borrowed my daughter's windows laptop and hqplayer desktop had no problem finding the mjcrorendu and dac,

both laptops on the same wifi home network.

i can ping the mrendu from both laptops but hqplayer doesn't find the mrendu/dac properly on the linux laptop......so i'm not sure if it is a linux laptop config issue or a hqplayer issue.

 

i'm also seeking help from jesus on the sonore mrendu threads.

 

thanks

[NAIDIVER]

Use for example "poly-sinc-short" or "poly-sinc-short-2s" instead.

 

Finally i ended up with poly-sinc-short-2s

Everything works now (flac,hi res flac,DSD,wav) All are upsampled to DSD256 and sounds awesome.

Love it.

[tboooe]

Finally i ended up with poly-sinc-short-2s

Everything works now (flac,hi res flac,DSD,wav) All are upsampled to DSD256 and sounds awesome.

Love it.

I need to compare DSD128 to 256! Have you compared?

[NAIDIVER]

I need to compare DSD128 to 256! Have you compared?

 

Yes i did. tboooe.

At the first tried upsampling, i found the sound stage was shallower, lack of space and layer among music instruments, freq response seemed to loss their linearity (rolled off a little bit on lower mid and accented on upper mid to HF) (compare to foobar with mytek ASIO) but superb details. when i listened to it for a long period, i found uncomfortable.

 

then i tried minringfir oversampling mode. SQ was improved but the weakness above still existed (upsampling to 256)

but with 128, SQ was better, then i ended up with it,Happy!!

 

After i changed sampling rate mode to poly-sinc-shrt-mp-2s (which i use now), i found SQ soooo warm and charming tube like sound but upper bass loss their definition and sounded like it's out of phase with 128. then i changed to DSD256. The sound was totally different from 128. At 256 sounded awesome, superb, magnificent (what else!! LOL!!) very good detail which foobar can't do and over than that the soundstage is deeper, wider with better layer and space than my earlier setting and its weakness got recovery and almost beat foobar.

 

That is all about my experiments.

poly-sinc-shrt-mp-2s (not poly-sinc-short-2s now), 256 is better than 128 without a doubt.

 

PS.

- I don't know why it sounds like that technically but my ears heard it.

- Some tracks or some albums, it sounded dull and not opened much in HF like heavy filter on it. I don't know why....

[tboooe]

Thank you naidiver!

 

@miska, for some reason I cannot get DSD256 to play without stuttering. DSD128 plays fine. I've tried adjusting the Buffer in HQP all the way to the max but it doesnt help. I've also tried adjusting the buffer settings of my DAC. Also no luck. My CPU utilization is only about 40% and I have plenty of memory. Any ideas?

[a.dent]

I am having some problems with gapless playback and clicking coming from my DAC between every track.

 

I have a Mac mini i7 server with Roon and HQ player. I am coverting to DSD 128 with HQ Player and serving the music via DoP to an Atom based Ubuntu machine connected to my Vitus DAC.

 

Live albums all have a gap between tracks where the applause stops. It seems something is causing a breakdown in gapless play. There is also a click between all tracks.

 

Please help.

[Miska]

@miska, for some reason I cannot get DSD256 to play without stuttering. DSD128 plays fine. I've tried adjusting the Buffer in HQP all the way to the max but it doesnt help. I've also tried adjusting the buffer settings of my DAC. Also no luck. My CPU utilization is only about 40% and I have plenty of memory. Any ideas?

 

Check the Resource Monitor for per-core load graphs and check that none of the CPU cores exceed about 75% load. For example if your CPU has HyperThreading, then 50% indicated load is already full load. The total load figure is not very informative, you need to check the per-core loads.

 

What filter are you using?

[Miska]

I have a Mac mini i7 server with Roon and HQ player. I am coverting to DSD 128 with HQ Player and serving the music via DoP to an Atom based Ubuntu machine connected to my Vitus DAC.

 

Live albums all have a gap between tracks where the applause stops. It seems something is causing a breakdown in gapless play. There is also a click between all tracks.

 

Check your Roon settings. It should be providing continous stream to HQPlayer.

[Miska]

Jussi, maybe said a different way: how much is CUDA offloading helping a computer do DSD512, and I ask since you feel comfortable disabling it for beta currently? I've never really a/b'd it in my new i7 6700k-based machine. I know it will come in very handy when I play multichannel to my e28 (via, say, DSD256). Not sure what is technically different (except for more channels of course) about multichannel and the need for double precision floating point vs 2 channel.

 

It can make pretty big difference. Even more so if you do matrix/convolution processing.

 

The processing is generally double precision (64-bit) floating point on both CPU and GPU. So technically there's nothing different, apart from the convenience that you get plenty of extra computing power for reasonable price.

 

I'm not at all comfortable disabling it, it is disabled only because there's not yet CUDA 8 SDK production release and the older 7.5 SDK doesn't work anymore in any of the development environments (latest Visual Studio, Xcode or Ubuntu). IOW, they stopped updating the previous release and have not yet released the new one. The old binaries I've built with older tools still work fine, but I cannot build new binaries with CUDA support using the new toolset.

[a.dent]

Check your Roon settings. It should be providing continous stream to HQPlayer.

 

So is it a Roon problem?

 

I have checked Roon settings and they are seemingly correct but I will post on the Roon forum to see if they can help.

[Brucemck2]

It can make pretty big difference. Even more so if you do matrix/convolution processing.

 

The processing is generally double precision (64-bit) floating point on both CPU and GPU. So technically there's nothing different, apart from the convenience that you get plenty of extra computing power for reasonable price.

 

I'm not at all comfortable disabling it, it is disabled only because there's not yet CUDA 8 SDK production release and the older 7.5 SDK doesn't work anymore in any of the development environments (latest Visual Studio, Xcode or Ubuntu). IOW, they stopped updating the previous release and have not yet released the new one. The old binaries I've built with older tools still work fine, but I cannot build new binaries with CUDA support using the new toolset.

 

So, a new 1080 or 1070 card won't offer improvement yet?

[tboooe]

Check the Resource Monitor for per-core load graphs and check that none of the CPU cores exceed about 75% load. For example if your CPU has HyperThreading, then 50% indicated load is already full load. The total load figure is not very informative, you need to check the per-core loads.

 

What filter are you using?

ahhh...so I checked and 1 CPU (I only have a dual core i3) is maxed out but the other one is barely above 0. Is there any way I can make both cores share the load better? I am using poly-sinc-mp-2s.

[YashN]

Great! Thank you for posting the update, I didn't notice this myself! If it is supposed to be on par with GTX 980, then it is supposed to be faster than GTX 980 with HQPlayer, because 1000-series is supposed to have improved 64-bit double precision floating point performance.

 

Should be pretty good price/performance ratio!

 

Oh yes, lots of CUDA cores to play with and thanks AMD for giving them stiff competition driving some prices down. At $250 for that kind of powerful Graphics Card, the most expensive item in a build then remains the CPU!

[cat6man]

There is now 3.14b5 available with following changes:

- Fixes problem where convolution engine is not enabled by default (non-matrix-pipeline case)

- Adds two NAA backend entries to settings, one for IPv4-only and one for IPv4+IPv6 dual-stack instead of just dual-stack

- Some compatibility fixes for older Macs with older CPU models

 

i see mac and windows versions but not linux.

thanks

[rickca]

Miska, I'm considering GTX 1060 vs GTX 1070. I use my system for gaming when I'm not listening to music, but since I game at 1080p the GTX 1060 would be powerful enough. The question is ... would the GTX 1060 with 1280 CUDA cores be plenty (with an i7-6700K) for HQPlayer PCM --> DSD512, or do you recommend getting a GTX 1070? Of course, the GTX 1060 memory bandwidth is also significantly lower than on the GTX 1070, but I don't know if that's significant for HQPlayer.

So then Miska, back to my question above. If I'm not doing convolution or matrix processing, are you saying that the new GTX 1060 ($250) should be plenty of CUDA power for HQPlayer? If a GTX 1070 wouldn't make that big an incremental difference to HQPlayer performance in comparison to the GTX 1060, I'd prefer to save the money for something else.

[EdmontonCanuck]

... I'd prefer to save the money for something else.

 

Then save your money and not use a graphics card at all! I'm happily doing DSD512 upsampling on my quad core and have no graphics card at all installed.

[tboooe]

Then save your money and not use a graphics card at all! I'm happily doing DSD512 upsampling on my quad core and have no graphics card at all installed.

 

Do you mind letting me know what processor you use? I have an old I3 dual core that is struggling with DSD128. I am thinking of upgrading the cpu to an I7 (3770s) quad. My problem is my mobo is old (lga1155) so selection is limited.

[hifial]

Do you mind letting me know what processor you use? I have an old I3 dual core that is struggling with DSD128. I am thinking of upgrading the cpu to an I7 (3770s) quad. My problem is my mobo is old (lga1155) so selection is limited.

 

You will need to use an i7 6700K. You want the K version. You can look for my build list on CA. The total including case and OS came to around $1,100. I also upgraded my PS for a total of $1,400. Not cheap but perfect for up-sampling all rates to DSD512 using HQP.

 

I left out a Graphics Card, no need for it. But it can always be added later.

 

You can also look for Ted b build list.

 

Hope this helps.

[tboooe]

You will need to use an i7 6700K. You want the K version. You can look for my build list on CA. The total including case and OS came to around $1,100. I also upgraded my PS for a total of $1,400. Not cheap but perfect for up-sampling all rates to DSD512 using HQP.

 

I left out a Graphics Card, no need for it. But it can always be added later.

 

You can also look for Ted b build list.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Thank you but I am not looking to build a new pc. I am hoping to reuse my current fanless one but just switch out the cpu. So you don't think a i7 3770s will work? There is a 3770k version but I need to check to see what the thermal output is to see if my passive cooling case can handle it.

 

EDIT: looks like my fanless case can also handle the 3770k. Doesnt look like much of a difference between 3770S and 3770K unless I overclock the K.

[hifial]

Thank you but I am not looking to build a new pc. I am hoping to reuse my current fanless one but just switch out the cpu. So you don't think a i7 3770s will work? There is a 3770k version but I need to check to see what the thermal output is to see if my passive cooling case can handle it.

 

Well it depends on what you plan to up-sample to.

 

For DSD512, no it will not. (PS if you go for the 6700K overclock it)

 

For DSD256, it should be fine, especially if you overclock it.

 

For DSD128, easily.

 

There are some prebuilt PC that you could buy (6700K) that will work but I believe none are fan-less> I take it that you want a fan-less PC.

 

CA member Priaptor likes his Falcon NW, though it is not fan-less it will do DSD512.

[tboooe]

Well it depends on what you plan to up-sample to.

 

For DSD512, no it will not. (PS if you go for the 6700K overclock it)

 

For DSD256, it should be fine, especially if you overclock it.

 

For DSD128, easily.

 

There are some prebuilt PC that you could buy (6700K) that will work but I believe none are fan-less> I take it that you want a fan-less PC.

 

CA member Priaptor likes his Falcon NW, though it is not fan-less it will do DSD512.

 

Thank you. Yes i would prefer to stay fanless and just reuse as much as what I currently have as possible. I am trying to just do DSD256. My little i3 dual core almost does it so I think a 3770s or 3770k quad should handle DSD256 just fine. I think I will get the 3770K so I have the option to overclock though I have never done that before so I am afraid I am going to burn down my house!

[Miska]

ahhh...so I checked and 1 CPU (I only have a dual core i3) is maxed out but the other one is barely above 0. Is there any way I can make both cores share the load better? I am using poly-sinc-mp-2s.

 

Both cores should be automatically pretty much evenly loaded. Make sure Audiophile Optimizer or Fidelizer is not messing up with load balancing (no affinity settings or anything like that).

 

Dual core CPUs that have HyperThreading show four virtual CPUs and in these cases two of the four virtual cores should be roughly evenly loaded.