HQ Player

[DancingSea]

I continue to have issues with HQP refusing to play on my MacBook Pro (connected to Direct Stream Junior via USB).  Via Roon.  If I use any other zone on Roon, forget it, HQP conks out, can take an hour or more to get it to play again.  But even if I stick with the HQP zone, HQP will refuse to play at times.  Or it will play but no sound comes out, can see the track progressing, but zero sound.

 

Over the past week, I’ve twice spent nearly 2 hours trying to HQP to resume normal function, doing every trick I know.  Restarting the DSJunior, unplugging the and plugging in the USB cable, restarting the Mac, and in a myriad of different orders.

 

I have Audio Midi set per Miska’s recommendations.  Not sure why this is happening as HQP has performed well for over a year.  And nothing has changed in my system....

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Allan F said:

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?

 

If those got removed, also registry entries have been removed (very likely). You can just delete the folder under Program Files. Please also check that you don't have it under both "C:\Program Files" and "C:\Program Files (x86)". Earlier versions installed under latter folder while later ones under the former one. If you didn't always uninstall old version before installing new one, there may be left over files from older versions.

 

[Miska]

43 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

I continue to have issues with HQP refusing to play on my MacBook Pro (connected to Direct Stream Junior via USB).  Via Roon.  If I use any other zone on Roon, forget it, HQP conks out, can take an hour or more to get it to play again.  But even if I stick with the HQP zone, HQP will refuse to play at times.  Or it will play but no sound comes out, can see the track progressing, but zero sound.

 

Over the past week, I’ve twice spent nearly 2 hours trying to HQP to resume normal function, doing every trick I know.  Restarting the DSJunior, unplugging the and plugging in the USB cable, restarting the Mac, and in a myriad of different orders.

 

I have Audio Midi set per Miska’s recommendations.  Not sure why this is happening as HQP has performed well for over a year.  And nothing has changed in my system....

 

Have you checked that you don't have the DAC enabled as a zone in Roon? Otherwise the two applications will have a competition about the device...

 

[Allan F]

14 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

If those got removed, also registry entries have been removed (very likely). You can just delete the folder under Program Files. Please also check that you don't have it under both "C:\Program Files" and "C:\Program Files (x86)". Earlier versions installed under latter folder while later ones under the former one. If you didn't always uninstall old version before installing new one, there may be left over files from older versions.

 

 

Scanning the registry with regedit, many entries for HQPlayer remained, so I was very reluctant to delete the program folder and risk screwing things up. Instead, I restored my complete Windows system from a backup which restored HQPlayer to its former state. For the time being, I am leaving well enough alone. HQPlayer works fine,  albeit without the Libarary-dialog metadata edit feature. My library's metadata is currently up to date after the many hours I have spent editing the xml file.

 

My only concern is the inability to update to new releases in the future if I can't uninstall the previous one. I am currently using 3.25.2.

[DancingSea]

28 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Have you checked that you don't have the DAC enabled as a zone in Roon? Otherwise the two applications will have a competition about the device...

 

 

Yes, in Roon I have the following 3 zones:

DAC enabled as USB connection. 

DAC enabled over the DSJunior’s network Bridge II

And HQP enabled.

 

Ought I disable everything except for the HQP zone?

 

Thanks. 

[DancingSea]

Miska,

 

I disabled the Roon USB and the Network zones.  Only the HQP zone is enabled.

 

Its still behaving very oddly.  Currently, it will only play PCM.  DSD files show they are playing, but no sound comes through the DAC.  PCM files (not upsampled to DSD) play fine, though I’m not sure how long that will last.  In the past week, it will start to play certain things and then stop.  For instance, for one evening, HQP (via Roon) would only play Tidal tracks, but nothing local.

 

DSD 64 and 128, including upsampling PCM to both, have always played fine for a year.  Just weird the last week.

 

It should be noted that with Roon on its own, both via USB and the DSJ’s internal network Bridge, everything performs normally.  Just doesn’t sounds as good as HQP!!

Any ideas?

[DancingSea]

Currently, when Roon is passing DSD on to HQP, the track plays, but only a soft hiss comes through the speakers.  The MacBook volume is turned up to max.  PCM is being upsamples to 352 and playing normally.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, DancingSea said:

Yes, in Roon I have the following 3 zones:

DAC enabled as USB connection. 

DAC enabled over the DSJunior’s network Bridge II

And HQP enabled.

 

Ought I disable everything except for the HQP zone?

 

Yes, all the items pointing to the same DAC HQPlayer is using, it is also instructed here, at the end of the page:

https://kb.roonlabs.com/HQPlayer_Setup

 

1 hour ago, DancingSea said:

Its still behaving very oddly.  Currently, it will only play PCM.  DSD files show they are playing, but no sound comes through the DAC.  PCM files (not upsampled to DSD) play fine, though I’m not sure how long that will last.  In the past week, it will start to play certain things and then stop.

 

I assume here you have Roon and HQPlayer in the same machine and HQPlayer's address is "localhost"?

 

1 hour ago, DancingSea said:

For instance, for one evening, HQP (via Roon) would only play Tidal tracks, but nothing local.

 

This sounds like some problem at Roon side, because all content comes from Roon to HQPlayer same way regardless if it is Tidal or local file.

 

37 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

Currently, when Roon is passing DSD on to HQP, the track plays, but only a soft hiss comes through the speakers.  The MacBook volume is turned up to max.  PCM is being upsamples to 352 and playing normally.

 

That is how DoP sounds like when played as PCM. Something is messing with the data and breaking DoP and thus DAC doesn't detect it as DoP/DSD. Just to confirm, please check that the DAC is not set as default for anything in Audio/MIDI Settings.

 

[DancingSea]

5 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

That is how DoP sounds like when played as PCM. Something is messing with the data and breaking DoP and thus DAC doesn't detect it as DoP/DSD. Just to confirm, please check that the DAC is not set as default for anything in Audio/MIDI Settings.

 

 

This appears to be our final remaining issue.  Attached is my Audio Midi settings.  The Built In Output is set as the default, or so I believe.  Any suggestions of how to correct the DoP data being broken?

 

PCM is consistently playing like normal now that I have disabled all other Roon zones except HQP.

 

DSD plays fine on the DAC from Roon by itself.

 

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Allan F said:

Scanning the registry with regedit, many entries for HQPlayer remained, so I was very reluctant to delete the program folder and risk screwing things up. Instead, I restored my complete Windows system from a backup which restored HQPlayer to its former state. For the time being, I am leaving well enough alone. HQPlayer works fine,  albeit without the Libarary-dialog metadata edit feature. My library's metadata is currently up to date after the many hours I have spent editing the xml file.

 

My only concern is the inability to update to new releases in the future if I can't uninstall the previous one. I am currently using 3.25.2.

 

Those registry items are likely just stored GUI state items (under Signalyst\HQPlayer Desktop). Those could be related, but unlikely. There's only one item stored for Library dialog and that is unrelated (only a last added directory path). If the application disappears from Control Panel, then the other registry items are gone.

 

On purpose, uninstall doesn't touch your settings or library data.

 

In recent versions of HQPlayer there are options to clean up all HQPlayer settings, library data, license key, registry settings etc, in Help-menu. But it will also delete library.xml from the default location, so if you use that make sure you have latest library.xml and license key properly backed up somewhere...

 

[Miska]

3 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

This appears to be our final remaining issue.  Attached is my Audio Midi settings.  The Built In Output is set as the default, or so I believe.  Any suggestions of how to correct the DoP data being broken?

 

PCM is consistently playing like normal now that I have disabled all other Roon zones except HQP.

 

DSD plays fine on the DAC from Roon by itself.

 

 

That Master volume setting maybe? Especially if HQPlayer cannot access the DAC in integer mode. Does it get fixed if you turn it to max (Value=1.0,  0 dB)

 

[DancingSea]

5 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

That Master volume setting maybe? Especially if HQPlayer cannot access the DAC in integer mode. Does it get fixed if you turn it to max (Value=1.0,  0 dB)

 

 

Yes, putting the master volume all the way to 1.0 appears to have fixed the issue.  Whew, I hope it stays stable now.  I've literally spent 8 full hours over the past days trying to figure this out.

 

I'll report back.  Thanks so much.

[Allan F]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

In recent versions of HQPlayer there are options to clean up all HQPlayer settings, library data, license key, registry settings etc, in Help-menu. But it will also delete library.xml from the default location, so if you use that make sure you have latest library.xml and license key properly backed up somewhere...

 

Please excuse what are probably dumb questions but I want to be sure that I do everything right.

1. I assume you are referring to the "Clear Data" item, correct?

2. Is it necessary or recommended to click on  "Remove key" as well from the Help Menu?.

3. After clearing data and opening HQPlayer again, does it request key or do I click "on Register" from Help Menu?

4. After key is entered, I would simply import library.xml and settings.xml from stored backupsto restore HQPlayer functionality, correct?.

[DancingSea]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

 

That Master volume setting maybe? Especially if HQPlayer cannot access the DAC in integer mode. Does it get fixed if you turn it to max (Value=1.0,  0 dB)

 

 

Miska, is the Roon headroom clipping indicator accurate when all is being funneled through HQP?

[Miska]

26 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

Miska, is the Roon headroom clipping indicator accurate when all is being funneled through HQP?

 

It could be if they implemented it to react to limiting indicator from HQPlayer. But I don't know right now. The one that is accurate is in HQPlayer, the "Limited" counter in main window. Should stay at 0 at all times.

 

If you send bit-perfect data from Roon, there is of course no clipping possible at Roon side. When HQPlayer does DSP processing, you may get inter-sample overs. As documented, to avoid this do not turn HQPlayer's volume control higher than -3 dBFS (you can also adjust this from Roon side). There are still some pieces of material where that is not enough, but for most cases it is fine. HQPlayer doesn't let output clip as such, but instead triggers it's own soft limiter. Limiting is also indicated by turning HQPlayer's volume knob red (it is also yellow at -1 dBFS and red at 0 dBFS settings to alert about imminent danger).

 

[DancingSea]

8 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

It could be if they implemented it to react to limiting indicator from HQPlayer. But I don't know right now. The one that is accurate is in HQPlayer, the "Limited" counter in main window. Should stay at 0 at all times.

 

If you send bit-perfect data from Roon, there is of course no clipping possible at Roon side. When HQPlayer does DSP processing, you may get inter-sample overs. As documented, to avoid this do not turn HQPlayer's volume control higher than -3 dBFS (you can also adjust this from Roon side). There are still some pieces of material where that is not enough, but for most cases it is fine. HQPlayer doesn't let output clip as such, but instead triggers it's own soft limiter. Limiting is also indicated by turning HQPlayer's volume knob red (it is also yellow at -1 dBFS and red at 0 dBFS settings to alert about imminent danger).

 

 

I read on the PS Audio forum that setting the HQPlayer volume to zero for both min and max defeats the digital volume, leaves  all volume control to the DAC, and improves SQ. Is that true?

[Miska]

43 minutes ago, Allan F said:

Please excuse what are probably dumb questions but I want to be sure that I do everything right.

1. I assume you are referring to the "Clear Data" item, correct?

 

Yes, that cleans everything except license key and exits HQPlayer.

 

So for total cleanup procedure, you would first use "Clear data" and then uninstall the application and check that there's nothing left under those two Program Files folders.

 

44 minutes ago, Allan F said:

2. Is it necessary or recommended to click on  "Remove key" as well from the Help Menu?.

 

No, that is not necessary. It is only useful if you need to remove license key for some reason.

 

46 minutes ago, Allan F said:

3. After clearing data and opening HQPlayer again, does it request key or do I click "on Register" from Help Menu?

 

No need to do that unless you also remove key. You can see registration status from the application title-bar. If necessary key can be installed again through Register in Help-menu.

 

48 minutes ago, Allan F said:

4. After key is entered, I would simply import library.xml and settings.xml from stored backupsto restore HQPlayer functionality, correct?.

 

Yes, exactly.

 

These files are stored in "%LOCALAPPDATA%\HQPlayer" folder. So you can backup/restore those files from/to that folder manually too when HQPlayer is not running.

 

If you have a lot of edits to the library.xml file, like I do, it is good to retain multiple backup copies of that file. I've been storing earlier versions too, just in case.

 

[Miska]

8 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

I read on the PS Audio forum that setting the HQPlayer volume to zero for both min and max defeats the digital volume, leaves  all volume control to the DAC, and improves SQ. Is that true?

 

No, it doesn't improve sound quality, it makes sound quality worse. Because inter-sample overs happen before the data is converted to the output format. If you "defeat" the volume control, the limiter still stays active and will trigger in such cases. But most people would rather not have the limiter triggering, so better leave enough headroom for the output so that it practically never happens.

 

Overall, there's no point in trying to drive digital data to the max (0 dBFS), it will just make sound quality suffer as we know from loudness wars.

 

So keep an eye on the Limited counter and make sure it stays at 0 at all times for best sound quality.

[Allan F]

18 hours ago, Miska said:

If you have a lot of edits to the library.xml file, like I do, it is good to retain multiple backup copies of that file. I've been storing earlier versions too, just in case.

 

This is excellent advice. I routinely keep three backup copies of the library.xml and settings.xml files, each stored on a different drive.

[Strikertango55]

On 1/4/2019 at 2:37 PM, Strikertango55 said:

Hi All

 

I luckily came across hqplayer randomly and now there is no going back. My setup (my dad's setup ha)

 

44.1 256DSD with xtr-2s on HQplayer / i7-920 16GB DDR3 X58 chipset

LKS  mah-DA004 on I2s

Singxer SU-1

SOtM sms-200-ultra

Classe Audio amp

Emerald Physics EP-2 speakers.

 

I've tried Jriver, Audnirvana, and Foobar2000 over DLNA but none of them come close to HQPlayer.

 

There's one issue that one of you may be able to help me with. The Singxer is making things out of phase. I know its the SIngxer because SOtM -> LKS through USB is in phase. I tried physically reversing the amp -> speaker cables, changing the firmware to 2.22, and setting the no 6 switch to off. 

 

https://download.shenzhenaudio.com/Singxer/

New firmware was posted for the SU-6 because there was a bug. It's v2.21 and its the exact same size as v2.20 for the SU-1. I thought that was coincidental but haven't tried flashing it. Oh and the inv button on HQplayer doesn't change anything either. Any ideas?

 

Two other quick questions.

When direct SDM is checked, do any of the default settings effect the playback for DSD files?

 

Would enabling the speaker settings and setting up the front two channels be beneficial at all?

 

 

I forgot how subjective the term phase may be. Soundstage.

26-Phasing Test- In-phase.dsf

27-Phasing Test- Out-of-phase.dsf

[Miska]

On 1/4/2019 at 11:37 PM, Strikertango55 said:

There's one issue that one of you may be able to help me with. The Singxer is making things out of phase. I know its the SIngxer because SOtM -> LKS through USB is in phase. I tried physically reversing the amp -> speaker cables, changing the firmware to 2.22, and setting the no 6 switch to off. 

 

Are you now talking about two channels being in phase or out of phase, or are you talking about inverting absolute phase?

 

Quote

Oh and the inv button on HQplayer doesn't change anything either.

 

It does invert the absolute phase, but in most cases you won't notice any difference.

 

Quote

When direct SDM is checked, do any of the default settings effect the playback for DSD files?

 

No, the DSD data goes through as-is, so none of the controls touch it. Only modifications that can be done are multichannel speaker delays (distances), which is bit-perfect operation. Phase inversion would be another possibility, but IIRC I have not implemented it.

 

Quote

Would enabling the speaker settings and setting up the front two channels be beneficial at all?

 

For a stereo system it is only useful only if you have asymmetrical speaker layout.

 

[Strikertango55]

Two channels being in or out of phase. I will learn what absolute phase is. At the bottom of my last post there are two .dsf files. The one that is in phase sounds out and vice versa. It's like the sound is going outwards for the inphase one, and her voice is right in the center and the sound goes inwards for the out of phase one. I've got other phase testing tracks that do the exact same thing. I'll post them here

 

02 - Phase MF.wav
04 - Phase LF.wav
03 - Phase HF.wav

 

And thanks for the answers to those questions! I think I've come up with a flow chart for noobs based on file type and what they wanna do. I've messed with hqplayer alooooooooot. I guess its pretty straightforward after you do that so its just a matter of putting the effort in.

[asdf1000]

Hi @Miska

 

If I play a DSD64 source file, like Michael Jackson - Thriller, which can be purchased on AcousticSounds. 

 

DSD64 has the quantization noise close/in the audio band. I know that ideally you'd want a DSD128 or even better DSD256 source file, to start with.

 

But for DSD64 source files, does HQP help to push this noise out of the audio band?

Or is this noise already "baked in" and there's not much that can be done with DSD64?

 

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Em2016 said:

Hi @Miska

 

If I play a DSD64 source file, like Michael Jackson - Thriller, which can be purchased on AcousticSounds. 

 

DSD64 has the quantization noise close/in the audio band. I know that ideally you'd want a DSD128 or even better DSD256 source file, to start with.

 

But for DSD64 source files, does HQP help to push this noise out of the audio band?

Or is this noise already "baked in" and there's not much that can be done with DSD64?

 

If you upsample it, most of the noise is moved higher up, so it is certainly worth doing it IMO. The noise itself is "baked in" so it cannot be completely removed, but it gets tamed this way.

 

How much it makes difference depends on the DAC how it filters the noise.

 

[asdf1000]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

If you upsample it, most of the noise is moved higher up, so it is certainly worth doing it IMO. The noise itself is "baked in" so it cannot be completely removed, but it gets tamed this way.

 

How much it makes difference depends on the DAC how it filters the noise.

 

 

Thanks!

 

From reading the manual, I understood poly-sinc-lp and poly-sinc-xtr-lp to both have symmetrical impulse responses (equal length pre and post ringing)? Have I got that right or completely wrong?

 

Is there another poly-sinc filter that has shorter pre and post ringing than the above two filters, but still symmetrical?