HQ Player

[Le Concombre Masqué]

24 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

You are familiar with it from Embedded already...

 

So one can use inputs for example from ADC, or from S/PDIF  or AES/EBU and process those through HQPlayer. Depending on OS it may also work with some external audio loopback software (not tested yet) to also enable processing within same computer. This allows use cases like routing audio from old CD spinner transports, from Chromecast Audio dongle or from vinyl through ADC to HQPlayer for room correction processing and possible upsampling. So one could for example route output from Spotify through HQPlayer's upsampling.

 

Very interesting feature

 

audio loopback would be something like Audio Hijack? In conjunction with LAConvolver it allows me yet to get a great sound from movies played via IINA.Going even further in SQ would be great though.

 

IINA is a OSX soft while I go Windows Server when using HQP (3.x, TEAC 501, the lean OS per se, whatever; it's much better) ; from the licensing structure I understand I would be authorised to run one instance of HQP from my Bootcamp partition and one from OSX (same Mac) ; correct?

 

Last but not least : Vinyl. Despite the huge advantage provided by convolution in my room , there are quite a few records I still find very attractive as vinyl when there are bass and drums mastered/compressed to be addictive the vinyl way...

 

I have not upgraded in ages but my vinyl gear was much higher end than my TEAC DAC : which ADC would you suggest  (my phono preamp that would feed it directly, I guess, is XLR/balanced) ?

[AnotherSpin]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Which version of the OS do you have? I'm trying to nail down the problem and I'm seeing some behavioral differences between Mojave and High Sierra. I've done most of my testing on Mojave, but now after your report trying to reproduce the problem I am able to reproduce it on High Sierra only, on Mojave things are working fine. All machines have exactly same kind of network configuration so the only difference I see is the OS version.

 

I think I will be able to release a hot fix later today for macOS version.

 

 

I tried 4 on two High Sierra macs, no drag and drop. Can not try how it sounds)

[wolft]

I use now the *.xml key file and I got the coupon code. However, the price is very high for an upgrade.

Wolft

[Bob Stern]

58 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

audio loopback would be something like Audio Hijack? In conjunction with LAConvolver it allows me yet to get a great sound from movies played via IINA.Going even further in SQ would be great though.

 

You need software that routes the sound to a virtual audio INPUT device so that HQP can choose that virtual device as its input.

 

Audio Hijack captures audio from a Mac app and transmits it to an OUTPUT device.  To route Audio Hijack's output to an INPUT device that HQP can receive from, you could use Soundflower (free and open source).

 

https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/tag/2.0b2

 

If Soundflower proves to be flaky on your system, you could ask Rogue Amoeba if they will give you a discount on Rogue Ameoba "Loopback" because you already own Audio Hijack.

[antonellocaroli]

Edit...

 

 

[Confused]

I have been trying version 4.0 this morning, but I am finding some strange behaviour.

 

At first, HQPlayer would not work with Roon at all.  A bit of experimenting, HQPlayer would play local FLAC files, and it would work with Roon if I was playing internet Radio, MP3 files, or 24 bit files.  The one thing that would not play were 16/44.1 files.  This was with poly-sinc-xtr, up sampling to PCM.

 

A bit more experimenting, 16/44.1 files will play via Roon with some filter settings, but not others.  For example, Poly-sinc-short-mp works fine, Poly-sinc-xtr does not.  Back on HQPlayer V3, both options work fine.

 

Maybe I am getting something wrong in the settings?  HQPlayer is running on a Windows 10 PC, to a sMS-200Ultra.

[craighartley]

On 9/6/2018 at 10:39 PM, Miska said:

 

They are very different. DSD5 is fifth order and can adapt some of the parameters, but otherwise it is fairly static one. It is in a way closer to a traditional modulator. ASDM7 is seventh order and more adaptive in various ways, I'd call it more modern. ASDM5 is similar to ASDM7 but fifth order. Fifth order modulators are slightly less demanding for DAC's DSD noise filter, while seventh order ones are otherwise better.

 

Miska,

 

Which modulator do you use with T&A DSD DAC 8? Or, in other words, is this a DAC that technically suits 5th or 7th order?

 

thanks

 

Craig

[ckpiv]

15 hours ago, Miska said:

 

For this case, I have a temporary solution to try, so on macOS if you have problems to connect from Roon to HQPlayer, you can try opening terminal and starting HQPlayer with following command:

HQPLAYER_IPV6=0 /Applications/HQPlayer4Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/HQPlayer4Desktop

This disables IPv6 support and could help the case. Success/failure reports welcome!

 

This is the only way I can get Roon to connect to HQPlayer as well. Running Mojave 10.14.4. Also ask to allow network connection on start up (firewall shows HQPlayer4 and HQPlayer3 as allowed) and the says failed to open audio device - check preferences and the preference pane opens. Audio device is there, close preference pane and roon connects and plays.

[craighartley]

4.0.0 working nicely for me at the moment, in tandem with Roon. You can also use the Client on a remote PC to change the Mode/Filter/Modulator/Max sampling rate settings while Roon/HQP are playing, then pause the music in Roon, and the new settings will take effect when you press Play. It would obviously be better if you could do this inside Roon, but still. Halfway house would be if you could put Client on an iPad.

[vortecjr]

I recently experimented with routing digital audio through HQ Player Embedded on a SGC SonicTransporter and it works very well.

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/43534-sgc-sonictransporter-hqplayer-4-embedded-as-audio-hub/

[firedog]

52 minutes ago, craighartley said:

4.0.0 working nicely for me at the moment, in tandem with Roon. You can also use the Client on a remote PC to change the Mode/Filter/Modulator/Max sampling rate settings while Roon/HQP are playing, then pause the music in Roon, and the new settings will take effect when you press Play. It would obviously be better if you could do this inside Roon, but still. Halfway house would be if you could put Client on an iPad.

Is it possible to download and install just the client on your remote PC if you have HQP desktop running on your server? 

[Hammer]

Hi, trying to get HQPlayer 4 Desktop to run under Windows Server 2016...Roon does not seem to be able to connect to it.  I also have HQPlayer 3 Desktop on that same machine and that still works.  Interesting when I first started up HQPlayer 4 Desktop, Windows did not ask me for Firewall settings.  Thinking that is the issue, I manually added the exception for HQPlayer4Desktop.exe.  Unfortunately, Roon is still unable to see it.  Any thoughts?

 

Additionally, I am noticing that CUDA offload is showing up as disabled when I play a song manually via the HQPlayer v4 GUI (eg., not via Roon) even though when I run v3, CUDA offload is enabled.  I've checked my setting and CUDA is enabled under settings. 

 

Thank you!

[craighartley]

18 minutes ago, firedog said:

Is it possible to download and install just the client on your remote PC if you have HQP desktop running on your server? 

Yes, that’s how I’ve got it. The client is on the remote PC along with the Roon ‘remote’. The streamlined server portion of HQP Desktop is on the server PC along with Roon server. 

[craighartley]

13 minutes ago, craighartley said:

Yes, that’s how I’ve got it. The client is on the remote PC along with the Roon ‘remote’. The streamlined server portion of HQP Desktop is on the server PC along with Roon server. 

Or did you mean can you buy the client separately? In which case, no. 

[jimdukey]

What is the difference between 1x and Nx oversampling?

I have them both set the same.

Should they be different?

Are Poly-sinc-xtr and Poly-sinc-xtr-lp the same?

 

I don't think of 4.0 as an Upgrade, but a New Version altogether.

I'm very happy with it, tho it was a tough sled to get it all going and registered...

Hmmm, User-errors likely.

Good help here!

[sdmarquart]

29 minutes ago, jimdukey said:

What is the difference between 1x and Nx oversampling?

I have them both set the same.

Should they be different?

Are Poly-sinc-xtr and Poly-sinc-xtr-lp the same? 

 

I don't think of 4.0 as an Upgrade, but a New Version altogether.

I'm very happy with it, tho it was a tough sled to get it all going and registered...

Hmmm, User-errors likely.

Good help here!

I have the same question. I upgraded to HQPlayer 4 Desktop and have both filter 1x and Nx at Poly-sinc-short-mp. Only using PCM, no DSD capabilities. Sounds great to me but why two filters now? I have no need to change it, just curious.

 

Thanks,

Spencer

 

[tboooe]

8 hours ago, Miska said:

 

The new Client application will grow further over time. Technically it can be now built for tablet OS as well. For phones it's design is too big though.

 

Yes, having an official HQP Android tablet app would make the upgrade definitely more worth it to me so I can stop paying for Roon. I know their is HQPD and other other options but there is also no way of knowing of those apps will continue to be supported and developed.  

[mtcs]

17 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Price is now the same for both HQPlayer Embedded and HQPlayer Desktop. 199 EUR net, while previous version has been running 119 EUR net for years. But now you get all three platforms covered at once.

 

Unfortunately there's just a limit how far single person can stretch and I would love to be able to hire a student to help out on some of the things. That would enable more things to happen at faster pace.

 

 

There have been a lot of comments recently on price and features. People always want more for less, which is understandable. I'd like to say that I think Miska does exceptionally well on both counts. We seem to get new features - useful ones - on a  regular basis to what is already a great product. The price may not be the lowest but the software is worth a lot more to me. On top of all that, the level of support we get can't be beat. I have no problem paying a still modest price for all this.

[jimdukey]

+1!

It's a small price indeed for such exclusive access to Miska's Brain...!!!

I want to help keep it well fed and healthy, so we can all get even more Audio Goodness!

[shadowlight]

@Miska

 

Couple of questions:

1. Does the input portion allow support for Chromecast Audio, similar to embedded
2. As code for server and client is now split, will the server portion run as a windows service at startup
3. As desktop and embedded code is starting to be similar level, my current assumption is that the biggest advantage that embedded has is the ability to support upnp/dlna setup.  Am I missing some other difference between the two code base?
4. Has your stance on adding UPNP/DLNA support to Windows code changed with the new release?  I know previously you had said that some of the underlying code needed was not available under Windows and MacOS.

 

[Miska]

8 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

IINA is a OSX soft while I go Windows Server when using HQP (3.x, TEAC 501, the lean OS per se, whatever; it's much better) ; from the licensing structure I understand I would be authorised to run one instance of HQP from my Bootcamp partition and one from OSX (same Mac) ; correct?

 

Yes, that is fine. As long as you have only one copy per license running at a time on a computer in your possession. So obviously in this case you'd have just one running at a time.

 

8 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I have not upgraded in ages but my vinyl gear was much higher end than my TEAC DAC : which ADC would you suggest  (my phono preamp that would feed it directly, I guess, is XLR/balanced) ?

 

My personal favorite at the moment and one I've used the most for testing is RME ADI-2 Pro. It allows PCM ADC up to 768/32 in addition to DSD256. Performing convolution for DSD256 is very heavy, so it may be more beneficial to run it at 768/32 PCM instead. If you'd also like to use digital inputs you need to switch it into "multichannel mode" and then maximum ADC rate is 192/32 without changing device settings every time. But that should be pretty good for vinyl as well.

 

ADI-2 also works up to 768k PCM and DSD256 on macOS too (both ADC and DAC). And on Linux I've implemented quite a bunch of extra driver features for it to allow automatic follow of sampling rate changes on digital inputs.

 

[Miska]

8 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

I tried 4 on two High Sierra macs, no drag and drop. Can not try how it sounds)

 

Another thing I've mostly tested on Mojave. I have one Mac with current - 1 version, so High Sierra at the moment. I've done some basic testing on it too, but I'll check further. I'm wondering if this is also related to the toolkit, because D'n'D goes through the toolkit...

[AnotherSpin]

1 minute ago, Miska said:

 

Another thing I've mostly tested on Mojave. I have one Mac with current - 1 version, so High Sierra at the moment. I've done some basic testing on it too, but I'll check further. I'm wondering if this is also related to the toolkit, because D'n'D goes through the toolkit...

 

Will much appreciate you will find a way for it operate properly on pre-mojave OSs. Thank you.

 

[Miska]

7 hours ago, craighartley said:

Which modulator do you use with T&A DSD DAC 8? Or, in other words, is this a DAC that technically suits 5th or 7th order?

 

Both DAC8 DSD and also Holo Spring/Cyan work fine with both 5th and 7th order. Especially Holo Audio DACs are totally fine with 7th order modulators just like DSC1/DSC2 designs. Analog FIR type DACs work perfectly fine with 7th order modulators (TI/BB chips included, like iFi).

 

[Miska]

1 minute ago, AnotherSpin said:

Will much appreciate you will find a way for it operate properly on pre-mojave OSs. Thank you.

 

I'm just curious is there a reason to stick to non-current version on macOS? But generally I try to support current and current - 1, but not older.