HQ Player

[Le Concombre Masqué]

2 minutes ago, ted_b said:

DSD (whatever the bit rate) is seen by a DAC as digital.  So LP to DSD requires ADC in their somewhere.  Not sure what LP flux is, but you'll need a needledrop ripper of some sort.  But you know all this already, so maybe I'm missing your point.

RME ADI-2 Pro for the purpose seems to be the answer, as far as ADC is concerned  ; further question is how good is it as a DSD 256 DAC 

[Miska]

56 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

thank you; very interesting possibilities, maybe even amazing :  Do I understand correctly that with Embedded it won't be mandatory to have a AD converter to convert the spinning on turntable LP flux, provided one has a Linux & DSD 256 compatible DAC ?

 

Well, if you have analog source like LP player, you need to have AD converter somewhere...

 

[Miska]

47 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

RME ADI-2 Pro for the purpose seems to be the answer, as far as ADC is concerned  ; further question is how good is it as a DSD 256 DAC 

 

It is also a very good DAC, but I have not tested it in full-duplex mode, so I'm not sure how well HQPlayer will cope with the case where both ADC and DAC are the same device... Something to do later when I find time...

 

[pkane2001]

Question on how to combine multiple impulse response convolution filters in the same pipeline.

 

I just started using headphones with HQP and was able to create a very good frequency response filter that works great with HQP convolver.

 

I now have the problem that I also want to apply a separate cross-feed set of impulse response WAV files on top of the frequency-corrected signal. In other words, I want to apply two sets of impulse response filters in series to the original signal before passing it on to the headphones. I don't see a way to set up a two-stage pipeline like this in HQP. 

 

I'm guessing that I need to create a single set of impulse response files from the two sets of filters. Am I correct that this would be a convolution of the FR filter impulse response and the cross-feed filters impulse response files?

 

If yes, what's the best software to produce a convolution of two impulse response WAV files? I see that Audacity might be able to do this with some LISP coding. Is there a simpler way that doesn't involve coding? I've not used LISP for about 30 years

 

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

21 hours ago, Miska said:

 

It is also a very good DAC, but I have not tested it in full-duplex mode, so I'm not sure how well HQPlayer will cope with the case where both ADC and DAC are the same device... Something to do later when I find time...

 

I'll be interested to read your findings ; but i'm not in a hurry : the whole thing is quite an investment

[Kritpoon]

Hi all, just a quick question. Do youn guys think the Intel NUC 7i7BHN with 16MB of ram will have have enough power to run HQPlayer with -2s filters upsampling redbook to DSD256? I am planning to install Roon Server+Hqplayer on that machine. Any comment will be much appreciated. Thank you.

[Bob Stern]

11 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

I'm guessing that I need to create a single set of impulse response files from the two sets of filters. Am I correct that this would be a convolution of the FR filter impulse response and the cross-feed filters impulse response files?

 

If yes, what's the best software to produce a convolution of two impulse response WAV files?

 

I see that Audacity might be able to do this with some LISP coding. Is there a simpler way that doesn't involve coding? I've not used LISP for about 30 years

 

Yes, you need to convolve the two impulse responses.  You can do it easily with the "fir" command of sox.

 

Where and why did you learn LISP?

[Altabay]

26 minutes ago, Kritpoon said:

Hi all, just a quick question. Do youn guys think the Intel NUC 7i7BHN with 16MB of ram will have have enough power to run HQPlayer with -2s filters upsampling redbook to DSD256? I am planning to install Roon Server+Hqplayer on that machine. Any comment will be much appreciated. Thank you.

 

Other than the 16MB typo, I think you'll be fine.    At a glance the NUC7i7BHN sounds more powerful than the NUC6i7KYK I'm using.  I am also running RoonServer and HQP on the same NUC.  I can upsample everything to DSD512 with poly-sinc-xtr-2s filter.  Or non-2s when upsampling DSD64 to DSD512.  PCM to DSD512 only works with -2s.  I have 32GB memory but it's an overkill.  16GB should be plenty.

[Kritpoon]

21 minutes ago, Altabay said:

 

Other than the 16MB typo, I think you'll be fine.    At a glance the NUC7i7BHN sounds more powerful than the NUC6i7KYK I'm using.  I am also running RoonServer and HQP on the same NUC.  I can upsample everything to DSD512 with poly-sinc-xtr-2s filter.  Or non-2s when upsampling DSD64 to DSD512.  PCM to DSD512 only works with -2s.  I have 32GB memory but it's an overkill.  16GB should be plenty.

Thank you fro sharing. I think 16MB of ram wouldn't run even the OS :). Can you please share what OS are you running with? If its Windows OS, do you use optimization program i.e. AO? And when you upsample to DSD512 with -2s what is normally your CPU% utilization? Lastly, with the DSD512 -2s filter, does the NUC fan noise becomes very loud (to the point of annoyance?) Thank you so much for the info

[Altabay]

9 minutes ago, Kritpoon said:

Thank you fro sharing. I think 16MB of ram wouldn't run even the OS :). Can you please share what OS are you running with? If its Windows OS, do you use optimization program i.e. AO? And when you upsample to DSD512 with -2s what is normally your CPU% utilization? Lastly, with the DSD512 -2s filter, does the NUC fan noise becomes very loud (to the point of annoyance?) Thank you so much for the info

 

I don't remember the % CPU, let me get back to you on that.  I'm running Windows 10 without any optimization software.  I went through settings and turned off whatever I could find, but honestly I don't think these matter much because there is enough headroom and I'm using a NAA.  My NAA is a NUC5i5 running Windows Server 2012 R2 and AO core mode.

 

You might be able to hear the fan noise during upsampling, but you can easily solve this by running it in a different room, assuming you are using a NAA.  I tend to listen at high volume and I can't really hear the fan even when I have the NUC next to the DAC.

[pkane2001]

2 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

 

Yes, you need to convolve the two impulse responses.  You can do it easily with the "fir" command of sox.

 

Awesome, thanks Bob! Sox was the ticket. Now, the music is no longer in my head and is perfectly equalized  In case someone needs the shell script that I used (modified slightly from a StackOverflow article):

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# Convolve audio file with and impulse response (IR)
#
# Usage:
#
#applyReverb.sh <ir.wav> <audio.wav> <output.wav>

# read IR from wav, resample it if necessary, make sure is mono
# and save it as plain text (.dat format in SoX). Also reduces gain
# to prevent clipping later
sox --norm=-10 -c 1 $1 -r 192000  filter.dat

# extract the coeffients (second column, skipping the first 2 lines)
awk 'NR<3{next}{print $2}' filter.dat > filter.txt

# apply reverb using SoX's fir effect
sox $2 --norm $3 fir filter.txt

 

2 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

Where and why did you learn LISP?

 

I did some work in LISP in my undegrad years. Did some AI/NLP work and wrote a LISP interpreter. Then worked on an RLISP compiler written in ...RLISP for a project. So, I could probably dust it off if I really wanted to, but it's been a while. It really is a fun language. Sox was a much easier way to do this, so thank you!

 

[Kritpoon]

1 hour ago, Altabay said:

 

I don't remember the % CPU, let me get back to you on that.  I'm running Windows 10 without any optimization software.  I went through settings and turned off whatever I could find, but honestly I don't think these matter much because there is enough headroom and I'm using a NAA.  My NAA is a NUC5i5 running Windows Server 2012 R2 and AO core mode.

 

You might be able to hear the fan noise during upsampling, but you can easily solve this by running it in a different room, assuming you are using a NAA.  I tend to listen at high volume and I can't really hear the fan even when I have the NUC next to the DAC.

 

Thank you. I will also be using NAA( ultraRendu). Currently, I run Roon Server on my NAS > MacBookPro i5 8GB Ram (HQ Player Upsampling) > ultraRendu > DAC. With this setup I can only do DSD64 with -2s filter without studdering. When I change to DSD128, there are some studdering occur. So, I am thinking of adding Roon+HQPlayer dedicated machine NUC i7 with W10+AO to do DSD256(my limit). Also, I am curious Upsampling aside, if moving to dedicated machine will produce nice SQ improvemt over my MacBookPro i5.

[Bob Stern]

@pkane2001:  Cool!  Thanks!  I would not have figured out the step of converting the WAV file to .dat.

[scan80269]

5 hours ago, Altabay said:

 

Other than the 16MB typo, I think you'll be fine.    At a glance the NUC7i7BHN sounds more powerful than the NUC6i7KYK I'm using.  I am also running RoonServer and HQP on the same NUC.  I can upsample everything to DSD512 with poly-sinc-xtr-2s filter.  Or non-2s when upsampling DSD64 to DSD512.  PCM to DSD512 only works with -2s.  I have 32GB memory but it's an overkill.  16GB should be plenty.

I don't believe NUC7i7BNH is more powerful than NUC6i7KYK.

 

NUC7i7BNH: Core i7-7567U processor - 2 cores, 4 threads, 3.5GHz, 4.0GHz max turbo, 4MB cache, 28W

NUC6i7KYK: Core i7-6770HQ processor - 4 cores, 8 threads, 2.6GHz, 3.5GHz max turbo, 6MB cache, 45W

 

For single-threaded apps, the i7-7567U processor may deliver higher performance due to its higher base and single-core turbo frequencies.  However, since HQPlayer is multi-threaded, the i7-6770HQ processor having twice the number of cores and threads plus a larger cache should deliver higher performance, despite a somewhat lower max turbo frequency.

 

When up-sampling 24/192K PCM to DSD512 using poly-sinc-xtr-2s filter on my NUC6i7KYK, I get something like 40% CPU utilization by HQPlayer.  The same task running on NUC7i7BNH should yield a much higher CPU utilization, possibly to the point of the music not being stutter free.

 

I won't be surprised if NUC7i7BNH does not satisfactorily support HQPlayer upsampling to DSD512 with -2s filters.

 

 

[Altabay]

Thanks for correcting me, Scan.  I retract my comment that NUC7i7BNH can handle DSD512 upsampling.  I'll stick to describing what my NUC6i7KYK can do.  Upsampling redbook to DSD512 with poly-sinc-xtr-2s shows CPU fluctuating between 25% and 50% in Task Manager.  It sits around 36% if I change Task Manager to slower refresh interval. (View > Update speed > Low). Memory usage is only 2.8GB.

[lmitche]

10 hours ago, Kritpoon said:

Thank you fro sharing. I think 16MB of ram wouldn't run even the OS :). Can you please share what OS are you running with? If its Windows OS, do you use optimization program i.e. AO? And when you upsample to DSD512 with -2s what is normally your CPU% utilization? Lastly, with the DSD512 -2s filter, does the NUC fan noise becomes very loud (to the point of annoyance?) Thank you so much for the info

Over here with Windows 10 running Hqplayer and Roon server total physical memory usage is 1.7 gb.  Two 4gb sticks are installed. Unfortunately smaller are unavailable.

[Kritpoon]

@lmitche @Altabay@scan80269 Thank you so much for your input. Looks like NUC6i7kyk is a good choice.

[scan80269]

19 minutes ago, Kritpoon said:

@lmitche @Altabay@scan80269 Thank you so much for your input. Looks like NUC6i7kyk is a good choice.

I gave my NUC6i7KYK a fanless chassis to eliminate the awful fan noise:

 

 

NUC6i7KYK can handle upsampling to DSD512, as long as you stay with the -2s filters.  With non-2s filters the computing horsepower demands are much higher so not even NUC6i7KYK will cut it.

 

Another thing I have not tried is faster DDR4 memory with XMP profile support, such as those from G.Skill.

 

[mirekti]

I have just received a new DAC and having an issue when I stop the music in Roon. This I assume tells HQPlayer to release the resources and once it does I can hear the pop in my speakers. This doesn't happen when I start the music.
 

I am uploading everything to DSD512 and have -3dB set in volume. 
Anyone here with a similar issue? 

[tboooe]

6 minutes ago, mirekti said:

I have just received a new DAC and having an issue when I stop the music in Roon. This I assume tells HQPlayer to release the resources and once it does I can hear the pop in my speakers. This doesn't happen when I start the music.
 

I am uploading everything to DSD512 and have -3dB set in volume. 
Anyone here with a similar issue? 

I dont get a pop but i do get some crackling when I stop the music or when the music stops at the end of an album.  The crackling is not very loud so I never really paid attention to it.  is your pop loud?  Are you using Windows or Linux for your server or end point connected to your DAC?

[Dr Tone]

9 minutes ago, mirekti said:

I have just received a new DAC and having an issue when I stop the music in Roon. This I assume tells HQPlayer to release the resources and once it does I can hear the pop in my speakers. This doesn't happen when I start the music.

 

I am uploading everything to DSD512 and have -3dB set in volume. 
Anyone here with a similar issue?

 

Allot of DACs exhibit this problem when doing Native DSD.  Talk to your DAC manufacturer.

[mirekti]

12 minutes ago, tboooe said:

is your pop loud?  Are you using Windows or Linux for your server or end point connected to your DAC?

 

It equals pretty much the level of sound I had it set to when the music was on, so nothing extreme. 
I am using Win 10. The funny part is that it doesn't happen when I start the music i.e. only when I start the music the DAC displays the rate at which source is played (DSD512), then the same happens when I stop the music, DAC removes 512 from the display, but it that case the pop comes out of the speakers. 

[mirekti]

....one other thing. Filters, I've noticed in 3.17 there is -ext, but not -ext-2s. What is actually ext, is it similar to xtr?

 

BTW I tried using regular poly-sinc-mp, AMDSD 512-fs DSD512, and kind of liked it.

I noticed many opt for either short or xtr on this forum, and somehow got impression the regular poly-sinc was left behind. Any reason for that?

[Conte_Oliver]

Hi I've tried to install a NAA on an old pc with Windows 7 Home Premium, but what I got is this message...

could anyone explain me if can be fixed?

[tboooe]

2 hours ago, Conte_Oliver said:

Hi I've tried to install a NAA on an old pc with Windows 7 Home Premium, but what I got is this message...

could anyone explain me if can be fixed?

I had this issue once when NAA was starting before all the network services on my PC.  Are you sure the PC is connected to the network before starting NAA?