HQ Player

[JTS]

+1 on this. I am curious. I have been bouncing between poly-sinc-ext2, close-form-16m and polysinc-xtr-mp. My playback chain in my work suite where I do most of my listening:

 

Tidal -> Roon -> HQPlayer -> [filter] -> [modulator] -> DSD256 -> USB -> Intona-> RME ADI-2 DAC fs (in DSD direct mode)-> Schiit Freya -> Neumann KH120As

 

I listen principally to studio recorded music. Looking at my testing playlist and pulling a few tracks out: Songs: Ohia, Lioness; Mattew E. White, One of These Days; The Books, Group Autogenics I; Bjork, Crystalline; Sparklehorse, Shade and Honey; Gorillaz, Revolving Doors; James Blake, Limit to Your Love; T. Rex, Spaceball Ricochet etc.

 

I have not done any scientific testing here, but I find:

 

closed-form-16M - exciting to listen to, sharp, great separation and stereo imaging. A bit tiring with janglier stuff (non-apo?)

polysinc-xrt-mp - sharp but more mellow than closed form, again great stereo imaging and depth.

polysinc-ext2 - hard one for me to describe. I would say it's very clean and beautiful sounding. I somehow go to it less than 16M or XTR, though. I perhaps just need to give it more time.

 

This all changes around with the modulator. I am going in between DSD5V2, ADSM7, ADSM7 256+fs. All of them sound different though I mostly just stick to ADSM7.

 

I think I could probably do up a matrix and some notes when I have some time.

 

I would be super curious to hear other people's preferences and thoughts on the different filters/modulators and what type of music they might be listening to with them and on what type of system.

 

Any suggestions of things to try and why?

 

Funs!

[Yviena]

@Miska I asked on the RME forums if it was as possible to enable the headphone amp while DSD direct was active as I was using software volume control, and I mentioned that I hear more depth when sending DSD direct with HQplayer https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=28833

One guy replied, and said this it actually true or BS?

The imagination of more depth lies in the loss of impulse response (less dynamic). Because of less prominent sound events the acoustic perception creates the imagination of a deeper sound stage, or better said, the sound stage seems to be further away. But it is still a loss of information (for example artistic expression) and does not correspond to the original recording.

A similar effect occurs with the usage of a battery as a power supply, but less signifcant. That's another story.

But if you prefer the imagination of a further away projected sound stage, go for it. But you lose more than you gain. With headphones, especially with a HD800 it might be desireable. With a reference speaker setup the loss of information is much clearer because of far better localisation (with very good recordings, of course).

My knowledge bases on detailed studies of human acoustic perception (psychoacoustics). Many, many listening tests with different setups and different persons for several months.

[jamesg11]

Miska, further on the RME ADI-2 ... given its architecture re xlr balanced & rca unbalanced outputs, is it worth connecting up xlr leads with pin 3 disconnected?

My pre has some xlr unbalanced connections.

 

See from the manual -

“!The XLR outputs do not operate servo-balanced! When connecting unbalanced equipment, make sure pin 3 of the XLR output is not connected.”

 

 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, Yviena said:

@Miska I asked on the RME forums if it was as possible to enable the headphone amp while DSD direct was active as I was using software volume control, and I mentioned that I hear more depth when sending DSD direct with HQplayer https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=28833

One guy replied, and said this it actually true or BS?

 

Typical BS, probably one of the crazy ASR forum guys. And no data provided or any relevance for this particular case or device.

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, jamesg11 said:

Miska, further on the RME ADI-2 ... given its architecture re xlr balanced & rca unbalanced outputs, is it worth connecting up xlr leads with pin 3 disconnected?

My pre has some xlr unbalanced connections.

 

See from the manual -

“!The XLR outputs do not operate servo-balanced! When connecting unbalanced equipment, make sure pin 3 of the XLR output is not connected.”

 

It is better to use the unbalanced outputs for unbalanced equipment, the unbalanced output seems to be done properly inside ADI-2.

 

[Miska]

On 6/26/2019 at 12:43 AM, lucretius said:

Here are some notes provided with the A+ remote app for iOS:

 

"Please note that Audirvana Plus must be running on a Mac or PC connected to your local WiFi network:

• Audirvana Plus for Mac at least version 2.2, preferably 3.1 or later

• or Audirvana Plus for Windows 10 version 1.1 or later"

 

Therefore, it will not work with HQPlayer.

 

You can use HQPDcontrol for Android to control either HQPlayer Desktop or HQPlayer Embeded.

 

Also, I believe you can use an UPnP/DLNA remote -- mconnect for iOS and USB Audio Player Pro for Android -- with HQPlayer Embedded.  As well, you can use HQPlayerd Controller app for Android with HQPlayer Embeded.  Perhaps @Miska can confirm?

 

If you use A+ to output to HQPlayer Embedded, then I don't see why the A+ Remote wouldn't work for controlling playback. I have not tried it yet, but I can try it later. But it is hard to think why the remote would be different depending on what is set up as output device for A+.

 

For HQPlayer 4 Desktop, HQPDcontrol for Android is one option. Or running HQPlayer Client on a Windows tablet.

 

[luisma]

10 hours ago, JTS said:

+1 on this. I am curious. I have been bouncing between poly-sinc-ext2, close-form-16m and polysinc-xtr-mp. My playback chain in my work suite where I do most of my listening:

 

Tidal -> Roon -> HQPlayer -> [filter] -> [modulator] -> DSD256 -> USB -> Intona-> RME ADI-2 DAC fs (in DSD direct mode)-> Schiit Freya -> Neumann KH120As

 

I listen principally to studio recorded music. Looking at my testing playlist and pulling a few tracks out: Songs: Ohia, Lioness; Mattew E. White, One of These Days; The Books, Group Autogenics I; Bjork, Crystalline; Sparklehorse, Shade and Honey; Gorillaz, Revolving Doors; James Blake, Limit to Your Love; T. Rex, Spaceball Ricochet etc.

 

I have not done any scientific testing here, but I find:

 

closed-form-16M - exciting to listen to, sharp, great separation and stereo imaging. A bit tiring with janglier stuff (non-apo?)

polysinc-xrt-mp - sharp but more mellow than closed form, again great stereo imaging and depth.

polysinc-ext2 - hard one for me to describe. I would say it's very clean and beautiful sounding. I somehow go to it less than 16M or XTR, though. I perhaps just need to give it more time.

 

This all changes around with the modulator. I am going in between DSD5V2, ADSM7, ADSM7 256+fs. All of them sound different though I mostly just stick to ADSM7.

 

I think I could probably do up a matrix and some notes when I have some time.

 

I would be super curious to hear other people's preferences and thoughts on the different filters/modulators and what type of music they might be listening to with them and on what type of system.

 

Any suggestions of things to try and why?

 

Funs!

I like closed-form as one of my favs, lately (last month or so) I have been using minringFIR-mp for 1x and Nx and it is very good too.

 

There is some compromising on the filter and the CPU stressing, many have noticed that increasing the filter complexity will drive the CPU cores to max and this will increase noise generated within your PC's and could be potentially transmitted to your DAC, every system is different.

 

 

[lucretius]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

If you use A+ to output to HQPlayer Embedded, then I don't see why the A+ Remote wouldn't work for controlling playback. I have not tried it yet, but I can try it later. But it is hard to think why the remote would be different depending on what is set up as output device for A+.

 

You are likely correct. However, I think  @Carl Mawer was asking whether A+ Remote for iOS without A+ desktop could control HQPlayer. 

[JTS]

2 hours ago, luisma said:

I like closed-form as one of my favs, lately (last month or so) I have been using minringFIR-mp for 1x and Nx and it is very good too. 

 

There is some compromising on the filter and the CPU stressing, many have noticed that increasing the filter complexity will drive the CPU cores to max and this will increase noise generated within your PC's and could be potentially transmitted to your DAC, every system is different. 

 

 

Thanks for weighing in. I've never tried the MinringFIR filters. I will give them a shot. I'm on an i9-9900k with an allcore clock of 4.8GHz. HQ player usually sits around 5-6% and have never seen it go over 12% CPU with DSD256 (with PolySincXTR-MP). It would likely be a different story with 512 :-).

[Miska]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

You are likely correct. However, I think  @Carl Mawer was asking whether A+ Remote for iOS without A+ desktop could control HQPlayer. 

 

No, that's not going to work. I think A+ Remote is as much A+ specific as HQPlayer Client is HQPlayer specific.

 

[Carl Mawer]

4 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

You are likely correct. However, I think  @Carl Mawer was asking whether A+ Remote for iOS without A+ desktop could control HQPlayer. 

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

I was pretty sure that A+ desktop would need to be running. I have a license for A+ and find that it's IOS remote is very good. On my system I prefer the SQ of HQPlayer, but running  it on a headless Mac mini is a pain in the ass.

I have used Geoff's HQPlayer via iTunes which works pretty well.

I am sure I am not alone in hoping for a dedicated HQPlayer IOS remote app. ( Roon is far too expensive for just its remote function and I don't want any of its other features)

 

Regards

Carl Mawer

[Jerry]

9 hours ago, JTS said:

Thanks for weighing in. I've never tried the MinringFIR filters. I will give them a shot. I'm on an i9-9900k with an allcore clock of 4.8GHz. HQ player usually sits around 5-6% and have never seen it go over 12% CPU with DSD256 (with PolySincXTR-MP). It would likely be a different story with 512 :-).

I think you will be fine at DSD512, my CPU is only i7-6700k and offloading to GTX1080, when I do 44.1kHz -> closed-form- 16M -> AMSDM7 512+fs -> DSD512, CPU utilisation is only around 40%, including also overhead from Roon and Tidal etc, I think there's still CPU resources to be utilised to improve sound quality...

[JTS]

8 minutes ago, Jerry said:

I think you will be fine at DSD512, my CPU is only i7-6700k and offloading to GTX1080, when I do 44.1kHz -> closed-form- 16M -> AMSDM7 512+fs -> DSD512, CPU utilisation is only around 40%, including also overhead from Roon and Tidal etc, I think there's still CPU resources to be utilised to improve sound quality...

I imagine I could. I use an RME ADI-2 in my suite, though, which had a max input of DSD 256. I used a Holo Spring at home and I can get 512 off an old HP Z420 with a GTX980 when I chose friendly settings 🙂 (I send it over LAN to a W10 mac mini running the HQP NAA. Intona, SU-1 etc). Sounds really very sweet.

[Yviena]

@Miska Any recommendations on DSD filter kHz, i can choose between 47, 50, 60, 70kHz on the sabre dac, also is default/32 bits on dac bits fine with sending PCM on a DS DAC, or should i use the linearity measurement just like i do on my R2R dac?

[asdf1000]

Hi @Miska

 

I have bauer crossfeed enabled via HQP Embedded's Matrix page.

 

If I already have a fixed volume of -9 dB enabled in Config page, do I still need "gain" value in Matrix field?

 

[Miska]

8 hours ago, Yviena said:

@Miska Any recommendations on DSD filter kHz, i can choose between 47, 50, 60, 70kHz on the sabre dac, also is default/32 bits on dac bits fine with sending PCM on a DS DAC, or should i use the linearity measurement just like i do on my R2R dac?

 

50 kHz is standard DSD filter. But depends a bit on what kind of analog output filter the DAC has...

 

32-bit is fine, in this case it is better to provide maximum resolution for the on-chip DSP.

 

[Yviena]

Hmm looks like DSD 48 is not supported even if it can play it, music slowdowns etc on the matrix sabre pro, also weirdly enough playing back PCM 7xx rates, and using -3db makes the sound break up on bass notes, while -2, and -4db is okay.

[Miska]

1 minute ago, Yviena said:

Hmm looks like DSD 48 is not supported even if it can play it, music slowdowns etc on the matrix sabre pro, also weirdly enough playing back PCM 7xx rates, and using -3db makes the sound break up on bass notes, while -2, and -4db is okay.

 

Quite common problem that DAC goes either muted, or plays 48k-base DSD using 44.1k-base clock (causing slow down).

 

I cannot quickly think of why volume setting would make difference for 7xx rates...

[Yviena]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Quite common problem that DAC goes either muted, or plays 48k-base DSD using 44.1k-base clock (causing slow down).

 

I cannot quickly think of why volume setting would make difference for 7xx rates...

Yeah it's weird that -3db volume triggers it,  doesn't happen with the RME so I think it's some kind of interaction between the dac.

[shahed99]

@Miska I reinstalled my HQP version 3.x. However, I can't seem to register. I've the old key. Online key conversion tool to XML on your site doesn't work. Please HELP!

[jimdukey]

Does anyone have a Favorite Mac OS for listening with HQ?

I've read that some have claimed that High Sierra is no good, Sierra better, and now also Mojave.

I've never noticed that the OS to matter to me.

That Finale 25 isn't compatible with Mojave is the only OS related problem I've heard of that would affect (effect?) me,

more of a practical matter than quality.

So I'm stuck with High Sierra until I am willing to upgrade to Finale 26, which I don't really need.

My Computer will likely not be compatible with Catalina, would have to buy a new one.

So, anyone feel that High Sierra is a problem for sound quality?

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

1 hour ago, jimdukey said:

Does anyone have a Favorite Mac OS for listening with HQ?

I've read that some have claimed that High Sierra is no good, Sierra better, and now also Mojave.

I've never noticed that the OS to matter to me.

That Finale 25 isn't compatible with Mojave is the only OS related problem I've heard of that would affect (effect?) me,

more of a practical matter than quality.

So I'm stuck with High Sierra until I am willing to upgrade to Finale 26, which I don't really need.

My Computer will likely not be compatible with Catalina, would have to buy a new one.

So, anyone feel that High Sierra is a problem for sound quality?

 

The OS/HQP/DAC ensemble matters very much IMO. A few yeras ago I installed Bootcamp on my Mac in order to listen under Windows Server. I've found Desktop 4 to sound very good with Mojave. Embedded (HQP under its dedicated Linux )  sounds best to my ears. 

[Miska]

On 6/29/2019 at 10:07 PM, shahed99 said:

@Miska I reinstalled my HQP version 3.x. However, I can't seem to register. I've the old key. Online key conversion tool to XML on your site doesn't work. Please HELP!

 

I had the form online for almost two years, but had to take it offline due to misuse.

 

Please send me email from your original order address.

 

[Miska]

On 6/29/2019 at 5:58 PM, Yviena said:

Yeah it's weird that -3db volume triggers it,  doesn't happen with the RME so I think it's some kind of interaction between the dac.

 

Can you ask manufacturer to check it out? They can use HQPlayer trial to test and maybe the have an answer...

 

[Miska]

On 6/28/2019 at 12:00 AM, Carl Mawer said:

I am sure I am not alone in hoping for a dedicated HQPlayer IOS remote app. ( Roon is far too expensive for just its remote function and I don't want any of its other features)

 

I'm curious how many would be happy with HQPlayer Client on iOS/Android and would be ready to pay for it?

 

Because it would cost me 6000 EUR/year extra. So it would need to cost some amount (also taking into account that app stores take 30 - 35% margin plus possible taxes like VAT on top).