HQ Player

[Bob Stern]

10 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

To enable a front-end program to display the elapsed time while playing a track, will it slow down HQP if the front-end sends a status query to HQP once or twice per second...

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8 hours ago, Miska said:

It doesn't really have noticeable impact. Roon is doing that. But you can also subscribe to status queries like my Client does, then you don't need to poll, but instead HQPlayer itself sends you updates.

 

Thanks.  I'm currently using the polling method, and since you say that's OK, I won’t bother you with questions on how to subscribe to notifications.

[Bob Stern]

28 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

Swinsian has not responded to our request to be the front end for HQPlayer.  Given the HQPlayer GUI is unlikely to change, and to be polite, let’s call it “vintage” rather than “antiquated”, is there any way to get a Mac/ iOS remote control for HQP 4?

 

HQP Client already is Mac remote control, so I think you need to restate your request more precisely.

 

Regarding Swinsian, I'm thinking I'll wait a few weeks and then ask Jussi if the Swinsian developer has contacted him about adding HQP control to Swinsian.  If not, I should be able to develop a bridge between Swinsian Mac and HQP, similar to the way Bit Perfect, Pure Music and Amarra use iTunes as a front end for their audio engines, although mine might not be quite as seamless.  But you'll have to be very patient, as I'm not a real programmer, so I'll be learning as I go along.  This would strictly be for Mac, not iOS.

[Bob Stern]

3 hours ago, DancingSea said:

I did just hear back from James Burton, the Swinsian developer.  He said that incorporating HQP would be a lot of work and that he has other priorities, like creating an iOS remote.

 

Great news that Swinsian is developing an iOS remote app.

 

If the Swinsian iOS app will control the Swinsian Mac app in client/server fashion rather than being completely independent, my scheme would allow the Swinsian iOS app to control HQP.

[Bob Stern]

1 hour ago, shadowlight said:

@Miska, is there away to leverage loopback input options under Mac OS or is it strictly Windows and Linux options?  Previously you had mentioned that adding UPnP support under Windows is difficult due to missing libraries/functionalities but does similar issue exists for MacOS also?

 

I'm not Miska, but I and a couple of others have posted here about using Rogue Amoeba Loopback to pipe the output of a music player app (Idagio, Qobuz, etc) or a web browser to HQP4.  The only limitation is that HQP4 requires manually setting its input sample rate to match the source..

[Bob Stern]

On Mac, a folder or file whose name begins with a dot is hidden.  To open the folder specified by Miska, copy the path "~/.hqplayer" to the clipboard (without the quotes), switch to the Finder, select Go menu > Go to Folder (shift-cmd-G), paste the previously copied path into the provided field (replacing any previous text), then click Go.

 

This is a useful Mac skill.

[Bob Stern]

—

[Bob Stern]

10 hours ago, DancingSea said:

2) Besides Roon, what Mac OS software can play Tidal or Quboz through HQPlayer?

 

4 hours ago, Miska said:

... Maybe some loopback software works too.

 

I can confirm that Rogue Amoeba "Loopback" works.  I use it with Idagio's app, so it must work the same way with apps from Tidal & Qobuz.

[Bob Stern]

9 hours ago, Em2016 said:

So Loopback supports up to PCM192kHz?

 

I don’t know.  Idagio only provides 44.1.  Try it and find out.  Be sure to set Audio MIDI Setup to 192 for the Loopback device.

 

Rogue Amoeba Loopback admittedly is quite expensive at $99, but it has a very generous, flexible trial mode:  It is not limited by number of days.  It replaces the sound with white noise after 30 minutes of actual audio transmission.  Time the program sits idly without capturing audio is not counted toward the 30 minutes.  Each time you relaunch it, you get another 30 minutes.

[Bob Stern]

14 hours ago, ted_b said:

for those of you eschewing DSD512 for a lower DSD256 and its working EC modulators, what specifically is it about the trade off that you love (musically)?

 

I find ASDM7EC at DSD128 (the highest my CPU can go) has much better "purity" than ASDM7 at either DSD128 or DSD256.  (My DAC cannot do DSD512.)

 

Other parameters were Redbook source, poly-sinc-ext2 filter, 19-bit dither.

 

According to OS X Activity Monitor, ASDM7EC at DSD128 loads CPU about 15% more than ASDM7 at DSD256.

[Bob Stern]

1 hour ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I would appreciate to be able to build several libraries to break down the huge bulk. But, as I wrote earlier I can still browse Finder instead and then perform a Search in Client.

 

In Finder I have built : File under Classical, File under Jazz, File under Popular etc and then broke into Middle age, Renaissance, Baroque etc for Classical and inception decade for Jazz and Popular

 

Try using Finder Tags rather than relying entirely on the folder hierarchy.  Tags have the advantage of facilitating multi-dimensional searches.  For example, a given track can be tagged as both Classical and Piano.

 

Of course, a true database permitting searching of multiple fields is even better.  That's why I use iTunes or Swinsian as a music database manager.

[Bob Stern]

Since several of you are having problems with Roon, does Roon install updates automatically without alerting you?  If so, a Roon update may have changed the way Roon streams to HQP.

[Bob Stern]

4.1.1 Desktop is neither better nor worse than 4.0.1 on my 2012 i7 Mac Mini.  

As before, I can do ASDM7-EC and ASDM5-EC  at DSD128 but not 256.  (I can do non-EC versions of these modulators at 256.)

[Bob Stern]

@jimdukey What Energy Saver are you referring to?  System Prefs > Energy Saver?  With one possible exception, its settings only affect when the Mac goes to sleep, which is irrelevant to HQP because the Mac will not sleep while music is playing.  The only exception is there will be a checkbox for "Automatic graphics switching" if your Mac has 2 graphics chips.  If you do have that checkbox, hopefully Jussi can advise whether it affects CUDA offload.

[Bob Stern]

50 minutes ago, Miska said:

[Display sleep] probably doesn't have much effect. But it may reduce amount of noise the computer generates, because GPU doesn't need to work.

 

I hadn’t thought of that!  It may not help, but I changed the display sleep from "never" to 1 min.  Thanks to both Jim and Miska for the idea.

[Bob Stern]

3 hours ago, Kirbyt said:

Hey all, installed trial version of hqplayer4 and when I go to set it up it won’t acknowledge my exasound ASIO drivers and I can only use core audio. Anybody have any ideas why?

I’m running a Mac with an exasound e32 dac using hqplayer 3 with no issues but when I try hq4 I run into this problem.

 

If you search this thread for exaSound, you'll see that Miska confirmed that HQP version 4 is incompatible with the exaSound ASIO driver.  However, I find the sound quality of version 4, especially the new EC filters, via the Core Audio driver exceeds the sound quality of version 3 with exaSound's ASIO driver.

[Bob Stern]

REW (Room EQ Wizard) for creating impulse response for parametric EQ

 

Here are the instructions I created for my own use over a year ago.  Please post any corrections, since the REW user interface may have changed since then:

 

Prefs > EQ > Default Equaliser = Generic

 

Prefs > View > clear “Enable mouse wheel zoom” if using a trackpad.

 

Open EQ window by clicking EQ button (or Tools menu > EQ).

• Gear button: Clear “Invert Filter Responses”.  Click Gear button again to close dialog.

 

Open “EQ Filters” window by clicking “EQ Filters” button (top center of EQ window).

 

Close EQ window.

 

Return to “EQ Filters” window:

• Clear “Always on top”.

• Control = Manual for filter bank #1.

• Type = PK for parametric EQ.

     • enter Q=1.4 for BW = 1 octave.  (0.67 for BW=2.)  http://www.rane.com/note170.html

• Alternatively, Type = HS for high-freq shelf.  dB should be negative to shelve down above specified frequency.

 

• Leave EQ Filters window open to assist in naming IR file afterward.

 

Bring the main REW window to the front by clicking it or cmd-tilde.

 

File menu > Export > Export filters impulse response as WAV.

• Clear “Normalize Peak”.  Mono.  32-bit (integer).  Sample rate 192.

• No minus sign or other non-alphanumeric characters in filename.  Easier to save with default filename and then edit it immediately after saving.

[Bob Stern]

On 11/13/2019 at 1:55 PM, randytsuch said:

If you run hqp embedded, it supports upnp/dlna.  I think vlc also supports upnp also, so something might be possible. 

 

Before Jussi released Desktop version 4 with its streaming input, I tried configuring VLC as a UPNP server to stream to HQP Embedded.  I couldn’t figure out how to get VLC to work as a UPNP server.  If you get it to work, please post your findings.

[Bob Stern]

This reminds me of a minor question about the command line syntax.

 

What does "5" signify in the following command?  Why does it not work if I omit the "5"?

 

--set-transport 5 'audio:default/44100/2'

 

 

[Bob Stern]

1 hour ago, randytsuch said:

I installed Client on my macbook, much nicer program to play local songs with.

But I called up Terminal to run a command line, tried to run hqp-control2 and it couldn't find it.

 

/Applications/HQPlayer4Client.app/Contents/MacOS/hqp-control2

[Bob Stern]

On 12/24/2019 at 8:02 AM, Hensema said:

is dithering needed when 32 bit is selected? I can understand why it’s beneficial when 16 bit is selected. The noise of the dac itself will “dither” on that high bitrates?

 

It's more effective to set the dither bit depth to the resolution of your DAC chip, or even 1 or 2 bits less.  I'm unaware of any DAC chip having better than 20-bit resolution, so setting Bits to 19 seems a reasonable place to start.  See this brief discussion:

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/13649-hqplayers-network-audio-adapter/?do=findComment&comment=952886

 

[Bob Stern]

On 12/25/2019 at 4:14 AM, StreamFidelity said:

It's worth checking the Signalyst site regularly:

 

The Visual Ping service can automatically check a website for changes at an interval you choose.  Checking one website every 12 hours or two websites every 24 hours is free.

https://visualping.io

[Bob Stern]

@ambre:  Try the free demo of Rogue Amoeba "Loopback" to send realtime audio to HQP.  Although it is $100, a hardware solution probably would be more expensive.

[Bob Stern]

On 12/27/2019 at 1:28 PM, Miska said:

If you subscribe to my Twitter feed, or HQPlayer Facebook-group you get notified for updates as they happen

 

Facebook is undermining democracy and facilitating ethnic hatred all over the world.

[Bob Stern]

@Ellsworth

1.  Time Machine must be disabled.  In OS X Prefs > Time Machine, delete any reference to a time machine backup volume and turn off automatic backups.

2.  Try disabling Spotlight indexing with this command in Terminal:

sudo mdutil -ai off

 

If that solves the problem, but you want to use Spotlight, you can try turning it back on with:

sudo mdutil -ai on

 

If turning on Spotlight subsequently interferes w HQP, "App Tamer" from St Clair Software ($15) can be configured to limit Spotlight indexing to less than 1% of CPU.

https://www.stclairsoft.com

 

[Bob Stern]

@Ellsworth I forgot to suggest:  The most basic first step when you have problems with a computer is to restart the computer.  Did you do that?

 

Next, launch Activity Monitor and sort by highest CPU usage to see if there is a process using more than 10% CPU.  Wait 30 seconds for Activity Monitor to settle down before reaching conclusions.  The Spotlight-related processes have names beginning "md" (metadata).