HQ Player

[StreamFidelity]

Hi Mario,

 

here you hang around. 😎

 

2 hours ago, Holzohr said:

Or the SDV 3100 HV. Now with your Monos you could sell the HV amp.

 

This is unfortunately too expensive for me. But Miska wrote that the HQPlayer volume control with DSD does'nt reduze any bits. Maybe one of the reasons why this sounds so good. Maybe I don't need a preamp anymore. 😁

 

bye Gabriel

[randytsuch]

28 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

Hi Mario,

 

here you hang around. 😎

 

 

This is unfortunately too expensive for me. But Miska wrote that the HQPlayer volume control with DSD does'nt reduze any bits. Maybe one of the reasons why this sounds so good. Maybe I don't need a preamp anymore. 😁

 

bye Gabriel

My "preamp" is a dact attenuator which is built into my amp.

So I have three ways to control volume, the dact, HQP and my Ian Canada ESS dac.

 

I found that it sounds best leaving the dact at full volume, using ESS or HQP to control volume.  I think I liked HQP volume control a little better than ESS, but it was close.  I use a combination of both, ESS is more convenient because I can use a normal apple remote, so I use ESS for fine volume control and HQP for course.

 

Randy

[Yviena]

@Miska does the volume control in DSD  mode decrease the signal level or does it reduce the volume via another method, I kind of want to avoid the ESS IMD hump that starts around -16dbfs

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Yviena said:

@Miska does the volume control in DSD  mode decrease the signal level or does it reduce the volume via another method, I kind of want to avoid the ESS IMD hump that starts around -16dbfs

 

There's no way to completely avoid the hump, due to way ESS works even with DSD. But what I've measured, running at DSD512 seems to lessen such behavior somewhat.

 

[Holzohr]

22 hours ago, satbaba said:

Is it useful to use Fidelizer or AudiophileOptimizer when playing Microrendu + NAA + Hqplayer3

 

Depends on the Windows version you are using. In Windows Server (core) AO makes Windows "ready" for HQPlayer (qwave thing) and also you can autostart the HQPlayer by shell replacement (or by Fidelizer).

[satbaba]

1 hour ago, Holzohr said:

 

Kullanmakta olduğunuz Windows sürümüne göre değişir. Windows Server'da (çekirdek) AO, Windows'u HQPlayer için "hazır" yapar (qwave şeyi) ve ayrıca HQPlayer'ı kabuk değiştirme (veya Fidelizer) ile otomatik olarak başlatabilirsiniz.

windows 10 pro

[Xoverman]

Last weekend I made a strange discovery that I don’t understand.
In HQPlayer I up sample everything to DSD512. My DAC is a “L.K.S Audio MH-DA004 Dual ES9038pro”.  Even though I use DSD as my output format changing the DAC Bit depth in HQPlayer has influence in soundstage depth. How can that be ?

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Xoverman said:

Last weekend I made a strange discovery that I don’t understand.
In HQPlayer I up sample everything to DSD512. My DAC is a “L.K.S Audio MH-DA004 Dual ES9038pro”.  Even though I use DSD as my output format changing the DAC Bit depth in HQPlayer has influence in soundstage depth. How can that be ?

 

That value is only used for PCM output mode. It has no relevance for DSD and is not used in any way in that scope. It is just four bytes of data sitting untouched in the memory.

 

There is one exception though, depending on used backend; if you are using DoP, some few DACs expose both 24- and 32-bit endpoints over USB. In this case, you can force the data output to either one of these two. (default would be to use 32-bit one)

 

[Xoverman]

@Miska

I know, that’s what makes it so strange. But Soundstage is defiantly deeper when I select 24 bit then when I use 32bit . An audiophile friend of mine hears the effect to.

[Miska]

26 minutes ago, Xoverman said:

@Miska

 

I know, that’s what makes it so strange. But Soundstage is defiantly deeper when I select 24 bit then when I use 32bit . An audiophile friend of mine hears the effect to.

 

With ASIO backend it won't make a difference, or when using native DSD on ALSA. With DoP it depends (and requires relatively recent HQPlayer version)...

 

With DoP, if 24-bit gets enabled, it burns some extra CPU time and possibly some MCU time at the DAC too because it is inefficient format, but less data to transfer over USB (3 bytes of data per sample instead of 4).

 

[Xoverman]

@Miska

I don’t think I’m doing  DoP. I’m sending DSD512 to my Singxer-SU1 and then with HDMI to my LKS DAC. I use Singxer ASIO backend.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Xoverman said:

@Miska

I don’t think I’m doing  DoP. I’m sending DSD512 to my Singxer-SU1 and then with HDMI to my LKS DAC. I use Singxer ASIO backend.

 

Yes, for ASIO it doesn't matter because ASIO has a separate byte-based format for DSD. And even for PCM, there's just single sample format dictated by the driver.

 

So in your case, the DAC Bits setting is not used for anything when output is DSD. It doesn't come even close to the code being executed.

 

[rickca]

@Miska I realize DAC bits is just for PCM.  I think you recommended setting DAC bits to 20 to @Superdad for his Holo Spring and he confirmed that it improved sound quality.  With my Nu Audio card, you said just leave it at default.

 

So I'd like to understand under what conditions should DAC bits be set to a specific value and how do you determine the appropriate value?

[ted_b]

2 hours ago, Xoverman said:

@Miska

I don’t think I’m doing  DoP. I’m sending DSD512 to my Singxer-SU1 and then with HDMI to my LKS DAC. I use Singxer ASIO backend.

 

Xoverman, is this strange soundstage behavior happening on all source material (i.e does it happen on DSD->DSD512) or just PCM content being upsampled?

[Xoverman]

7 minutes ago, ted_b said:

Xoverman, is this strange soundstage behavior happening on all source material (i.e does it happen on DSD->DSD512) or just PCM content being upsampled?

Actually at the moment with my setup, DSD sounds the best when I bypass processing in HQP.             For PCM Playback I even went back to foobar2000. Of course the mid’s are not so refined as if I would use HQP, but Soundstage depth is much better. There’s something not working correct for me at the moment with HQP. And it has to do with small signal resolution. I don’t even up sample in Foobar.
When I use DSP up sampling in Foobar depth and spatial cues suffer again.
Maybe its imported to know, that my DAC is very highly tweaked. It has very very high resolution.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

@Miska I realize DAC bits is just for PCM.  I think you recommended setting DAC bits to 20 to @Superdad for his Holo Spring and he confirmed that it improved sound quality.  With my Nu Audio card, you said just leave it at default.

 

So I'd like to understand under what conditions should DAC bits be set to a specific value and how do you determine the appropriate value?

 

Holo Spring has both R2R PCM section, and DSD section. When using the R2R PCM section like he does, it is important to only utilize linear part of the DAC. This can be measured with a linearity sweep, or alternatively testing low level linearity at different word lengths to determine the optimal point.

 

When sending PCM to a SDM DAC (like ESS, AKM, TI, Wolfson or Cirrus Logic), it is important to send data that utilizes full data precision it can accept, but not more or less. This is because the data goes through the on-chip DSP processing. Most of the new chips accept 32-bit data, while older accept only 24-bit.

 

Another case is when the data ends up being sent through S/PDIF or AES/EBU which limits resolution to maximum 24-bit, although many USB-to-S/PDIF interfaces take in 32-bit data over USB and claim 32-bit resolution. And even if they do report the actual resolution too, it gets hidden by the driver - some time ago I added this capability to the Linux driver which was also hiding it (for example Holo Spring says it has 24-bit resolution while it takes in 32-bit samples). In addition, since S/PDIF is unidirectional, there is no way for software to determine what kind of DAC is behind the S/PDIF link. For example it could be some old DAC chip with 16-bit resolution. In such cases it is important to set the actual resolution.

 

In addition there are some cases like Holo Spring 2 + macOS, where if you want to use the 32x PCM rates, you need to set DAC bits to 16. Otherwise it won't work.

 

The AKM DAC chip on Nu Audio card understands 32-bit data, so that is best for it's DSP processing (in case you for some strange reason want to send PCM there).

 

[Miska]

51 minutes ago, Xoverman said:

There’s something not working correct for me at the moment with HQP. And it has to do with small signal resolution. I don’t even up sample in Foobar.
When I use DSP up sampling in Foobar depth and spatial cues suffer again.
Maybe its imported to know, that my DAC is very highly tweaked. It has very very high resolution.

 

Maybe something is going wrong in the DAC. Or then you just like the sound of DSP algorithms in ESS...

 

Would be good to hook the DAC to a measurement bench and see what is going on.

[StreamFidelity]

3 hours ago, Xoverman said:

I’m sending DSD512 to my Singxer-SU1 and then with HDMI to my LKS DAC.

 

I try to avoid such additional boxes and prefer direct connections. Have you tried it with a direct USB connection and if so, since the problems continue?

 

HDMI is a complex interface and the cable must be of good quality in my opinion. Have you ever tried another cable?

[Miska]

So far I have not seen a single measurement where external box with I2S would improve technical performance, only cases where it gets worse...

 

[Xoverman]

@Miska

Shame on me.  My HQPLAYER is set to DoP. I just came home and checked. 

I will test how it  behaves with native DSD on Saturday. Bit resolution was set to 24 bit. 24bit sounded the best.

But how can that alter the Sound?

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Xoverman said:

@Miska

Shame on me.  My HQPLAYER is set to DoP. I just came home and checked. 

I will test how it  behaves with native DSD on Saturday. Bit resolution was set to 24 bit. 24bit sounded the best.

But how can that alter the Sound?

 

With ASIO backend it cannot for DSD output, since it is not used for anything... With ASIO backend it applies only to PCM output mode.

 

[ted_b]

1 hour ago, Xoverman said:

@Miska

Shame on me.  My HQPLAYER is set to DoP. I just came home and checked. 

I will test how it  behaves with native DSD on Saturday. Bit resolution was set to 24 bit. 24bit sounded the best.

But how can that alter the Sound?

Wow you can get to DSD512 via DoP?  Can it do 1.5mhz PCM?

[AudioXP]

On 11/25/2019 at 1:53 PM, Miska said:

 

If you are using DSD output, there are no bits to be lost. Volume control doesn't directly affect CPU load, only in case you are hitting the limiter at higher settings.

 

 

Does this suggest that when upsampling to PCM there will be losses because of volume control?

[DancingSea]

10 hours ago, Miska said:

So far I have not seen a single measurement where external box with I2S would improve technical performance, only cases where it gets worse...

 

This may be DAC dependent.  DirectStream Dacs seem to have an affinity for I2S.  There’s a massive thread on the PSA forums where many many DS owners have seen improvements by using a Matrix Audio X-SPDIF 2 to convert usb to I2S.  

[ted_b]

Although my system is still down from the move I have documented profusely on this site (esp Holo dac review) that I, also, found going through the Singxer to be a big improvement sonically. Maybe I like distortion but I don’t think so 😀. It must be something we aren’t measuring?  Dunno. Btw this was with the Holo’s first stock USB interface, nothing upgraded at that time.