HQ Player

[Bimmer100]

3 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

Here's at 44.1x256

 

and 44.1x512.

 

I’m late in joining on his, but are you using hqplayer with Roon?

[Johnseye]

1 minute ago, Bimmer100 said:

I’m late in joining on his, but are you using hqplayer with Roon?

 

Yes

[Bimmer100]

4 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

Here's at 44.1x256

 

and 44.1x512.

 

It’s common mistake... but you must disable the Asio Holo audio driver within Roon as a source. Why? Because hqplayer and Roon cannot use the driver at the same time! Roon must use the hqplayer as the source. This should fix the problem 

[Bimmer100]

Just now, Bimmer100 said:

It’s common mistake... but you must disable the Asio Holo audio driver within Roon as a source. Why? Because hqplayer and Roon cannot use the driver at the same time! Roon must use the hqplayer as the source. This should fix the problem 

 

[Johnseye]

3 minutes ago, Bimmer100 said:

It’s common mistake... but you must disable the Asio Holo audio driver within Roon as a source. Why? Because hqplayer and Roon cannot use the driver at the same time! Roon must use the hqplayer as the source. This should fix the problem 

 

Thanks Tim, that was it.  I would never have guessed.  Now I get to find out how upsampling to DSD512 is.

 

Walla!

 

[Bimmer100]

4 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

 

Yes

If I understand correctly the dac is not able to engage into dsd native for you. If hqplayer and Roon are trying to access the driver at same time... well, not going to happen 

[Bimmer100]

1 minute ago, Johnseye said:

 

Thanks Tim, that was it.  I would never have guessed.  Now I get to find out how upsampling to DSD512 is.

 

Walla!

 

Excellent! Glad I could assist with a solution to the problem. That’s the most common mistake I believe. 

 

I think most of your other settings appeared ok. You might consider to offload to Cuda cores if you have a good nvidia video card. This can be very helpful! 

Otherwise dsd512 native is quite demanding on a cpu and requires a fairly decent speed machine. 

 

My laptop has no chance and it’s a basic intel i7 dual core. Doesn’t even do dsd256 very well. But it’s el cheapo toshiba z930.

 

my desktop is fairly fast intel i7 quad core @4.4ghz, 32gb ram and Nvidia 1080ti 11gb which still cant do any better than the 2stage xtr filters.  I wonder if it’s possible for further optimization to allow better performance of the filters with faster Nvidia cards. 

 

Ive noticed a few new filters in the most recent version and meant to ask miska for explanation on them. However I probably can look it up somewhere but have not had the time. 

 

Please share your thoughts on dsd native playback. I know you haven’t had your dac long. But hopefully you are enjoying it so far. There are a lot of very helpful people on this particular forum. Personally I don’t post much on any other forum really. This one is generally zero BS and I enjoy that

 

 

[ted_b]

Tim,

Thanks for getting involved.  I completely missed the Roon part.  Doh!

[lmitche]

John, ASIO buffer and latency settings have a profound influence in SQ with the Holo Spring DAC and Hqplayer. Set Hqplayer to take the default buffer settings. This pushes control to the ASIO driver. Now go into the ASIO driver and set to the lowest latency level. Once done do a binary search of buffer sizes for the smallest one possible that still sounds great. You can go quite low with Holo Spring and su-1 pairing. @Forehaven may be able to guide you here as well.

 

Things may be different without an su-1 so be careful.

 

Larry

[tboooe]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

Once done do a binary search of buffer sizes for the smallest one possible that still sounds great

Can you please explain what you mean here?  

 

Btw, I totally agree with your comments.  I was using a Linux device as my NAA and felt the music sounded boring and flat. When I switched back to my Windows based NAA and SU-1 with driver and lowest latency settings the magic came back.  

[xiddox]

11 minutes ago, tboooe said:

Can you please explain what you mean here?  

 

i think he means to manually find the smallest one by a binary search: that is for example, starting with the default, then halve the buffer size. Still sounds good? Then halve it again, etc. If it doesn't sound good any more, then try the buffer value half way between the current one and the last good one, etc etc until you  find the smallest one that still sounds good. It's more efficient than trying every one.

[xiddox]

2 hours ago, lmitche said:

John, ASIO buffer and latency settings have a profound influence in SQ with the Holo Spring DAC and Hqplayer. Set Hqplayer to take the default buffer settings. This pushes control to the ASIO driver. Now go into the ASIO driver and set to the lowest latency level. Once done do a binary search of buffer sizes for the smallest one possible that still sounds great. You can go quite low with Holo Spring and su-1 pairing. @Forehaven may be able to guide you here as well.

 

I've been away from computer audio for several months, and so i have only just updated my versions of hqplayer and AO, and have just discovered that mqa is now available on roon. I wonder if you - and others - are willing to summarise your preferred settings?

 

My setup is roon -> hqplayer -> ultrarendu -> SU-1 -> Holo Spring DAC.

 

Do i take it from the comment above that you have found Linux (in my case, the ultrarendu) inferior to a WIndows-based NAA?

[lmitche]

18 minutes ago, xiddox said:

 

i think he means to manually find the smallest one by a binary search: that is for example, starting with the default, then halve the buffer size. Still sounds good? Then halve it again, etc. If it doesn't sound good any more, then try the buffer value half way between the current one and the last good one, etc etc until you  find the smallest one that still sounds good. It's more efficient than trying every one.

Yes, that's the idea, cut the search space in half at each step.

[lmitche]

22 minutes ago, xiddox said:

 

I've been away from computer audio for several months, and so i have only just updated my versions of hqplayer and AO, and have just discovered that mqa is now available on roon. I wonder if you - and others - are willing to summarise your preferred settings?

 

My setup is roon -> hqplayer -> ultrarendu -> SU-1 -> Holo Spring DAC.

 

Do i take it from the comment above that you have found Linux (in my case, the ultrarendu) inferior to a WIndows-based NAA?

Seems you have two questions here: one about mqa and the second about Linux.

 

On MQA, I don't use it and don't see it's value beyond Tidal and/or Tidal like services. I see it as a Trojan horse for a Digital Rights Mechanism like the existing schemes on Blu-Ray, DVD... etc. All my music is upsampled to dsd512 via Roon/Hqplayer. Tidal music has the same quality as local file sources. I don't need more then that.

 

On Linux/Windows, well with my meager IFI microIDSD black label DAC, I can't get Linux to play without zero db pops and cracks between tracks, when booting the machine, etc.

 

I just had my speakers refoamed due to this, and I am not going there again.

 

 

 

 

[tboooe]

1 hour ago, xiddox said:

My setup is roon -> hqplayer -> ultrarendu -> SU-1 -> Holo Spring DAC.

 

Do i take it from the comment above that you have found Linux (in my case, the ultrarendu) inferior to a WIndows-based NAA?

My chain is similar to yours except I use a Windows based NAA (i3-5015u mobile cpu).  I thought this sounded vastly better than the Allo Sparky + USBridge combo I had.  Of course that is nowhere near the quality of the Ultrarendu which I have not tried yet in my system.

 

BTW, the ASIO driver for SU-1 does not come with a latency setting.  I can only manually choose the buffer size.  My current setting is the lowest which is 128 samples.  The control panel tells me that is 1.18ms and 1.50ms latency on input and output respectively.

[pkane2001]

deleted

 

[simonklp]

12 hours ago, tboooe said:

Can you please explain what you mean here?  

 

Btw, I totally agree with your comments.  I was using a Linux device as my NAA and felt the music sounded boring and flat. When I switched back to my Windows based NAA and SU-1 with driver and lowest latency settings the magic came back.  

 

Hi @tboooe, I have not tried Linux NAA yet due to the limitation of my T+A DAC 8 DSD for accepting DSD512 from Window NAA only up till now.

 

However, I did try Linux version HQPlayer on Ubuntu Studio last night. But to my surprise, the initial impression was that the SQ was not as good as HQPlayer on Win 10, not to mention on WS 2016 Core optimized by AO. SQ of HQPlayer on Linux is far behind WS 2016 Core with AO.

 

But I must admit that this is just my initial impression. I am not sure whether I have done anything wrong and/or not yet adjusted the settings to optimal level.

[tboooe]

1 minute ago, simonklp said:

 

Hi @tboooe, I have not tried Linux NAA yet due to the limitation of my T+A DAC 8 DSD for accepting DSD512 from Window NAA only up till now.

 

However, I did try Linux version HQPlayer on Ubuntu Studio last night. But to my surprise, the initial impression was that the SQ was not as good as HQPlayer on Win 10, not to mention on WS 2016 Core optimized by AO. SQ of HQPlayer on Linux is far behind WS 2016 Core with AO.

 

But I must admit that this is just my initial impression. I am not sure whether I have done anything wrong and/or not yet adjusted the settings to optimal level.

I actually did this same experiment a while ago. I tested Lubuntu vs Server 2012 R2 + AO.  Preferred Server.  The sound was more dynamic and defined.

[gvl]

I also find Daphile, which is a custom LMS/Linux distro, sounding less interesting than say JRiver on W7. I don't know which sounds "truer" but I prefer JRiver. I don't know what's going on, if it is bit-perfect they should sound the same given the async USB, but they clearly do not sound the same, I did A/B and the differences are there. Well, they were running on different PCs but I find it hard to believe that's the reason especially given JRiver runs on much older hardware yet sounds better, to my ears anyway.

[simonklp]

2 hours ago, gvl said:

I also find Daphile, which is a custom LMS/Linux distro, sounding less interesting than say JRiver on W7. I don't know which sounds "truer" but I prefer JRiver. I don't know what's going on, if it is bit-perfect they should sound the same given the async USB, but they clearly do not sound the same, I did A/B and the differences are there. Well, they were running on different PCs but I find it hard to believe that's the reason especially given JRiver runs on much older hardware yet sounds better, to my ears anyway.

 

I did the trial and comparison of HQPlayer on Ubuntu Studio and HQPlayer on WS 2016 Core with AO on the same PC.

 

SQ of the latter one is clearly much better in terms of the sound details and naturalness.

[simonklp]

36 minutes ago, simonklp said:

 

I did the trial and comparison of HQPlayer on Ubuntu Studio and HQPlayer on WS 2016 Core with AO on the same PC.

 

SQ of the latter one is clearly much better in terms of the sound details and naturalness.

 

I have to clarify again that this is based on my initial impression only. It may be changed later. I shall explore more on HQPlayer on Linux if any adjustment and/or optimization of the system settings or etc. is required.

[Altabay]

I am also in the Windows NAA camp.  My NAA is a NUC running WinServer 2012R2 Core with AO, going into SU-1 and Holo Spring DAC.  In my system the Windows NAA is clearly superior to microRendu.  I know it's not a defective mR because I have two of them.  I can't explain why, but the difference is obvious.  This experience has stopped me from getting interested in an upgrade to ultraRendu.  Maybe I'll tweak things again at some point, but I am very happy with the Windows NAA for now.

 

Disclaimer: I have not tried any other Linux based NAA.

[Miska]

6 hours ago, Altabay said:

I am also in the Windows NAA camp.  My NAA is a NUC running WinServer 2012R2 Core with AO, going into SU-1 and Holo Spring DAC.  In my system the Windows NAA is clearly superior to microRendu.  I know it's not a defective mR because I have two of them.  I can't explain why, but the difference is obvious.  This experience has stopped me from getting interested in an upgrade to ultraRendu.  Maybe I'll tweak things again at some point, but I am very happy with the Windows NAA for now.

 

Disclaimer: I have not tried any other Linux based NAA.

 

You could also try my bootable NAA image on the NUC?

 

[Hammer]

Is it possible to stream Spotify output to HQPlayer?  Reason is because my DAC is connected to a small Intel PC running the x64 NAA image and I listen to HQPlayer/Roon most of the time.  I find that this gives me the best SQ, but every once in a while, it is nice to be able to play something from Spotify.  DietPi with NAA and Raspotify will accomplish this, but the current DietPi image does not include support for my Auralic Vega DAC which means I won’t be able to play DSD natively with this solution.  And suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank you.  

[jimdukey]

Hi, what is the purpose of the CUDA Offload?

I upsample PCM and DSD 64 to DSD128.

My Mytek and Lampi Dacs do 48X128, Mac D150 44X128. 

2 Ch only, no room correction.

TIA!