HQ Player

[Hammer]

What is your DAC? Only a few can go beyond DSD128 in Linux.

 

It's a Teac UD-503. I am a/b'ing it against an Auralic Vega on the hunch that HQPlayer makes a bigger difference than the DAC.

[Hammer]

There is no non-DoP support for TEAC at the moment. In any case, main window can show the available sampling rate options, so if there's possibility of selecting DSD256 frequencies (11.3 MHz) then I'd expect it to work.

 

I'm going to buy UD-503, but haven't figured out yet where to get it from. I've found couple of places across Europe having it. Including nativedsd.com

 

Actually, when I play the Teac via Windows, the only way I get do DSD256 is to set DoP to None in HQPlayer...does this mean the Teac won't work on a NAA running Debian Stretch?

 

Thank you.

[Hammer]

Jussi, when playing a playlist that contains multiple file formats, there is often a long delay when switching formats. On a pc with sufficient hardware, would it be possible to add an option to "save" the initialization data structures in memory so that HQPlayer does not need to re-initialize each time there is a change in file format? Thank you, hammer.

[Hammer]

Technically yes, but it is not at all easy to implement. So currently only the current initialization is cached over stop/play cycles...

 

Thank you...and so the only way to speed up the initialization now is a faster processor? CUDA does not help with this aspect, right? Is there any other hardware that can help?

[Hammer]

At the moment that's the case. It could be possible to accelerate the initialization with CUDA, but it will also need more work, although it is quite a bit easier than caching bunch of different initializations and then picking the right one from those.

 

So I can look into CUDA acceleration of the initialization procedure in future releases to see how much it would help.

 

That would be great! Thank you.

[Hammer]

Hi, just want to pass along that HQPlayer plus REW is an awesome combo. The room EQ file REW created fixed the bloated bass I was hearing and now the music is so much clearer, especially with vocals! It was a cheap and effective way to improve my system and so I thought i'd share my experience.

[Hammer]

Is there a way to get HQPlayer to output to 2 NAA's at the same time?

[Hammer]

Hi, with the latest beta 2, I am noticing when I play 2 red book files (up sampled and converted to DSD128 with convolution on) back to back through Roon, HQPlayer will "reinitialize" before playing the send song even though no changes to settings are made. Eg, I see the progress bar goin back and forth. Is this normal?

[Hammer]

You get the progress bar every time playback is started from stopped state. How long it takes depends on amount of work to be done...

 

Does that mean Roon "stops" between tracks?

[Hammer]

Hi Jussi, would it be possible to add to the feature request list an "on/off" button for convolution on the main screen so we can more readily A/B the effect? I'm hoping the music would continue to play as convolution is toggled on and off. Thank you, Hammer

[Hammer]

It already is; it's the green checkmark.

 

Wow! Amazing! Thank you!

[Hammer]

Hi, using beta 3.14b3 and noticed that CUDA offload is not working. The message says disabled for both convolution and resampler. Anyone else experiencing this? Thanks, Hammer

[Hammer]

Hi, my current setup is a 6700k PC and it up samples fine to DSD256 (with convolution using a REW generated correction file) which is the max for my Vega DAC. The one area I would like faster response time is when switching between sample rates. When I play say a red book file and then a DSD64 fine, a blue bar comes on a it takes a few seconds before the new song plays. Will adding a CUDA card such as the new GTX 1070 speed that up? Thanks, Hammer.

[Hammer]

hi, is CUDA offload still disabled in latest version of HQPlayer? I just installed a GTX1080, and while I can selected CUDA is settings, when I start to play, the note on the main screen, bottom left, says offload resampler and convolution: disabled.

 

I am using version 3.1.4.4 on Windows 10. Latest nvidia drivers installed.

Any ideas? Thanks!

[Hammer]

hi, is CUDA offload still disabled in latest version of HQPlayer? I just installed a GTX1080, and while I can selected CUDA is settings, when I start to play, the note on the main screen, bottom left, says offload resampler and convolution: disabled.

 

I am using version 3.1.4.4 on Windows 10. Latest nvidia drivers installed.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

installed CUDA toolkit and it now works! thanks, hammer

[Hammer]

That is not necessary and you just waste diskspace. You only need latest Nvidia drivers, everything else comes with HQPlayer. I have this working for example in the latest server build. Win10 Pro OEM, Nvidia drivers and HQPlayer installed, nothing else. And CUDA offload works.

 

 

P.S. If you use any OS optimization tools, it may be possible that those have messed up something and that's why some things don't work.

 

Miska, I am finding that offload only works right after a reboot. If I quit HQPlayer and open it again, offload is not enabled. This is with the latest nvidia drivers.

 

Could this his be due to the fact I have the 1080 card as my "secondary" graphics card? I set my primary to be the integrated graphics of the 6700k since sometimes I like to run Roon via RDP. My machine is a dedicated windows 10 machine for HQPlayer with not much else installed.

 

Thank you. Hammer.

[Hammer]

Could be, although it shouldn't make difference. But it may be that Nvidia does less testing with such configurations.

 

RDP doesn't work with Nvidia drivers? That shouldn't make difference either...

 

All my configurations with Nvidia card also have display connected to the same card.

RDP works, but not Roon via RDP.

[Hammer]

Yeah, the tricky part is rendering OpenGL over RDP. Due to long time Windows RDP bugs, it only tends to work if the OpenGL application is started first, before RDP connection is established. If the application is started over RDP connection it doesn't work... Pretty annoying and not logical at all.

 

After some googling, it seems to be a common problem running a CUDA application when the video card is not the primary card, but many of the posts date back a few years. Surely, nVidia has fixed the issue or there is a work around...it turns out that even on reboot, HQPlayer will only work with CUDA until the next file resolution change. For example, if I reboot, HQPlayer will enable CUDA and play fine the first songs of the same resolution (say, 192/24), it will then stop/crash if the next track switches to say a DSF file. That's why I need to quit HQPlayer and re-open it. But when I do that CUDA is no longer enabled. Note when I say crash, the HQPlayer application stays open, but it does not play and music.

 

The reason why I like to have the integrated GPU be the primary is so I can run Roon via RDP (it appears the intel graphics driver allows OpenGL via RDP, but the nVidia driver does not). The reason why I like to do that is because sometimes it takes close to a week before Roon is available in the iOS app store, but the Windows version is available right away. Again, I only use this PC for HQPlayer.

 

Thank you. Hammer.

[Hammer]

Could be that they don't have much incentive to fix it for GeForce even if they fix it for Quadro/Tesla.

 

 

 

It would be useful to get a HQPlayer log file of all this happening to see what is going on. If you could email me the log...

 

I have not seen this kind of behavior, but as mentioned my graphics is running out of the Nvidia card and especially on the "HQPlayer only" Win 10 machine has i7-6950X which doesn't have any built-in GPU.

 

 

 

This goes to the same category as the CUDA secondary card problem, I'd expect Nvidia to fix this case if it is possible to fix...

 

I apologize for taking people's time on time...turns out the problem was HQPlayer was not installed properly. I was running the 64 bit version, but for some reason, the "start in" directory was the x86 directory and now that I uninstalled (both 64 bit and 32 bit versions) and reinstalled the 64 bit version, it all works fine. CUDA works and Roon via RDP works with the integrated GPU as primary and the 1080 as secondary.

 

Thank you your help. Hammer

[Hammer]

Does CUDA offload also speed up the initialization of HQPlayer when file formats change? (Eg. When the blue progress bar goes back and forth)

 

Trying to figure out if I need a fast processor and a CUDA card or just a CUDA card for my next build...

 

Thank you!

[Hammer]

No, that process is not offloaded because lot of things are performed at higher resolution than CUDA supports.

 

So I decided to repurpose an old board with an i5 3450 (3.1 Ghz, 4 cores, no HT) and paired it with a GTX 1080. What is interesting is that even with CUDA offload, the music still stutters. However, if I turn off Pipeline SDM, the stuttering goes away. I thought I had read a while back that with CUDA offload, Pipeline SDM should be checked. I am upsampling everything to DSD256 and convolution is on. CPU load is around 40% and GPU load is 15%.

 

Any ideas? Will future versions of HQPlayer offload even more to CUDA? Just curious what processing remains on the CPU when CUDA is enabled. Thanks!

[Hammer]

Hi, trying to get NAA to work and I have the pi2 image from the signalyst website installed and while I see the Pi2 on my network (eg it has an ip address when I scan the network), HQPlayer does not list it in the drop down box. Any ideas? Thank you! Hammer

[Hammer]

I had similar issues last week. Can you confirm that you are able to see the RPI in Tools --> Network section of HQPlayer? Also, which DAC are you using? I had to manually edit config.txt file on the SD card that had RPI3 image to add support for the Allo Piano DAC which is based around PCM5122.

Hi, I don't see a Network section under Tools...I am using HQPlayer 3.14.4. Should I try the beta b8? Is that "newer"? I have an Auralic Vega DAC (upgraded to support DSD256).

 

Thanks! Hammer

[Hammer]

I think he meant Network Naming under Tools.

 

Here you should see the IP address of the device running NAA.

 

I don't see that either. Under Tools, I have 1) Speaker Setup, 2) ASIO Channel Mapping and 3) ASIO Control Panel. The only place I see which has the NAA option is under Settings where I can select the Backend: WASPI, ASIO, NAA, NAA (IPv6). And my pi2 is not listed when I select NAA.

[Hammer]

That does not seem right. I am running v 3.14.4 on windows and see Tools. Under tools there is Speaker Setup and Network Naming.

That's so strange. I'm looking at it right now and I only see those 3 options under Tools. I'm running the Windows version.