HQ Player

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Outlaw said:

Miska I know you have 8086k.Just wondering if you change anything in Bios.I notice my first 3 cores in turbo boost run at 5 then 4th and 5th run at 4.4 and last core runs at 4.3.Any advantage to sync all cores to 5 or say run all cores at 4.8 ?

 

I just leave it at "optimized default", only RAM is set to XMP profile. Rest is left to the OS (Linux) to deal with...

 

[Outlaw]

I have brought this up before often have to hit play twice for music to play.When i hit play I can cpu load go way up, then fall back down .Hit play again then music starts ?

[Outlaw]

On 9/24/2019 at 3:23 PM, jimdukey said:

Hmmm, hit play twice.

And it's an Issue because...

Its a issue because its not working properly.And I'm sure Miska as the developer would like to know of issues. 

[jimdukey]

Maybe that's just how it works.

Doesn't bother me at all.

[Outlaw]

10 minutes ago, jimdukey said:

Maybe that's just how it works.

Doesn't bother me at all.

 

Well good for you

[Hammer]

48 minutes ago, jimdukey said:

Maybe that's just how it works.

Doesn't bother me at all.

 

I don’t think so since older versions of HQPlayer didn’t require 2 presses.

[Miska]

I still have not seen it. I just tested it again, trying to simulate the environment I've understood this is happening in.

 

Roon is on my Mac Mini

HQPlayer 4 Desktop is on my Windows 10 machine (Windows 10 for Workstations)

NAA is running on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Server

 

When I start playback from Roon, I hit play once and it starts playing. When I switch to some other album and click "Play Now" it starts playing. No need to click play twice.

 

 

Only case where I know the double-play could be needed is when NAA has silently disappeared from HQPlayer which is noticed only once HQPlayer attempts to send something to NAA. However, there is TCP keepalive active on the connection, so it should detect the case in couple of minutes. This silent disappearance usually happens only if you pull the plug on NAA instead of proper shutdown which would properly send connection termination packages to HQPlayer.

 

[dminches]

If I going Roon > HQP > NAA what should my input device settings be?  

[ericuco]

8 minutes ago, dminches said:

If I going Roon > HQP > NAA what should my input device settings be?  

 

@Miska had recommended setting it to "none". I have Roon & HQP 4 Desktop on my music server and HQP NAA on opticalRendu.

 

Input Device Settings > Backend > none

[dminches]

37 minutes ago, ericuco said:

 

@Miska had recommended setting it to "none". I have Roon & HQP 4 Desktop on my music server and HQP NAA on opticalRendu.

 

Input Device Settings > Backend > none

 

Thanks.  That's what mine has been set to as well.

 

[Miska]

Input device is only useful when actually used, which doesn't seem to be very popular (at least yet). For things like digital inputs from S/PDIF or AES/EBU sources. If not used, it is easiest to just set the input backend to None...

 

[LoryWiv]

15 hours ago, Outlaw said:

I have brought this up before often have to hit play twice for music to play.When i hit play I can cpu load go way up, then fall back down .Hit play again then music starts...

This is my experience as well.

[Confused]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

Input device is only useful when actually used, which doesn't seem to be very popular (at least yet). For things like digital inputs from S/PDIF or AES/EBU sources. If not used, it is easiest to just set the input backend to None...

 

I use it regularly!  Albeit as a "virtual soundcard" using VB Audio Hi Fi Cable.  It might be more popular than you think?

[Outlaw]

Had this issue a few months ago and today.Couldn"t get music to play.Went to my nuc with naa and the screen kept rolling saying discovery then dissconnet in a continous loop ?

[Miska]

14 minutes ago, Outlaw said:

Had this issue a few months ago and today.Couldn"t get music to play.Went to my nuc with naa and the screen kept rolling saying discovery then dissconnet in a continous loop ?

 

HQPlayer nowadays tries to reconnect in the background if NAA+DAC connection is lost (well, the drivers don't always tell through the audio API if the DAC has disappeared until you try to use it, hence you may need to press play twice). That loop indicates that either NAA is reporting different name than what HQPlayer is looking for (by default it is now hostname), or the  DAC behind NAA is not responding.

 

For this reason NAA should be preferably built inside a DAC, so that one cannot exist without the other. Like USB interfaces now are. Unfortunately there are still only few DACs with built-in NAA.

 

[pcmchild]

Is there a way (preferable simple) to play video files and get the audio through HQP?

For example VLC. From what I found (April 2017) it could be done via http, but vlc seems to not support HEAD, which would be mandatory.

So is there currently a way to get sound from vlc or any other app that can play video files (mkv, avi, etc)?

Of course I could rip the audio from the video file and create a separate audio only file, but besides requiring dual start and syncing each time, it would not allow to navigate, pause  etc the video file.

I would want to keep HQP hooked to vlc, so it continues to work as I play new video files.

[JTS]

I've been playing with the settings in HQplayer 4.1.1.1 a bit and have found that turning Multicore on puts a greater load on the CPU.

 

I am running Tidal redbook >ROON>HQplayer on an i9-9900K with 64GB RAM with a good old GTX1080. It is currently running stock (no overclock).

 

I did a few tests with a challenging combination - streaming 44.1 Flac from Tidal through Roon to HQplayer ADSM7EC 256/XTR-MP.  No convolution.

 

I did up a little matrix (below) of the results. I cheated a bit on the permutations as I could predict some of the results.

 

Here is what I found with the above filter/modulator combination on my setup:

 

- multicore puts a bigger load on the cpu in my setup/filter and modulator choice.

- adaptive rate is necessary for smooth playback with my setup when converting to DSD 265.

- Cuda offload is necessary for smooth playback.

- best setting for me here seems to be Multicore off, Cuda on, Adaptive on.

 

When I note app crashes in the matrix, HQ player would spend 20-30 silent seconds at the noted cpu level, then reduce it's cpu load, and then crash.

 

I am attaching stills of the test results matrix and my "best" HQplayer settings.

 

I am curious if there are some setting in here that might make things more efficient.

 

 

 

[craighartley]

I thought that CUDA grey meant it was only used for convolution. As you are not using convolution, I don’t understand why the CUDA grey results are different from CUDA off. Miska?

[Miska]

1 hour ago, JTS said:

I've been playing with the settings in HQplayer 4.1.1.1 a bit and have found that turning Multicore on puts a greater load on the CPU.

 

I am running Tidal redbook >ROON>HQplayer on an i9-9900K with 64GB RAM with a good old GTX1080. It is currently running stock (no overclock).

 

I did a few tests with a challenging combination - streaming 44.1 Flac from Tidal through Roon to HQplayer ADSM7EC 256/XTR-MP.  No convolution.

 

I did up a little matrix (below) of the results. I cheated a bit on the permutations as I could predict some of the results.

 

Here is what I found with the above filter/modulator combination on my setup:

 

- multicore puts a bigger load on the cpu in my setup/filter and modulator choice.

- adaptive rate is necessary for smooth playback with my setup when converting to DSD 265.

- Cuda offload is necessary for smooth playback.

- best setting for me here seems to be Multicore off, Cuda on, Adaptive on.

 

When I note app crashes in the matrix, HQ player would spend 20-30 silent seconds at the noted cpu level, then reduce it's cpu load, and then crash.

 

I am attaching stills of the test results matrix and my "best" HQplayer settings.

 

I am curious if there are some setting in here that might make things more efficient.

 

 

 

 

I would be very interested to be able to reproduce the crash. Something is going seriously wrong. I may have not tested the RME driver that way, so you could try setting SDM Pack to "DoP". ADI-2 supports DSD only through DoP, so it is either driver or HQPlayer doing the DoP packing, so you can as well leave it to HQPlayer.

 

Please check that you have latest display drivers and RME driver. I just had a case on my measurement NUC (no HQPlayer there, just measurement software) where half of the applications would crash right after startup when opening a menu or similar. Found out reason being that some Windows 10 update had broken the Intel display driver version I had. Downloading and installing latest Intel display driver fixed the application crashing problem. If you have the i9's built-in GPU active, it may be the case for you too. Same probably applies to Nvidia driver. For example ASIO and OpenGL functionalities come through DLL's, and any crash in a DLL will crash the application.

 

Multicore off, CUDA on is practically same as Multicore grey, CUDA on. Enabling CUDA enforces some multicore features because there is both CPU and GPU in use. CUDA grey means offload convolution, so with your settings, assuming there is no convolution configured, it shouldn't make a difference.

 

46 minutes ago, craighartley said:

I thought that CUDA grey meant it was only used for convolution. As you are not using convolution, I don’t understand why the CUDA grey results are different from CUDA off. Miska?

 

Yes, that's the case. It affects only one filter - sinc-M which shares some code with convolution engine.

 

[JTS]

Hi @Miska

 

I updated my display driver to the latest studio version (431.86), ensured the iGPU is disabled in the bios and have tried setting HQplayer to DoP with the identical results. This last Windows update has caused a few spooky things to happen here - perhaps the HQP crashes are one of them.

 

I'm very happy with the "Cuda ON, Adaptive Rate ON" settings. It's perfectly stable and sounds amazing! 

[dminches]

I am a little confused at to what drives the decision to set ASDM7EC to 256/44.1 or 256/48.

 

[Account Closed]

On 9/27/2019 at 7:37 PM, dminches said:

I am a little confused at to what drives the decision to set ASDM7EC to 256/44.1 or 256/48.

 

Only use 256/48 if your DAC is capable of decoding 48K bases DSD sources( most cannot). Otherwise set it to 256/44.1 and leave 48K unchecked above.

[dminches]

4 minutes ago, bobflood said:

Only use 256/48 if your DAC is capable of decoding 48K bases DSD sources( most cannot). Otherwise set it to 256/44.1 and leave 48K unchecked above.

 

Thanks.  I will have to check the specs on my Lampizator.

 

[jimdukey]

My Lampi Euforia does 48K.

[jimdukey]

Mac Question-

Does using the Energy Saver:

1. Reduce overall power available for Audio,

2. Increase the available power for Audio,

3. Makes no difference.

 

I'm on USB.

 

I don't Hear any difference when using the Power Saver, but would like to know more about it.