HQ Player

[Outlaw]

Problems are back with network audio 3.60.NAA screen just keeps rolling and rolling and wont stop.Guess will have to go back release before this one.

[Outlaw]

Miska any ideas cant get the naa screen from rolling in loop.Shut down pc rebooted.Close and open naa.Nothing works ?

[AnotherSpin]

1 hour ago, Outlaw said:

Miska any ideas cant get the naa screen from rolling in loop.Shut down pc rebooted.Close and open naa.Nothing works ?

 

3.60 NAA image in usage for couple weeks, not a single problem.

[Outlaw]

11 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

3.60 NAA image in usage for couple weeks, not a single problem.

it was working great for me.Got to it to work.Had to open and close the naa numerous times to get it to work 

[Yviena]

Weird but the new 440.xx nvidia drivers seem to increase cpu usage of HQplayer a little from 18-19% to 19-21, and know i get some rare dropouts like once every 5 min.

 

[Yviena]

@Miska Is a noise modulator above 7th order not necessary , or do you maybe have plans to create a 8th/9th order one in the future?

[Miska]

9 hours ago, Yviena said:

@Miska Is a noise modulator above 7th order not necessary , or do you maybe have plans to create a 8th/9th order one in the future?

 

I could create a higher order one, but it would put more pressure on the analog filter too. There are not so many DACs on the market at the moment that would be able to cope with it, for example it would not work with a typical ESS Sabre implementation. But it would work with something like Holo Spring 2 at DSD512/DSD1024 or one of the most recent AKM chips.

 

[Miska]

10 hours ago, Yviena said:

Weird but the new 440.xx nvidia drivers seem to increase cpu usage of HQplayer a little from 18-19% to 19-21, and know i get some rare dropouts like once every 5 min.

 

Those drivers + GPU are pretty much complete black box. They don't publish much details how their drivers behave inside or how the CUDA stuff is exactly dealt with on the GPU.

 

[rando]

Custom drivers/firmware are not unheard of (professional use or gaming).    Along with physical improvements to the heat dissipation capabilities.  Reflashing always comes with risk of bricking, tinkering could have unwanted issues as well.  I suspect the EC thread would better contain discrete GPU specific discussions on wringing out every bit of performance.  

[Yviena]

11 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Those drivers + GPU are pretty much complete black box. They don't publish much details how their drivers behave inside or how the CUDA stuff is exactly dealt with on the GPU.

 

Hmm seems that the increased cpu usage with the the newest gpu drivers happens also without using CUDA, i can confirm it's the drivers as reverting to the older ones the usage goes down again, probably something to report to NVIDIA but i don't know how to capture the issue.

[DancingSea]

I’ve been having peculiar HQP behavior lately.  This is with HQP 3 or 4 with Roon.  I’ve had the HQP volume set at 0 and -6 for forever.  Recently HQP is always showing clipping.  Even if I set the volume at 0 and -18, it always shows clipping.  And I can’t adjust HQP volume to get rid of the red volume know without relaunching HQP.

 

Any ideas @Miska, or anyone else?

[Miska]

4 hours ago, DancingSea said:

I’ve been having peculiar HQP behavior lately.  This is with HQP 3 or 4 with Roon.  I’ve had the HQP volume set at 0 and -6 for forever.  Recently HQP is always showing clipping.  Even if I set the volume at 0 and -18, it always shows clipping.  And I can’t adjust HQP volume to get rid of the red volume know without relaunching HQP.

 

Any ideas @Miska, or anyone else?

 

Do you have Direct SDM enabled in DSDIFF/DSF Settings? Because if you do, it engages fixed volume and you cannot adjust it.

 

However, the fixed about -3 dBFS setting shouldn't cause regular limiting. If you have convolution filter or pipeline matrix enabled, then that could be a source for limiting if filter gain is not compensated or there is mixing without gain compensation.

 

[Miska]

15 hours ago, Yviena said:

Hmm seems that the increased cpu usage with the the newest gpu drivers happens also without using CUDA, i can confirm it's the drivers as reverting to the older ones the usage goes down again, probably something to report to NVIDIA but i don't know how to capture the issue.

 

Probably related to the changes they've made, because they claim up to 23% performance increase in some games with latest driver generation.

 

[rando]

15 hours ago, Yviena said:

Hmm seems that the increased cpu usage with the the newest gpu drivers happens also without using CUDA, i can confirm it's the drivers as reverting to the older ones the usage goes down again, probably something to report to NVIDIA but i don't know how to capture the issue.

 

In light of everything getting security critical updates, frequently.  The longstanding practice of not updating a perfectly functional driver has gotten lost.  If you look through the release notes you'll undoubtedly find your consumer gaming geared graphics card driver was updated to better compliment the latest and greatest video game release.  Those never satisfied with these conditions were at one time able to flash certain cards over to Quadro.  This "game cheat" was shut down as far as I'm aware.  

 

Contract a custom driver?  Test every driver from new for performance and SQ?  Set up a wall of experimental high refresh rate 6K monitors and buy everything on the new release page at STEAM?

 

   

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, rando said:

In light of everything getting security critical updates, frequently.  The longstanding practice of not updating a perfectly functional driver has gotten lost.

 

Not updating driver is not an option with CUDA, because if the driver is not up to date, CUDA doesn't work.

 

8 minutes ago, rando said:

Contract a custom driver?

 

Extremely expensive endeavour... Nvidia wouldn't probably wouldn't even say hello without spending at least half a million.

 

[terzinator]

hi @Miska (or other HQP guru)

 

Trying to figure out lack of signal using PCM to my DAC under certain instances of using HQPlayer with Roon. 

 

1) Mac Mini > Roon > HQPlayer > USB > Topping D50 DAC ... no problem playing PCM. 

 

2) Mac Mini > Roon > HQPlayer > USB > Matrix X-SPIDF 2 > Coax/Toslink > Topping D50 ... works to convert to DSD only. If I try to keep things PCM I get no signal to DAC. I've tried all settings within HQPlayer. If SDM pack is "none," no signal. Must be set to DoP to get signal to DAC. And I must use Sample-Rate Conversion within Roon also to convert to DSD.

 

3) Mac Mini > Roon > [NO HQPLAYER] > USB > Matrix X-SPIDF 2 > Coax/Toslink > Topping D50 ... no problem playing PCM

 

So, the addition of the Matrix X-SPIDF 2 to the chain makes PCM not work through to DAC if HQPlayer is also in chain. 

 

Thoughts?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Miska]

7 hours ago, terzinator said:

2) Mac Mini > Roon > HQPlayer > USB > Matrix X-SPIDF 2 > Coax/Toslink > Topping D50 ... works to convert to DSD only. If I try to keep things PCM I get no signal to DAC. I've tried all settings within HQPlayer. If SDM pack is "none," no signal. Must be set to DoP to get signal to DAC. And I must use Sample-Rate Conversion within Roon also to convert to DSD.

 

So, the addition of the Matrix X-SPIDF 2 to the chain makes PCM not work through to DAC if HQPlayer is also in chain. 

 

What are your settings for HQPlayer output? I assume it also works if you convert to DSD in HQPlayer?

 

[terzinator]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

 

What are your settings for HQPlayer output? I assume it also works if you convert to DSD in HQPlayer?

 

I've attached the window(s) from HQPlayer. If I go through the Matrix X-SPIDF2, DSD must be selected in HQPlayer AND Sample Rate Conversion must be used to convert to DSD in Roon, or I get no signal from the DAC. 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, terzinator said:

I've attached the window(s) from HQPlayer. If I go through the Matrix X-SPIDF2, DSD must be selected in HQPlayer AND Sample Rate Conversion must be used to convert to DSD in Roon, or I get no signal from the DAC. 

 

I don't know what output rate you have set in the main window since it is behind the dialog, but since you are asking for 1.5 MHz PCM and 49 MHz DSD, if the driver exposes any rates higher than 192k PCM which is maximum for S/PDIF, this explains why it won't work. Likely you have "Direct SDM" enabled in DSDIFF/DSF Settings  dialog and you are asking Roon to convert to DSD64 which explains why that would work.

 

[terzinator]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

, if the driver exposes any rates higher than 192k PCM which is maximum for S/PDIF, this explains why it won't work. 

 

 

ah, interesting. Ok, I will test that. THANK YOU!

 

For the sake of argument, is 192k PCM essentially equal to or better than DSD64 with respect to sound quality. (I'm sure I could find where I've read this if needed!) 

 

I think the question for me comes with upsampling, and whether it makes any difference at all to upsample to DSD from PCM. 

[mrvco]

@Miska

 

I just wiped my Mac Mini and did a clean install of Catalina.  I have HQ Player installed (4.1.1), but I'm not able to apply the xml registration file.  I've tried Help--> Register and selecting hqplayer3-lx-key.xml from a local directory, but it remains in "registered: EVALUATION" mode after restarting HQP.  I've also tried dragging and dropping the XML on to the HQP UI, but that doesn't work either.

 

I purchased and received this license key on November 28, 2015.

 

Thanks!

Mike

[Outlaw]

24 minutes ago, mrvco said:

@Miska

 

I just wiped my Mac Mini and did a clean install of Catalina.  I have HQ Player installed (4.1.1), but I'm not able to apply the xml registration file.  I've tried Help--> Register and selecting hqplayer3-lx-key.xml from a local directory, but it remains in "registered: EVALUATION" mode after restarting HQP.  I've also tried dragging and dropping the XML on to the HQP UI, but that doesn't work either.

 

I purchased and received this license key on November 28, 2015.

 

Thanks!

Mike

Hqplayer 4 is a upgrade that has to be purchased.Hqplaer key for 3 wont work.

[Miska]

5 hours ago, terzinator said:

For the sake of argument, is 192k PCM essentially equal to or better than DSD64 with respect to sound quality. (I'm sure I could find where I've read this if needed!) 

 

Not necessarily. Although most DACs these days do at least DSD256 or more. DSD64 is mostly remnant from SACD.

 

[randytsuch]

55 minutes ago, Outlaw said:

Hqplayer 4 is a upgrade that has to be purchased.Hqplaer key for 3 wont work.

 

And an older mac likely won't be able to do EC mods except at low rates if you're lucky.  Takes a high horsepower current gen I7 or I9.

I'd stick with 3 until you are ready to upgrade the mac mini.

[Miska]

8 minutes ago, randytsuch said:

And an older mac likely won't be able to do EC mods except at low rates if you're lucky.  Takes a high horsepower current gen I7 or I9.

I'd stick with 3 until you are ready to upgrade the mac mini.

 

Using v4 doesn't mean that you'd have to use EC modulators...