HQ Player

[luisma]

2 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

It is option in HQPlayer engine, goes together with volume control. But it is not related to configuration.

 

I tried the remote control from roon and there are no options for phase invertion, could this be added to HQPe @Miska

 I am almost sure since you did not included this already you must have a reason but would like to ask regardless

[ray-dude]

Since you're a Roon user, as a workaround perhaps use Roon DSP to do the inversion? (under DSP settings -> Speaker Setup)

[Miska]

10 minutes ago, luisma said:

I tried the remote control from roon and there are no options for phase invertion, could this be added to HQPe @Miska

 I am almost sure since you did not included this already you must have a reason but would like to ask regardless

 

You can control it with "hqp-control2 hostname --set-invert 1" (0 disables). As I said, Client doesn't have this functionality yet.

 

I have no control over what parts of the control API Roon supports. At the moment Roon supports very small subset of the available functionality. I would really hope that they would for example support the HQPlayer auto-discovery instead of having to enter hostname or IP address of HQPlayer instance. But I guess they don't have much interest working on this area apart from keeping it functional.

 

P.S. You can use "hqp-control2 --discover" to find address(es) of HQPlayer instance(s).

 

[DancingSea]

21 hours ago, Yviena said:

It depends ASR actually measured it, and it objectively performs worse due to additional ground path/60hz mains hum.

 

ASR’s measurements do not always equate to whether or not something sounds better.  I could comment further, but do not want to open up an exhaustive ASR debate.   I’ve read many user reviews of the Matrix X-SPDIF 2, and nearly all say a LPS improves the sound over USB power.  Of course, everyone’s mileage may vary....

[DancingSea]

Just wanted to point out that I stumbled over to Jussi’s website and noticed he’s having a Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale of 15% off new HQP 4 licenses, and 25% off upgrade licenses.  It runs midnight to midnight UTC time each day.

[flowerpot]

Hi Miska,

 

I am buying my PC parts this weekend (black Friday sales), I could not get the hardware fingerprint until my parts arrived. Any possibility to get the embedded licence now to enjoy the black Friday sale ? 

[Miska]

7 hours ago, DancingSea said:

ASR’s measurements do not always equate to whether or not something sounds better.  I could comment further, but do not want to open up an exhaustive ASR debate.   I’ve read many user reviews of the Matrix X-SPDIF 2, and nearly all say a LPS improves the sound over USB power.  Of course, everyone’s mileage may vary....

 

How the LPS (or SMPS) is built also matters quite a lot. Regarding the additional ground path and mains hum, it depends for example whether the PSU is earthed through 3-pin mains socket, or if it's floating with 2-pin mains socket. These ground paths can be problematic. Most desktop computers and many laptops have 3-pin mains socket, examples being iMac, Apple and Lenovo laptops. While some other don't, examples being NUC, Fujitsu and Acer laptops. Which one is better depends on overall ground structure of the entire system. This matters because USB cable always connects ground of the host and device (iFi has USB ground breakers, but that's another matter).

 

I would expect X-SPDIF and other devices have quite a bit of PSU input filtering and regulation, so the PSU quality shouldn't matter so much from that perspective.

 

When I want to lift USB ground, I use NAAs. Since normal Ethernet through unshielded UTP-cable provides galvanic isolation (*) and cuts ground connection, this leaves earth connections up to NAA and connected devices. For NAA I use medical grade floating SMPS, so it is not earthed either and allows clean USB power. It could be a floating LPS as well. NAA's like the UP Gateway, Rendu and sMS-200 provide possibility for this. And AFAIK, Rendu and sMS also put some extra effort into clean USB power delivery (UP feeds it through straight from the PSU).

 

 

*) Only corner case being if PoE is being used, then it depends on hardware implementation.

 

[Ropet]

@MiskaMaybe this has been covered, but I don find it. I read from time to time "your laptop is not fast enough" or "you need a more powerful laptop".

 

Could you please indicate what is a powerful laptop? Minimum recommended requirement for processor, RAM and clock frequence in order to run software like EQPlayer 4.

 

Besides specications as such they should not run loud. Not easy equation always.

[rickca]

@Miska if I buy HQPlayer Desktop 4 for Windows and later decide to run HQPlayer Embedded on Linux instead, is there any discount on HQPe?

[Luca72c]

10 hours ago, DancingSea said:

Just wanted to point out that I stumbled over to Jussi’s website and noticed he’s having a Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale of 15% off new HQP 4 licenses, and 25% off upgrade licenses.  It runs midnight to midnight UTC time each day.

 

Where did you see that? I can't find any discount on www.signalyst.com...

[rickca]

4 minutes ago, Luca72c said:

 

Where did you see that? I can't find any discount on www.signalyst.com...

You need to enter coupon code cyber19 according to signalyst.com website.

[Luca72c]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

You need to enter coupon code cyber19 according to signalyst.com website.

 

Thank you, i didn't notice the news... 

[Solstice380]

Is the Upgrade discount greater than the sale? TIA

[luisma]

On 11/28/2019 at 2:46 AM, Miska said:

DAC-UP ports on Gigabyte motherboards give pretty clean USB power (designed to do so)... But another way to deal with it is suitable NAA.

 

Hello, what are your thoughts on USB 3.2? since it doubles again the speed the EMI/RFI and shielding specs should be improved as well I think, seems the new NUC10 has it, it might not be as good as current DAC-UP ports but who knows.

[luisma]

Answering my own question about phase inversion it is included already in Roon

[Miska]

3 hours ago, luisma said:

Answering my own question about phase inversion it is included already in Roon

 

That is not really related to HQPlayer...

 

You can also do inversion per channel in HQPlayer by using matrix and setting negative linear gain...

 

[Miska]

4 hours ago, luisma said:

Hello, what are your thoughts on USB 3.2? since it doubles again the speed the EMI/RFI and shielding specs should be improved as well I think, seems the new NUC10 has it, it might not be as good as current DAC-UP ports but who knows.

 

The speed is not that useful for DACs. DAC-UP ports are about providing good USB power, not really related to speed. Although the newer DAC-UP2 ports are USB 3.1.

[Miska]

7 hours ago, rickca said:

@Miska if I buy HQPlayer Desktop 4 for Windows and later decide to run HQPlayer Embedded on Linux instead, is there any discount on HQPe?

 

No, Desktop, Embedded and Pro are three separate products. No discounts moving between the three...

 

[Account Closed]

On 11/28/2019 at 1:59 PM, bobflood said:

Hi Jussi,

 

I have a question. I can't seem to get HQP to work at 1.536 PCM with my Spring 2. The Spring 2 shows 1.536 but the sound is garbled. When I look at the Windows Task Manager (Windows 10/64/1909) I am only seeing 65 Mbps output to the Spring 2 (should be 98 Mbps). It works fine at 768 PCM (showing 49 Mbps output). I am using a Sonore ultraRendu running the NAA. I have no problem with DSD 512 (using the right filter/modulator combo) or DSD 256. Any ideas? 

Sorry, I forgot to put the @Miska header so I don't know if you saw this question. If you did please excuse my omission.  Thanks

[Yviena]

@Miska Do you have any theories as to why SQ can be better via USB-I2S boxes even if objectively jitter is worse?

 

Also on another note, which filter in HQP is closest to the filter that ESS names Corrected Minimum Phase Fast?

[dctom]

Recently purchased HQplayer and enjoying the sound quality - however when I load a very large playlist ,although it plays fine, if  go into the settings menu it freezes. Wondered if anyone else had experienced this.

[Account Closed]

2 hours ago, Yviena said:

@Miska Do you have any theories as to why SQ can be better via USB-I2S boxes even if objectively jitter is worse?

 

Also on another note, which filter in HQP is closest to the filter that ESS names Corrected Minimum Phase Fast?

I would be curious to hear Jussi's response on this as well but having tried it both ways, my guess is that the USB implementation in many DACs is very poor. A very good modern USB input should and in my case does beat the USB-I2S route.

[Yviena]

58 minutes ago, bobflood said:

I would be curious to hear Jussi's response on this as well but having tried it both ways, my guess is that the USB implementation in many DACs is very poor. A very good modern USB input should and in my case does beat the USB-I2S route.

The weird thing is people still report improvements even if the usb input measures excellent already

[zerung]

23 hours ago, DancingSea said:

Just wanted to point out that I stumbled over to Jussi’s website and noticed he’s having a Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale of 15% off new HQP 4 licenses, and 25% off upgrade licenses.  It runs midnight to midnight UTC time each day.

Do you know how to use this? 
I can only input one...i.e. the upgrade redeem coupon and not the black19 together, implying get only one of the discount....

thanks for any help....

 

Please ignore. Managed this. Needed to reset the cart and apply the generated upgrade code instead of the black19

[Account Closed]

58 minutes ago, Yviena said:

The weird thing is people still report improvements even if the usb input measures excellent already

True so there must be something going on. But, in the end the separate I2S box approach merely takes what should go on inside the DAC and moves it outside in an attempt to do it better.