HQ Player

[bogi]

1 hour ago, LoryWiv said:

adding PCM gain when downsampling DSD to FLAC

 

Why you didn't do it on the fly in HQPlayer?

File > DSDIFF/DSF Settings > [x] 6 dB gain

(I never convert DSD to PCM, so I'm not 100% sure that this settings applies also to DSD to PCM conversion ... just try it)

 

1 hour ago, LoryWiv said:

I haven't tried the new HQ Pro version but wonder if it performs some of these utility functions as well or better

 

If I have understood well the description then no. The main difference of Desktop and Pro is that Pro allows to save processing result to files. If I well understood the processing filter quality is the same for Desktop and Pro. Miska, is it so?

[Miska]

4 hours ago, LoryWiv said:

I previously used FooBar for playback but HQP is superior. However, like you FooBar is still in my toolkit for file format conversions, adding PCM gain when downsampling DSD to FLAC, and several other handy features. I haven't tried the new HQ Pro version but wonder if it performs some of these utility functions as well or better...

 

Why don't you let HQPlayer to convert DSD to PCM during playback? Or is the FLAC conversion for some other case?

 

HQPlayer Pro has same DSD to PCM conversion as HQPlayer Embedded, which in turn is very similar to HQPlayer Desktop, plus couple of extra algorithms available.

[Miska]

2 hours ago, bogi said:

Why you didn't do it on the fly in HQPlayer?

File > DSDIFF/DSF Settings > [x] 6 dB gain

(I never convert DSD to PCM, so I'm not 100% sure that this settings applies also to DSD to PCM conversion ... just try it)

 

That's the fixed gain option precisely for DSD to PCM conversion, in addition you can use volume control of HQPlayer to adjust other gains. For example with the 6 dB gain option enabled and volume control set to -3 dB the net result is +3 dB gain.

 

3 hours ago, bogi said:

If I well understood the processing filter quality is the same for Desktop and Pro. Miska, is it so?

 

Yes, quality is the same. In addition Pro has couple of extra config options.

[LoryWiv]

On 1/6/2019 at 3:31 AM, Miska said:

 

Why don't you let HQPlayer to convert DSD to PCM during playback? Or is the FLAC conversion for some other case?

 

Thank you, Miska. Yes, you are right . The FLAC conversion is done to create smaller file sizes for loading and listening on my portable player  where storage space is an issue. For desktop playback with my PC as source it is HQ Player all the way.

[Le Concombre Masqué]

happy new year all

 

I plan on buying a 2008 Pioneer Kuro Plasma TV and will need a solution to play 1080 remux mkv files.

Might be Raspberry Pi B+ might be Vero 4K ; guess there are solutions BR players too. 

I was not convinced when I experimented NAA with 2 MBP (had the sound of the connected one ; be it NAA or standalone) but I would be tempted to try again with a RPB+ ; is there also a HQP image for Vero 4K? Which would be best from a HQP standpoint (I don't want to hack but would be delighted to get PM about the video standpoint)?

 

[cat6man]

i have some issues with the imported library.xml file (see attached)

 

I see no problem in Tagscanner with special characters but when imported into library.xml, I get what is in the attached.

Note that the quotes around Harp show up fine in the path to the file but not in the song name.

When viewed in Tagscanner, I see the quotes in both path and song title.

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

 

The most likely cause is control characters (not visible in tagscanner).

I see 2 possible solutions, assuming this is actually the cause of the problem.

 

 

Marty Meyers

12:38 PM (0 minutes ago)

1.  create a script to remove all control characters from library.xml

i can do it to the library.xml file, and then re-apply the "remove control character" script after each re-scan of the hqplayer library

(not too much effort--much better than manually editing a 9MB file)

 

2.  ideally I'd like to automatically scrub/clean the metadata once an for all.

anyone aware of metadata tools that will do this globally for a 5TB music directory?

quotes-problem.xml

[Miska]

18 minutes ago, cat6man said:

i have some issues with the imported library.xml file (see attached)

 

I see no problem in Tagscanner with special characters but when imported into library.xml, I get what is in the attached.

Note that the quotes around Harp show up fine in the path to the file but not in the song name.

When viewed in Tagscanner, I see the quotes in both path and song title.

 

Any suggestions?

 

quotes-problem.xml

 

One possible explanation is if characters used in tag don't match with the specified character set. File paths use fixed predefined character set, while ID3v2 allows number of different character sets for a tag. There's a character set indicator for a tag and then a string. If this string doesn't match with the indicated character set, after the needed conversion it may end up referring to some wrong code point. HQPlayer uses UTF-8 internally for everything, so everything else gets converted to that one. library.xml is in UTF-8 too.

[cat6man]

Is there a tool anywhere to force metadata to UTF-8?

[Miska]

8 minutes ago, cat6man said:

Is there a tool anywhere to force metadata to UTF-8?

 

It depends on the tool used to write metadata into files. If there is any issue with original metadata, some manual work may be needed to fix potential issues.

 

If you don't have many albums with problems and you use HQPlayer Desktop, you can fix the problems manually in HQPlayer without touching original files. HQPlayer Desktop's Library-dialog works just like for example Excel, so you can double-click a cell, modify the content and hit enter. When you click OK button in the dialog, changes are saved. This will modify the data in library.xml without touching the music files. HQPlayer will try to preserve these modifications across library rescans etc. This is how I fix various metadata problems in my content. I have quite a lot of modifications, so I also regularly backup my library.xml using the backup-option in HQPlayer's File-menu.

 

[cat6man]

getting close to a solution.

i found the cause of the problem.

i tried converting the files from WAV to FLAC to look at the metadata in easytag, and found no problem.

then i converted the FLAC back to WAV and, voila, the special characters were back.

 

so, it appears this is a dBpoweramp converter problem.

time to see if this is a bug or if there are setting I can use to correct this problem.

[Miska]

30 minutes ago, cat6man said:

getting close to a solution.

i found the cause of the problem.

i tried converting the files from WAV to FLAC to look at the metadata in easytag, and found no problem.

then i converted the FLAC back to WAV and, voila, the special characters were back.

 

so, it appears this is a dBpoweramp converter problem.

time to see if this is a bug or if there are setting I can use to correct this problem.

 

IMO, it is best to just stick with FLAC. It is natively UTF-8 (Vorbis comment) and doesn't even try to support anything else. So it is less complicated and confusing in that way.

 

[cat6man]

I would, except that I've found, in my system, WAV has sounded better than FLAC.............why? 

I don't know why........but it is real (confirmed by others listening to my system...though 2 years ago, should revisit).

 

system:  qnap nas==>hqplayerd (no scaling, no dither, no processing)==>ultraRendu/NAA==>DAC

 

note:  hqplayerd==>ultraRendu/NAA  is much better than nas to ultraRendu/dnla/mpd

[Hazard]

2 hours ago, cat6man said:

I would, except that I've found, in my system, WAV has sounded better than FLAC.............why? 

I don't know why........but it is real (confirmed by others listening to my system...though 2 years ago, 

May I respectfully suggest that you organize a blind listening test.  An audio friend of mine is adamant that flack files dont sound as good as wav so I created a little test of 6 musical selections with one flack version and one wav version of each.  I controlled the playback of course and he could easily hear the difference in formats - except that he chose the flack file as his preferred format 5 out of 6!!!!  Perhaps not so surprising, he still maintains that flac conversion harms the sound.

[Allan F]

6 hours ago, cat6man said:

I would, except that I've found, in my system, WAV has sounded better than FLAC.............why?

 

I don't know if it is true, but an explanation often offered for this difference is the additional processing required to uncompress flac files. Assuming this to be the case, I don't know how much difference, if any, would be heard with uncompressed flac, an option chosen by a number of people for its superior handling and storage of metadata.

[Hazard]

51 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

I don't know if it is true, but an explanation often offered for this difference is the additional processing required to uncompress flac files. Assuming this to be the case, I don't know how much difference, if any, would be heard with uncompressed flac, an option chosen by a number of people for its superior handling and storage of metadata.

Many people here use HQPlayer to up sample PCM files to DSD512 with brilliant results.  Depending on CPU this process van take anywhere from 50% to 100% of CPU processing capability.

 

On the other hand, decompressing a flac file to a wav file doesnt even register a difference if you measure CPU utilisation in Task Manager.  Probably uses less than 0.1% of CPU capacity.  So it's pretty hard to imagine how this might have negative impact on sound quality.  

[Allan F]

10 hours ago, Miska said:

If you don't have many albums with problems and you use HQPlayer Desktop, you can fix the problems manually in HQPlayer without touching original files. HQPlayer Desktop's Library-dialog works just like for example Excel, so you can double-click a cell, modify the content and hit enter. When you click OK button in the dialog, changes are saved. This will modify the data in library.xml without touching the music files. HQPlayer will try to preserve these modifications across library rescans etc. This is how I fix various metadata problems in my content. I have quite a lot of modifications, so I also regularly backup my library.xml using the backup-option in HQPlayer's File-menu.

 

Jussi:

I have been doing my editing of metadata in HQPlayer Desktop by editing the contents of the xml file in Notepad after searching for the album I am interested in. Of course, I backup the xml file before doing so. How do I use the Desktop's Library-dialog to work "just like Excel"? Perhaps I misunderstand what you have written above but,  if select "Library" from the drop down menu under File in the HQPlayer interface and double-click on any of the individual entries, nothing happens.

[lucretius]

2 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

 if select "Library" from the drop down menu under File in the HQPlayer interface and double-click on any of the individual entries, nothing happens.

 

I'm using the Windows version and double clicking on any field makes that field editable.

[Allan F]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

 

I'm using the Windows version and double clicking on any field makes that field editable.

 

I am using the Windows 10 Pro version and that doesn't happen on my system. I am also somewhat confused by your description of double-clicking "on any field". When I select Library, I get a list of the paths of all the albums, not individual fields, e.g. M:\\CD\Blues-Jazz\Afro-Cuban All Stars\A Toda Cuba Le Gusta

[Miska]

4 hours ago, Allan F said:

Perhaps I misunderstand what you have written above but,  if select "Library" from the drop down menu under File in the HQPlayer interface and double-click on any of the individual entries, nothing happens.

 

For me at least, in the Library-dialog, if I double click on any of the individual cells in the table, I get cursor in the cell and I can edit the content. If that doesn't happen for you, it is really strange...

 

[simonklp]

9 hours ago, Hazard said:

Many people here use HQPlayer to up sample PCM files to DSD512 with brilliant results.  Depending on CPU this process van take anywhere from 50% to 100% of CPU processing capability.

 

On the other hand, decompressing a flac file to a wav file doesnt even register a difference if you measure CPU utilisation in Task Manager.  Probably uses less than 0.1% of CPU capacity.  So it's pretty hard to imagine how this might have negative impact on sound quality.  

 

In fact, this can be verified by ripping a CD by dBpoweramp to a set of FLAC compressed files and another set of uncompressed FLAC files, and then comparing the SQ between these two sets of files. There is a selectable option in dBpoweramp for different levels of compression. You can also conduct blind test between these FLAC files and the corresponding WAV files.

[Allan F]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

For me at least, in the Library-dialog, if I double click on any of the individual cells in the table, I get cursor in the cell and I can edit the content. If that doesn't happen for you, it is really strange...

 

It is strange. This is my Library-dialog, which looks different from yours. It doesn't show the same fields. M:\ is my mapped NAS drive. As mentioned previousl,  nothing happens if I double-click on the cells. Any explanation for the differences or why I can't edit the contents other than via the xml file?

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Allan F said:

It is strange. This is my Library-dialog, which looks different from yours. It doesn't show the same fields. M:\ is my mapped NAS drive. As mentioned previousl,  nothing happens if I double-click on the cells. Any explanation for the differences or why I can't edit the contents other than via the xml file?

 

Yes it does show same fields... My screenshot is just form Linux, so the paths are different because Unix systems (Linux and macOS) don't have concept of drive letters.

 

Only reason I can think of why it is not working is if UI toolkit is acting up for some reason. But why it would be - I don't know.

[Allan F]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Yes it does show same fields... My screenshot is just form Linux, so the paths are different because Unix systems (Linux and macOS) don't have concept of drive letters.

 

Only reason I can think of why it is not working is if UI toolkit is acting up for some reason. But why it would be - I don't know.

 

I intended to uninstall and reinstall HQPlayer to see if that would fix the problem. However, when I attempted to do so from Windows Control Panel, for some reason it did not complete. Windows removed "Signalyst HQPlayer Desktop 3" from the list of installed programs in Control Panel and the Start Menu but did delete either the program folder or its contents from Program Files. How can I complete the uninstall now apart from editing the Registry to remove all references to the program?

[cat6man]

20 hours ago, Hazard said:

May I respectfully suggest that you organize a blind listening test.  An audio friend of mine is adamant that flack files dont sound as good as wav so I created a little test of 6 musical selections with one flack version and one wav version of each.  I controlled the playback of course and he could easily hear the difference in formats - except that he chose the flack file as his preferred format 5 out of 6!!!!  Perhaps not so surprising, he still maintains that flac conversion harms the sound.

 

I don't want to hijack the thread, so this is the only response I will make here.  Whether or not you hear something depends greatly on the resolution and capabilities of your system.  As one example, replacing the power to my ultraRendu (from LPS-1 to LPS-1.2) made a noticeable improvement, to me and a visiting audio buddy.  Similarly, I use HQPlayer with no upsampling or dither, because somehow moving the renderer off of the ultraRendu to the hqplayer PC improves the sound (probably less processing/noise in the ultraRendu).

I have yet to find an upsampling scheme that sounds better than plain WAV into my DAC, and it seems that upsampling shows maximum (and significant) benefit with delta-sigma chip DACs by eliminating the generally poor quality signal processing in commercial DACs.  With my DAC, I can change the sound but not, in my personal opinion, for the better overall.  My audio buddy has a different listening bias than I do (I highly value spatial representation and imaging, he is more concerned that I about the bass) but he is in complete agreement on WAV vs. FLAC in my system.  Once we heard the difference we switched to only using WAV files to evaluate other system components.

So, would using Jussi's advanced signal processing swamp the difference between WAV and FLAC sources?  Very possibly!

In that case, there (likely!) might be no difference........but in my system, as configured the two times we compared over the past couple of years, there clearly was benefit to WAV.

 

So, respectfully, your mileage may very........let's get back to hqplayer discussions.

[cat6man]

Jussi,

 

It seems the dbpoweramp problem converting flac to wav is ID3 related, as this happens when codec tagging is set to either ID3 or List+ID3 (default).  With codec tagging is set to just List, the problem goes away

 

I tested with hqplayer and the library.xml file looks fine with just the List tagging, in hqplayer and tagscanner.

 

So I'll do a completer WAV-->WAV conversion of my music, then re-scan into hqplayer.