HQ Player

[AnotherSpin]

5 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I can't give you the theory, but I did prefer the closed-form filter for a few days. It seemed as if things sounded clearer, crisper. But, I ultimately decided to switch back to using XTR filter after playing some piano and orchestral pieces using closed-form: these sounded less natural to me, as if distorted. I would suggest that you try these filters on complex passages and see if you can A/B test them. 

 

I believe filter selection is very system related. Nevertheless, I was listening to closed-form filter for several days after xtr and have similar conclusions. It may sound lively, but closed-form gives some exaggeration or artificial flavour what is more detectable with chamber or solo classical music. Xtr is more neutral.

[Bob Stern]

6 hours ago, jimdukey said:

Is the 3.16.3 Update mainly for Windows, or are there changes/improvements for Mac/Sierra?

I'm happy with 3.16.1!

 

I don’t know about other OS's, but on the Mac you can simply copy both versions of HQP somewhere on your hard drive and launch one or the other.  After comparing them, you can trash whichever one you don’t like.

 

(fwiw, 3.16.3 is fine in El Capitan.  I don’t have Sierra.)

[Bob Stern]

I have to admit I haven’t tried the XTR filter (I use Poly-Sinc Short MP), but I wonder whether the popularity of XTR is due to the mystique of anything "extreme".  I don’t recall Miska ever recommending it.

 

When audiophiles are given a choice between lots of ringing and minimum ringing, most instinctively choose minimum ringing.  In HQP, the XTR filters have the most ringing, and the Short filters have the least ringing.

[Jud]

3 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

I have to admit I haven’t tried the XTR filter (I use Poly-Sinc Short MP), but I wonder whether the popularity of XTR is due to the mystique of anything "extreme".  I don’t recall Miska ever recommending it.

 

When audiophiles are given a choice between lots of ringing and minimum ringing, most instinctively choose minimum ringing.  In HQP, the XTR filters have the most ringing, and the Short filters have the least ringing.

 

I'm not almost all audiophiles then.   But as I've mentioned before, I think this may be due to the fact that my speakers rely on linear phase and time alignment for imaging and soundstage, and minimum phase filters may mess that up.

 

Minimum phase filters have less pre-ringing but more post-ringing unless they are apodizing.  To the extent we might actually be able to hear any of this, more post-ringing would give the very slightest artificial reverb, and an apodizing filter would tend to roll off highs, the vast majority at frequencies we can no longer hear if we ever could.

 

Edit: I just use poly-sinc-2s myself.

[EdmontonCanuck]

4 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Minimum phase filters have less pre-ringing but more post-ringing unless they are apodizing.  To the extent we might actually be able to hear any of this, more post-ringing would give the very slightest artificial reverb, and an apodizing filter would tend to roll off highs, the vast majority at frequencies we can no longer hear if we ever could.

 

 

Jud, can you point me to a web resource somewhere where I can read about the bolded, underlined terms in your post so that I can understand what those terms actually mean? I keep seeing them in this thread but actually have no clue what any of them mean and I guess it's important to understand the various filter options in HQP.

[Dr Tone]

16 minutes ago, EdmontonCanuck said:

 

Jud, can you point me to a web resource somewhere where I can read about the bolded, underlined terms in your post so that I can understand what those terms actually mean? I keep seeing them in this thread but actually have no clue what any of them mean and I guess it's important to understand the various filter options in HQP.

 

This is a good read.

 

https://www.ayre.com/pdf/Ayre_MP_White_Paper.pdf

[AnotherSpin]

5 hours ago, Jud said:

 

I'm not almost all audiophiles then.   But as I've mentioned before, I think this may be due to the fact that my speakers rely on linear phase and time alignment for imaging and soundstage, and minimum phase filters may mess that up.

 

Minimum phase filters have less pre-ringing but more post-ringing unless they are apodizing.  To the extent we might actually be able to hear any of this, more post-ringing would give the very slightest artificial reverb, and an apodizing filter would tend to roll off highs, the vast majority at frequencies we can no longer hear if we ever could.

 

Edit: I just use poly-sinc-2s myself.

 

I use xtr 2s. Do you hear PCM filter selection makes difference even if you upsample to SDM?

[Jud]

1 hour ago, EdmontonCanuck said:

 

Jud, can you point me to a web resource somewhere where I can read about the bolded, underlined terms in your post so that I can understand what those terms actually mean? I keep seeing them in this thread but actually have no clue what any of them mean and I guess it's important to understand the various filter options in HQP.

 

About pre-and post-ringing, here's something with graphics - I always find visuals help: http://src.infinitewave.ca

 

What you want to do is compare the same "family" of sample rate converter using minimum phase and linear phase on the impulse test.  So for example, compare iZotope 64-bit SRC steep no alias versus iZotope 64-bit SRC intermediate phase:

 

See how there are smaller waves (ringing) before and after the impulse in the (linear phase) Steep No Alias graphic, while the (closer to minimum phase) Intermediate Phase graphic has shifted those smaller waves mostly to after the impulse?  If that was a minimum phase rather than an intermediate phase filter, *all* the smaller waves would come after the impulse.  So that, in pictures, is what is meant by saying that as you go from linear phase filters to minimum phase filters, you get less pre-ringing but more post-ringing.

 

Apodizing filters: To understand apodizing filters (apodize means "remove the foot," the "foot" in this case being the ringing), it's necessary to realize two things:

 

First, those smaller waves (the ringing you saw in the graphics) are at *ultrasonic* frequencies.  This is due to the Gibbs phenomenon.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon)  Basically, what you need to know is that ringing happens at the frequency where the filter cuts, and the filters you saw in the graphics cut in the ultrasonic region.

 

Second, the more steeply the filter cuts, the more ringing.

 

The idea of an apodizing filter is to remove the ultrasonic ringing, but if you did it with a filter that cuts steeply, that filter would ring itself, and you'd just be substituting one ringing filter for another.  Instead apodizing filters have what is sometimes called a "slow roll-off:" the filter slope is relatively gentle, but starts at the top of the "audible" range (up where folks like me can't hear any more), so by the time you get to the ultrasonic range where the ringing is, the cut is sufficient to remove much of it.

 

Hope this helps.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

I use xtr 2s. Do you hear PCM filter selection makes difference even if you upsample to SDM?

 

I can't upsample from SDM to SDM because my old computer doesn't have the resources.  Upsampling from PCM and modulating with an SDM, I was assuming so, especially because when I changed from -sinc-2s to -xtr-2s with DSD256 output, I got occasional dropouts and had to switch back.  But I could easily be wrong; obviously Miska will know.

[Bob Stern]

7 hours ago, Jud said:

I'm not almost all audiophiles then.   But as I've mentioned before, I think this may be due to the fact that my speakers rely on linear phase and time alignment for imaging and soundstage, and minimum phase filters may mess that up.

 

You got it backwards.  Your Vandersteen speakers (and my Thiel speakers) are designed to be minimum phase.  Linear phase requires symmetrical pre-ringing and post-ringing.  A system with pre-ringing is called "non-causal" because it produces a output prior to the impulse that caused it.  Pre-ringing (a non-causal system) it is impossible to produce using only capacitors, inductors and resistors, i.e., without DSP.

[Bob Stern]

8 hours ago, Jud said:

Minimum phase filters have less pre-ringing but more post-ringing unless they are apodizing.

 

Minimum phase filters have zero pre-ringing.

 

Apodizing has nothing to do with pre or post ringing.  It means the filter has a cutoff frequency "much" lower than 22 KHz for the purpose of attenuating the ringing caused by analog low-pass filters used by the recording engineers when recording at the 44.1 KHz redbook sample rate.  This is equivalent to using a cutoff parameter "much" less than 1.0 in Audirvana's iZotope upsampling.

 

"Much" is not clearly defined, but the design approach is that if the recording engineer used a 20 KHz low-pass filter which produced ringing at 20 KHz, then your apodizing filter should have a sufficiently low cutoff frequency and a sufficiently steep slope to attenuate 20 KHz sufficiently to be inaudible.  You can use a less steep filter slope (less ringing) if you use a lower cutoff frequency.

[Jud]

27 minutes ago, Bob Stern said:

 

Minimum phase filters have zero pre-ringing.

 

Apodizing has nothing to do with pre or post ringing. 

 

Apodizing minimizes both.

[Jud]

46 minutes ago, Bob Stern said:

 

You got it backwards.  Your Vandersteen speakers (and my Thiel speakers) are designed to be minimum phase.  Linear phase requires symmetrical pre-ringing and post-ringing.  A system with pre-ringing is called "non-causal" because it produces a output prior to the impulse that caused it.  Pre-ringing (a non-causal system) it is impossible to produce using only capacitors, inductors and resistors, i.e., without DSP.

 

From a Thiel review:

 

Quote

The benefit of a first-order crossover is that it maintains the phase of the original signal, as long as the speaker that it's used in has the acoustic centers of the drivers aligned in the vertical plane, often through the use of a sloping front baffle. As long as your head is positioned so that your ears are equidistant from all the drivers, the phase of the direct sound that first reaches your ears shouldn't vary by more than a few degrees. That's why THIEL and other manufacturers refer to this as a phase-coherent design.

 

A filter that maintains the phase of the original must be linear phase, I thought.  No?

[Bob Stern]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

Apodizing minimizes both.

 

No, you're confusing two types of ringing:

(1) The ringing embedded in a Redbook recording caused by the analog low-pass filter used in the recording process.

(2) The ringing at half the sample rate of the D/A used for playback.

 

Meridian's apodizing was the first attempt to minimize (1).  Whether the chosen upsampling filter also minimizes (2) is orthogonal.

 

Also, keep in mind that Meridian coined the term "apodizing" for audio playback as a fanciful extrapolation of its original meaning in the field of optical image processing.  "Apodizing" has no well-defined meaning in professional or academic audio engineering, notwithstanding the uncredited Wikipedia definition.  So you can say that it means whatever Meridian wants it to mean for marketing purposes at various times.

[leftside]

I've been trying out HQPlayer this afternoon with Roon. Everything good so far - upsampling to 192 for my McIntosh D100 DAC. All on one box at the moment, but I'm about to also put Roon on my laptop and then feed my other DAC (a Lampizator Atlantic DSD256 DAC) some HQPlayer output.

 

Is there somewhere people post their HQPlayer settings for their various DAC's? I'm obviously interested in the various settings people have for the Lampizator Atlantic DAC. Thanks.

[Bob Stern]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

A filter that maintains the phase of the original must be linear phase, I thought.  No?

 

Here's some hairy theory:

 

https://www.dsprelated.com/freebooks/filters/Zero_Phase_Filters_Even_Impulse.html

 

https://www.dsprelated.com/freebooks/filters/Filters_Preserving_Phase.html

 

https://www.dsprelated.com/freebooks/filters/Minimum_Phase_Filters.html

[steveoat]

Any idea as to when there will be a fix for those of us who can't use HQ Player since the Windows 10 creator update?

[Miska]

9 minutes ago, steveoat said:

Any idea as to when there will be a fix for those of us who can't use HQ Player since the Windows 10 creator update?

 

I believe 3.16.3 should be working fine?

[steveoat]

Just now, Miska said:

 

I believe 3.16.3 should be working fine?

No it is not.  I have tried 3.16.3 on three different machine with different DACs and HQ Player crashes while opening on each one of them.  Is there anything else I can try?

[Miska]

26 minutes ago, Bob Stern said:

(1) The ringing embedded in a Redbook recording caused by the analog low-pass filter used in the recording process.

 

Digital anti-aliasing filter used to produce RedBook rate. It can be in either A/D converter if the recording is being made at 44.1k rate, or alternatively a software rate conversion performed at mastering stage. Latter being more typical in many new recordings because production is frequently done at 96 kHz rate or similar and only converted to RedBook at mastering stage.

 

Analog filters may of course also ring, but since all modern ADCs are oversampling, the analog filter is to large extent non-issue.

 

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, steveoat said:

No it is not.  I have tried 3.16.3 on three different machine with different DACs and HQ Player crashes while opening on each one of them.  Is there anything else I can try?

 

I think someone else has got success running HQPlayer on Creators Update?

 

I don' have it yet myself, because Windows Update is not offering it yet to any of my machines... (and Microsoft recommends not to force-install it)

 

[bibo01]

11 minutes ago, steveoat said:

No it is not.  I have tried 3.16.3 on three different machine with different DACs and HQ Player crashes while opening on each one of them.  Is there anything else I can try?

I cannot help you further but maybe, as a temporary measure, you can try 32 bit version of HQPlayer and to reinstall drivers.

[Hammer]

On 5/12/2017 at 8:26 AM, Miska said:

 

I'm investigating this...

 

I think I am having the same issue.  I use Roon and it will only play one song at a time.  The song will stop 1 or 2 seconds before the end and it will not move onto the next track.  At that point, I can select another track to play and I can do this once or twice, but after that, selecting another track will not play.  If I then quit HQPlayer, and start it up again, it says it cannot open my audio device.  On my Auralic Vega, I need to switch the input to say Coax and switch back to USB before I can start HQPlayer again.

 

 I am using the latest 3.16.3 version on Windows 10 CU with the most recent updates.  I hesitate to uninstall any of the updates given the news on the ransomware...

 

Thanks for looking into this!

[steveoat]

5 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I think someone else has got success running HQPlayer on Creators Update?

 

I don' have it yet myself, because Windows Update is not offering it yet to any of my machines... (and Microsoft recommends not to force-install it)

 

Would it help if I sent you the crash log.  If so, where do I send it?

[bibo01]

1 minute ago, steveoat said:

Would it help if I sent you the crash log.  If so, where do I send it?

support at signalyst.com