HQ Player

[dctom]

Yes it is the desktop of hqp4 I am using.

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, dctom said:

Yes it is the desktop of hqp4 I am using.

 

You could enable and check the HQPlayer log file. If you are getting "gvfs://" URL links, those won't work...

 

[jimdukey]

Thanks, Miska!

No obvious audio problems with ASDM7EC, so I'm staying with it and Polysinc-Long-LP.

[JTS]

On 11/14/2019 at 2:54 AM, Miska said:

 

Issue is multicast routing and discovery.

 

Understood. As I run my 10GigE connection for storage I had not choice but figure out a workaround. The Interface Metric does the trick here with no apparent issues with my regular LAN, HQplayer and infact resolved some annoying issues with my render managers (C4D team render and Smedge). I understand there are more complicated issues with multicast, but in my very humble experience, the Interface Metric has been helpful in getting everything working.

[Miska]

12 minutes ago, JTS said:

Understood. As I run my 10GigE connection for storage I had not choice but figure out a workaround. The Interface Metric does the trick here with no apparent issues with my regular LAN, HQplayer and infact resolved some annoying issues with my render managers (C4D team render and Smedge). I understand there are more complicated issues with multicast, but in my very humble experience, the Interface Metric has been helpful in getting everything working.

 

10 Gbps is certainly enough for both storage and NAA stream which in most cases is at most 50 Mbps? If you are playing RedBook FLAC from storage it is usually below 1 Mbps. SATA interface is theoretically max 6 Gbps, so that still leaves 4 Gbps spare.

 

[juanitox]

Hi, Miska  great job with the CPU power rediuction ,   now with 4.2.1 i can use  Closed form fast in  x512 DSD with my I6700K processor ( no GPU)   thing i couldn't do before .. 👍

[LoryWiv]

33 minutes ago, juanitox said:

Hi, Miska  great job with the CPU power rediuction ,   now with 4.2.1 i can use  Closed form fast in  x512 DSD with my I6700K processor ( no GPU)   thing i couldn't do before .. 👍

Nice, @juanitoxWhat modulator are using to achieve this result?

[juanitox]

with hte T+A DSD DAC8  my preferate are still the 5 modulators ,   DSD5EC for DSD256   and DSD5v2x256 for DSD512 , but this is purely subjective .😙

[Confused]

On 11/10/2019 at 10:23 AM, Confused said:

I have had a similar problem, the various "audio:default" options disappeared after I updated HQPlayer last weekend.  This was a new install on a replacement PC.  As a simple workaround, I simply hand typed in "audio:default/44100/2" and the functionality reappeared, in terms of music playing at last.  This morning I have updated to 4.2.0 and have the same issue.

 

Not a big deal, thanks to the simple workaround, but hopefully this will be fixed in a future update.

Fixed in 4.2.1, works perfectly now.  Thanks @Miska

[LoryWiv]

6 hours ago, juanitox said:

with hte T+A DSD DAC8  my preferate are still the 5 modulators ,   DSD5EC for DSD256   and DSD5v2x256 for DSD512 , but this is purely subjective .😙

Impressive that you can run DSD256 with EC modulator with that i6700i without stuttering. What cpu utilization percent is required?

[Miska]

17 minutes ago, LoryWiv said:

Impressive that you can run DSD256 with EC modulator with that i6700i without stuttering. What cpu utilization percent is required?

 

6700K is close to 7700K, so pretty high frequency quad-core. Since EC modulators consume pretty much two of the cores completely, it somewhat limits filter options. But that is not so demanding for DSD256 (DSD512 is twice the load).

[juanitox]

works perfectly fine, the only trick is to  uninstall all the useless software who can slow down your proc ( fidelizer, AO ;etc..)  , a Cl😉ean windows in performance mode and that's all folks

[juanitox]

1 minute ago, juanitox said:

 

 

2 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

6700K is close to 7700K, so pretty high frequency quad-core. Since EC modulators consume pretty much two of the cores completely, it somewhat limits filter options. But that is not so demanding for DSD256 (DSD512 is twice the load).

 

running it at 4.27ghz in performance mode helps too..

[Outlaw]

2 hours ago, juanitox said:

works perfectly fine, the only trick is to  uninstall all the useless software who can slow down your proc ( fidelizer, AO ;etc..)  , a Cl😉ean windows in performance mode and that's all folks

We’re you using Fidelizer and AO .How did you determine it was slowing down your PC.

[juanitox]

1 hour ago, Outlaw said:

We’re you using Fidelizer and AO .How did you determine it was slowing down your PC.

 

simple ,  with them EC modulators stutter with HQP and without it works fine

[LoryWiv]

After noting @juanitox's results decided to try to get at least DSD256 w/an EC modulator, and to my happy surprise running HQ Player 4.21 with DSD5EC and polysinc-mp-2s not only do I get stutter free playback on my i7 7700 @ 4.20 Ghz with cpu utilization under 25% (generally where I like to keep it to allow other programs to run smoothly while I listen to music), but the sound quality is excellent! @Miskaare there substantial differences between DSD5EC, ASDM5EC and ASDM7EC? The latter seem more demanding of my CPU and I can't really discern an audible advantage, so just curious. I do appreciate the 4.21 update and look forward to even better cpu efficiencies with future releases when your time permits. Thanks!

[Miska]

Some notes about using realtime input feature.

 

On both macOS and Windows (if using WASAPI), you need to grant HQPlayer access rights to audio inputs first. This includes any audio input, including loopback software. Although it is represented as "microphone access" by the OS. Otherwise audio input will either fail (Windows) or just produce silence (macOS).

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, when there is control for clock source, select your actual audio source as the clock source, this screenshot is with RME HDSPe AIO card when using optical link from Google Chromecast Audio:

[StreamFidelity]

17 hours ago, juanitox said:

simple ,  with them EC modulators stutter with HQP and without it works fine

 

Cause and effect is always such a thing. What I can confirm is that I removed Fidelizer Pro from my audio PC due to latency issues. I think it has something to do with Fidelizer trying to tweak the cores. HQPlayer also accesses the cores when Multicore DSP is enabled.

 

I can fully recommend Audiophile Optimizer (AO) Version 3, however.

 

Unfortunately, I still had to deactivate manually about 20 useless services under Windows 10 Pro. There are only about 60 processes left.

[brother love]

To add to @juanitox praise of 4.2.1 with i7-6700k...

 

4.2.1 now allows my i7-6700k music server to use poly-sinc-ext2 ASDM7EC upsampled to 48k x DSD256 (prior versions resulted in drop-out/ stuttering in 30- 40 sec. intervals requiring stable max upsampling set to 44.1k x DSD256). CPU useage increased from 31% to 35% & max temp is 61C. Rock soild after 40 min. continuous play (so long as no other programs are operated in Ubuntu 18.04 other than Psensor or Activity Monitor).

 

This improvement pushed me from Evaluation status to Purchase/ upgrade from Desktop v3 to v4 today.  Well done Jussi ! Another convert 😎

[Yviena]

Seems that 3700x can also do EC7 DSD256 with only 4 SMT threads selected when corepinning is disabled with 4.2.1

[pcmchild]

On 11/13/2019 at 10:03 PM, Miska said:

 

Some loopback software may work with the input feature. Another alternative is to use two computers or multiple audio interfaces and use the same input feature, but through S/PDIF.

 

HQPlayer has large buffers, so there is lot of delay. But it should be able to adjust lipsync delay enough in VLC. HQPlayer is not really designed for video use cases, so YMMV...

 

 

Thanks. After some days of searches and trials, I got it to work using VB-Audio loopback SW.

I will try it by HW as well. My motherboard has internal connectors of SPDIF OUT and SPDIF IN. I will get a cable to connect these together, so maybe I can connect HQP to SPDIF IN and VLC to SPIF OUT. But I think the fixed sample rate issue is the same.

I used "audio:default/48000/2", which obviously requires manual configuration each time source sample rate changes, which not practical at all.

Any possibility of HQP not having fixed sample rate input in the future?

In the manual you mention "input:" scheme, I could not find syntax for that. Does it include sample rate as well?

In fact I could not find syntax for "audio:" scheme as well, just used the examples in the Quick Start Guide (picture).

One ideal solution would be HQP creating a  HQP audio device that other apps could output into. And that device would allow a broad range of sample rates. 

[pcmchild]

On 11/13/2019 at 9:55 PM, randytsuch said:

If you run hqp embedded, it supports upnp/dlna.  I think vlc also supports upnp also, so something might be possible.  I use mconnect as my upnp client app, but I only play audio files through it, never tried video.

You can make a usb stick with hqp embedded and try it out.  Make a bootable stick, then boot from the stick and you'll have hqp embedded running.

 

Thanks. I am running HQP Desktop within Windows 7. I may try embedded. With the upnp solution you are using, do you also have to manually configure the sample rate of the source each time it changes? 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, pcmchild said:

Any possibility of HQP not having fixed sample rate input in the future?

In the manual you mention "input:" scheme, I could not find syntax for that. Does it include sample rate as well?

 

There is support for automatic switching, but it is not possible with WASAPI backend, because WASAPI in itself doesn't support slaved sample rates. ASIO does, but not all hardware/drivers support it though. For example USB Audio Class standard in itself doesn't support such fucntionality, but always assumes that computer explicitly sets some rate.

 

On Linux automatic switching works with RME ADI-2, because I've added support for the necessary custom controls to the driver.

 

Also DSD using DoP is supported.

 

5 hours ago, pcmchild said:

I used "audio:default/48000/2", which obviously requires manual configuration each time source sample rate changes, which not practical at all.

In fact I could not find syntax for "audio:" scheme as well, just used the examples in the Quick Start Guide (picture).

 

It is audio:<device>/[samplerate]/[channels]/[format]

Where "format" is "pcm", "sdm" or "auto". "device" can be "default" which points to unnamed default <input> element in the configuration. You can have multiple.

 

5 hours ago, pcmchild said:

One ideal solution would be HQP creating a  HQP audio device that other apps could output into.

 

There's already software for that available, so I didn't want to start duplicate work of making yet another loopback driver.

 

5 hours ago, pcmchild said:

And that device would allow a broad range of sample rates.

 

Problems are more due to restrictions of OS audio APIs, which is not solvable that way. They usually expect that application would know which sample rate it wants to use. Which is not the case here.

 

Only ASIO has designed in standard provisions for that, due to it's pro-audio background where it is not uncommon that rates are set manually to some fixed value from hardware itself (like Word Clock unit).

 

[Yviena]

@Miska what ethernet cable do you recommend for a NAA, i'm currently unsure if my existing cable is UTP or STP, would fibre ethernet converter also help, or is that overkill?

[Rune]

37 minutes ago, Yviena said:

@Miska what ethernet cable do you recommend for a NAA, i'm currently unsure if my existing cable is UTP or STP, would fibre ethernet converter also help, or is that overkill?

If you have >=5e then there is no need to "upgrade"

 

If you have problems it is most likely not your network cables.