HQ Player

[Miska]

He could make HQP an ASIO service though! That would be great, it means you can use HQP with any software that supports ASIO.

 

But that would be Windows-only, which makes it sort of uninteresting. Plus lot of software doesn't support ASIO, for example Spotify.

 

And I'm afraid it would end up like JPlay with JRiver.

[Miska]

I am helping a friend installing his first Computer Audio transport.

The system: Sonic transporter i5 (Roon Core) - Microrendu - USB dac, using an iPad pro for control.

This configuration worked flawlessly, but was inferior to his CD playback.

HQ Player to the Rescue.

I installed an evaluation copy of HQ player on an iMac and restarted Microrendu as an HQ player NAA. HQ player could not see the Microrendu.

I was able to play music as follows:

1- HQ Player (on iMac) - USB DAC

2- Roon server on Sonic Transporter i5 - HQ Player on iMac - USB DAC - Roon control on iPad pro.

But I was not able to see the Microrendu as a device in HQ player.

Any Idea what could have gone wrong?

 

First try with the HQPlayer 3.14 beta and see if it helps. If it doesn't then the network likely doesn't pass multicast packets properly.

[Miska]

Still I understand there may be other technical solution how MicroRendu, HQPlayer and Roon could work together. Future will tell.

 

As you may understand I was looking for a future and different solution for my MicroRendu communication issues.

 

Roon + HQPlayer + microRendu as NAA is working perfectly for me. No problems at all. And the traffic is traversing three different switches when I use HQPlayer on my office workstation. (Mac Mini running Roon on OS X, HQPlayer running on Linux and NAA running on microRendu)

[Miska]

There are 3Gb (cheaper) and 6Gb versions. Does the amount of memory matter or just the processing cores for CUDA?

 

It depends on what kind of HQPlayer configuration you are planning to use...

 

Number of CUDA cores alone doesn't define performance. What matters is combination of memory bus width, memory and GPU clock frequencies - and number of cores.

 

But depending on use case, it doesn't make much sense to overdo the GPU either. Although there are certain side effects, for example large GPU at 10% load will very likely run cooling fans at lower speed than smaller GPU loaded at 80%.

 

Plus if you use Roon for example or HQPlayer touch/fullscreen mode, there's extra GPU load coming from the graphics. This is also the case if you use for example Chrome web browser while listening music. So in such cases it is good to have more GPU power reserve.

[Miska]

Good news! Nvidia has today released production version of CUDA 8. This means 3.14 should be ready soon.

 

Note: Nvidia has dropped support for OS X / macOS, likely because there have not been new Macs with Nvidia GPUs in recent years. This means that 3.14 will also drop CUDA support on macOS.

[Keith_W]

But that would be Windows-only, which makes it sort of uninteresting. Plus lot of software doesn't support ASIO, for example Spotify.

 

And I'm afraid it would end up like JPlay with JRiver.

 

If people cared about quality, they wouldn't be using any software that doesn't support ASIO. Least of all (ugh) Spotify. People who don't care about quality is not your market. In any case, it should be possible to route output from Spotify to any ASIO device using an ASIO bridge.

 

I don't know anything about Macs and Linux. I was under the impression that they have ASIO equivalents?

 

JPlay IMO provides no audible improvement. Your software is nothing like JPlay. I love HQP so much that I am prepared to put up with the default interface, just to use it! I don't see how it would end up like JPlay with JRiver.

[Pocobear]

 

I love HQP so much that I am prepared to put up with the default interface, just to use it! I don't see how it would end up like JPlay with JRiver.

Keith, check out this site Alchemy Desktop. Try it out and see it you like their interface to HQP better, and let us know what you think. I run Mac's and would try it myself, but they haven't finished the Mac version yet.

Cheers

[Keith_W]

Thanks Poco. I have tried Alchemy. I gave my impressions and feedback in their thread here on CA. I am waiting for them to release a new version before I buy. At the moment it does not offer much improvement over the HQP standard interface.

[Pocobear]

Thanks Poco. I have tried Alchemy. I gave my impressions and feedback in their thread here on CA. I am waiting for them to release a new version before I buy. At the moment it does not offer much improvement over the HQP standard interface.

I guess we will both have to wait:) Thanks for the reply.

[kings_audio]

From technical point of view yes, but I have not yet implemented the load balancing. It has some tricky aspects such as asymmetric GPU configurations when all the GPUs are not the same model and have different performance, etc.

 

At the moment it just picks the GPU "best suited" for the task and uses it together with CPU.

 

Hi, Miska

 

If i install two same model GPUs (e.g. Tesla K20),can get support in next version ?

 

At this moment i install CUDA 8.0.44 for Titan Black & Tesla k20 work fine in 3.13 .

 

Thanks for the reply.

[Miska]

If i install two same model GPUs (e.g. Tesla K20),can get support in next version ?

 

Multi-GPU is not supported at the moment, so only one of the two will be picked up by the Nvidia driver. And since such setups are rare, it is not planned in near futue either.

 

At this moment i install CUDA 8.0.44 for Titan Black & Tesla k20 work fine in 3.13 .

 

You don't need to install anything else than display drivers from here:

Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

 

Anything else you install won't be used.

[Miska]

I don't know anything about Macs and Linux. I was under the impression that they have ASIO equivalents?

 

Yes they do, but those are all different, so instead of one implementation there needs to be three which means 3x the amount of work. For most part, the HQPlayer code base is the same for all three platforms.

 

Plus it would require pretty much redoing the entire player. It wouldn't be "HQPlayer" anymore, but something else. I'm not eager to make some ugly hack to make it "work".

 

Better alternative is to convince those other players to support HQPlayer as a player engine...

[R1200CL]

Better alternative is to convince those other players to support HQPlayer as a player engine...

 

.....as Roon suggested here https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-raat-architecture-and-protocol-vs-dlna-upnp-av/8542/23?u=r1200cl ?

[Miska]

.....as Roon suggested here https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-raat-architecture-and-protocol-vs-dlna-upnp-av/8542/23?u=r1200cl ?

 

I don't think it would technically work very easily. HQPlayer wants to have low level control of the audio device and having something stiff in the middle doesn't work. It would likely mean huge modifications to Roon's audio system and degraded sound quality overall. Especially synchronized multiroom to asynchronous USB DACs means degraded sound quality.

 

If Roon wants, I could probably provide them base class for my internal audio API and they could implement something on top of it and we could see what kind of results that would lead to. But I don't think they are willing to invest the time and effort for it.

[R1200CL]

Miska

 

Is it your plan to allow network naming for IPv6 as well.

 

The purpose of this function is well explained in your user manual.

Is the network name or IP address meant to be remembered by HQPlayer ?

 

Is yes, there may be a small bug there. Also I have made HQPlayer crash by using this function. After crash HQPlayer "forget" that allow network control was enabled.

[Keith_W]

Yes they do, but those are all different, so instead of one implementation there needs to be three which means 3x the amount of work. For most part, the HQPlayer code base is the same for all three platforms.

 

Plus it would require pretty much redoing the entire player. It wouldn't be "HQPlayer" anymore, but something else. I'm not eager to make some ugly hack to make it "work".

 

Better alternative is to convince those other players to support HQPlayer as a player engine...

 

Well, if I can't convince you to make it an ASIO service, can I request that you consider a digital input then? JRiver has one.

 

I would LOVE to route all my sound through HQPlayer. As you know from my other posts, I am using HQP to generate my crossover using filters created by Acourate. All my audio has to run through a convolution engine of some sort. Because there is no digital input for HQP, I had to buy an Acourate Convolver license. The disadvantage of AC is there is no DSD upsampling, and I am stuck with using two convolution programs - one which I love (HQP), and the other which I am ambivalent about (AC).

[vladimirb0b]

On the subject of convolvers, is HQP's convolver special compared to a generic one, and how?

[Keith_W]

On the subject of convolvers, is HQP's convolver special compared to a generic one, and how?

 

Yes. It is the only convolver on the market that upsamples to DSD, and performs convolution in DSD. All other convolvers are PCM only.

[vladimirb0b]

Yes. It is the only convolver on the market that upsamples to DSD, and performs convolution in DSD. All other convolvers are PCM only.

 

But PCM convolution is still done in PCM, correct?

[bibo01]

But PCM convolution is still done in PCM, correct?

 

Yes, convolution is always done at native input resolution.

There is one exception: when you do DSD-to-PCM conversion at the same time, the convolution is performed at 1 / 16th of the DSD frequency in the PCM domain.

 

From NextHardware: Convolution in HQPlayer

[Miska]

Well, if I can't convince you to make it an ASIO service, can I request that you consider a digital input then? JRiver has one.

 

I would LOVE to route all my sound through HQPlayer. As you know from my other posts, I am using HQP to generate my crossover using filters created by Acourate. All my audio has to run through a convolution engine of some sort. Because there is no digital input for HQP, I had to buy an Acourate Convolver license. The disadvantage of AC is there is no DSD upsampling, and I am stuck with using two convolution programs - one which I love (HQP), and the other which I am ambivalent about (AC).

 

Yes, I completely understand the point. However, that probably wouldn't be called "HQPlayer", but something else. It would be another product.

 

I'm not against such product overall. Point was just that a ship is good for it's purpose, but won't make a good airplane, and vice versa.

[westside]

Hi guys,

I am a new member and i need your help with HQPlayer.

 

I use HQPlayer with Audiophile Optimizer and Fidelizer Pro on Windows Server.

I don't have an nvidia card , my cpu is an i5 3570k and my DAC is a psaudio nuwave ( max 192k no dsd support ) .

 

So when i play a file everything sound great the sound is really good.

But i wondering if i setup the player at his best possibility because when i look my cpu load it's very low ( a few % ).

Can you tell me if everything is good ?

I use : poly sinc short mp and TPDF And Auto k and PCM.

 

Thank you by advance for your help and i'm sorry my english is not very good.

 

Aurelien.

[bibo01]

Hi guys,

I am a new member and i need your help with HQPlayer.

 

I use HQPlayer with Audiophile Optimizer and Fidelizer Pro on Windows Server.

I don't have an nvidia card , my cpu is an i5 3570k and my DAC is a psaudio nuwave ( max 192k no dsd support ) .

 

So when i play a file everything sound great the sound is really good.

But i wondering if i setup the player at his best possibility because when i look my cpu load it's very low ( a few % ).

Can you tell me if everything is good ?

I use : poly sinc short mp and TPDF And Auto k and PCM.

 

Thank you by advance for your help and i'm sorry my english is not very good.

 

Aurelien.

 

It's all correct!

In PCM only a cpu is not stressed at all.

You can test filter/noise shape combinations as you like.

[westside]

Hi,

Thank you for your help.

I have another question what's mean LIMITED :

You can found this under TIME and under SONG.

Sometimes i have LIMITED : 0 when i play an album

Sometimes i have LIMITED : with number.

Whats mean this number ?

something wrong ?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Aurelien.

[ted_b]

Hi,

Thank you for your help.

I have another question what's mean LIMITED :

You can found this under TIME and under SONG.

Sometimes i have LIMITED : 0 when i play an album

Sometimes i have LIMITED : with number.

Whats mean this number ?

something wrong ?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Aurelien.

 

Search is your friend. http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/hq-player-20293/index252.html#post574737

 

Or look in the manual, page 12.