HQ Player

[rickca]

8 hours ago, Yviena said:

The new topping D90 seems interesting I asked their customer support if the modulator bypass mode is implemented, and they said yes in DAC only mode, idk how it will sound though as their products has always been a little mediocre.

Interesting in the middle of this page https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-with-volume/topping-d90-balanced-dac-ak4499-xmos-xu208-i2s-32bit-768khz-dsd512-bluetooth-50-black-p-14281.html

there is an ASR logo with the text 

Topping D90 measurements by Audio Science Review

 

I don't follow ASR, but I wondered whether other products ASR has measured have this logo on the product page.  Has Topping paid ASR for this plug (Amir monetizing ASR), or is this an ASR advertisement?

 

 

[rickca]

Other new AK4499 DACs are

Monolith by Monoprice Liquid Platinum Balanced DAC by Alex Cavalli

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=38966

 

Gustard DAC-A22

https://shenzhenaudio.com/products/pre-order-gustard-dac-a22-dac-dual-ak4499-xmos-solution-native-balanced-decoder

 

@Miska can the Nu Audio card (AK4493) be used in bypass mode?

[jimdukey]

I'm waiting for the new ADI -2 fs Dac, around $1250.

[Miska]

2 minutes ago, Yviena said:

Hmm seems that the D90 DAC has been measured on ASR, the measurements doesn't look bad excluding the clock management and less than 20 bit linearity, any thoughts about acquiring one to measure yourself?

 

Do you know if someone is selling such in Europe? Importing anything from outside of EU is always PITA...

 

[Miska]

14 minutes ago, jimdukey said:

I'm waiting for the new ADI -2 fs Dac, around $1250.

 

That is likely also very good, given how already the EVGA NU Audio card performs that is using the same AKM chip.

 

[Yviena]

Just now, Miska said:

 

Do you know if someone is selling such in Europe? Importing anything from outside of EU is always PITA...

 

There's audiophonics.fr Shipping is cheap

[rickca]

2 minutes ago, Yviena said:

There's audiophonics.fr Shipping is cheap

The link is in my post 16522.

[Miska]

22 minutes ago, rickca said:

 

@Miska can the Nu Audio card (AK4493) be used in bypass mode?

 

Given that volume control doesn't work in DSD output mode, it likely runs in bypass (DSD Direct) mode. However, it doesn't have configuration option to switch between the two DSD filters.

 

I'm very interested to see how the new RME performs with AK4493. And I'd expect TEAC to soon come with new UD-series DAC with AK4499. Ad I don't have TEAC's 505 yet, just 501 and 503, if they come up with new one (507?) I likely skip over one and go for that.

 

[rickca]

@Miska I was planning to evaluate the trial of HQPlayer Desktop 4 on Windows.  My main objective was to test PCM to DSD conversion with the new EC modulators.

 

Does the trial expire after 30 days?  I installed it on 11/19.  The problem is that the Nu Audio card didn't work properly with DSD so I was unable to accomplish my goal.  The EVGA card is the only DAC I have that does DSD.

 

EVGA has just released a fix (hopefully ... I will test it this weekend).  If the fix resolves the problem, I'd like to continue my evaluation.  If the trial expires after 30 days, is it possible to get an extension?  Thanks.

[Rune]

I got a NT-505 and  I have to choose Narrow or Wide filter. Does this mean that it cannot run DSD Direct?

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Rune said:

I got a NT-505 and  I have to choose Narrow or Wide filter. Does this mean that it cannot run DSD Direct?

 

No,the output (D/A conversion) filter can be configured in two ways. Different AKM chips have different kind of filters. Setting it to "wide" moves the filter corner frequency up by octave (2x frequency).

 

[pcmchild]

On 12/13/2019 at 7:45 AM, Miska said:

 

I consider HW card cleaner way. Primary use cases for the input feature are to allow input from external devices like streamers (Bluesound Node2i, etc), old CD transports (always 44.1k) and from analog sources like vinyl rigs. That could also include another computer. Loopback possibility within same computer is nice add-on extra and for most such cases automatic rate switching is not needed, since for example Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, Amazon musicUnlimited, etc are always at a fixed rate and anyway 99% of the music out there is 44.1/16.

 

Tidal/Qobuz have varying rate, but to HQPlayer Desktop, better source for those services is Roon that directly talks to HQPlayer. Or with HQPlayer Embedded there are more source options for those services through UPnP functionality (mConnect Player, BubbleUPnP, Audirvana, etc).

 

Apart from those services, most asked streaming source is Spotify, which works through existing loopback solutions or the cheap miniDSP USBStreamer since it is fixed rate.

 

The most used configuration for this feature is HQPlayer Embedded device, where it is firmware of a "black box" that is streamer/upsampler device, since that is where it first appeared.

 

When I say clean I mean we already have the audio data on the output device, and we are converting it 4 times before getting it back exactly as it was, hopefully (data to electrical spdif, then to optical spdif, then back to electrical spdif, and then back to to original data that was there all along). And all this depending on shady driver (and hw?) implementations that can also break with future OS versions.

Audio from videos vary a lot, mostly between 44.1K and 48K but also some 96K (blurays).
 

Regarding HQP Embdeded, can I run HQP Embedded on a regular Linux workstation?

I am bit confused about HQPlayer Embedded Prerequisite: "No graphical user interface / desktop environment".

Can't I have HQPlayerd running on Debian machine and at same time graphical environment running a video player app that would loopback the audio to HQP Embedded on the same machine?

Or would I need a separate PC for the video player app? I don't care/use streaming, only play local files.

Also, independent of 1 or 2 PCs, I am not finding it, but is there a video player app (Linux or Windows) that can play video on PC screen and send the audio out to UPnP so that HQP Embedded can receive it?
 

Back to HQP Desktop, I can live with the rate manual selection if I don't have to retype the full audio: line each session, but just select it from the pulldown.

So it would be great if you could make pulldown list contents persistent between sessions as it happens already with URI content. It could be erased with the crossed arrow, as the URI is.

[Miska]

12 minutes ago, pcmchild said:

Audio from videos vary a lot, mostly between 44.1K and 48K but also some 96K (blurays).

 

Videos very rarely have 44.1k audio, almost always 48k-family because it works well with the frame rate and clock divisors (from video clocks).

 

HQPlayer is not really intended for videos. With VLC you may manage to compensate for the ~1.5 second delay, but any video stuff is certainly out of scope for HQPlayer.

 

12 minutes ago, pcmchild said:

Regarding HQP Embdeded, can I run HQP Embedded on a regular Linux workstation?

 

Yes...

 

12 minutes ago, pcmchild said:

I am bit confused about HQPlayer Embedded Prerequisite: "No graphical user interface / desktop environment".

 

Because it is designed as firmware for "network streamers".

 

12 minutes ago, pcmchild said:

Can't I have HQPlayerd running on Debian machine and at same time graphical environment running a video player app that would loopback the audio to HQP Embedded on the same machine?

 

Yes, in such case you would disable the hqplayerd system service and run it under a normal user session instead.

 

12 minutes ago, pcmchild said:

Also, independent of 1 or 2 PCs, I am not finding it, but is there a video player app (Linux or Windows) that can play video on PC screen and send the audio out to UPnP so that HQP Embedded can receive it?

 

Maybe there is, but I have to say I don't know. But I would say such is especially prone to synchronization issues, so likely you would never have decent lip-sync.

 

12 minutes ago, pcmchild said:

Back to HQP Desktop, I can live with the rate manual selection if I don't have to retype the full audio: line each session, but just select it from the pulldown.

 

I'm not sure why in your case you don't get the available rates enumerated to the list. Are you sure you are using latest version of HQPlayer?

 

12 minutes ago, pcmchild said:

So it would be great if you could make pulldown list contents persistent between sessions as it happens already with URI content. It could be erased with the crossed arrow, as the URI is.

 

HQPlayer retains a playlist, but audio inputs are not playlist...

 

[pcmchild]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

I'm not sure why in your case you don't get the available rates enumerated to the list. Are you sure you are using latest version of HQPlayer?

 

 

I was using 4.2.0. I just updated to 4.2.1, and it works!!!            Great!!!

                  Great!!!                      

I didn't think there was any change about that because on news page it mentions only "Fix failure on input device definition without explicit channel count" and my lines always include "2" on channels field.

 

So now I will be happy using my motherboard realtek internal spdif loopback, with wasapi on both HQPlayer input and output. No need for asio and asio drivers, which tend to be not so reliable (less used/tested I guess). 

 

Regarding lipsync both MPC-BE and VLC have config and keys to adjust audio delay, so it works ok for me. Sometimes (rarely) lipsync is lost (due to short system busy state I guess), but restart of playing fixes it. (Unfortunately VLC does not support wasapi exclusive nor asio, so now I always use MPC-BE)

 

And to make things even better I just found out that if I click below the playlist, the URI content is "entered" to the playlist, so I no longer have to reach for the keyboard to press enter after selecting from pulldown list.           Great!!!

 

Have I already told you HQPlayer is great?

And HQPlayer developer is great too! Thank you very much for all the patience and detailed replies.

 

[Allan F]

Since recently updating HQP from 3.24 to 3.25, upsampling from 16/44 to DSD512 seems to take noticeably longer before playback starts. Has anyone else noticed the same thing?

[shang_2000]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Videos very rarely have 44.1k audio, almost always 48k-family because it works well with the frame rate and clock divisors (from video clocks).

 

HQPlayer is not really intended for videos. With VLC you may manage to compensate for the ~1.5 second delay, but any video stuff is certainly out of scope for HQPlayer.

 

 

Yes...

 

 

Because it is designed as firmware for "network streamers".

 

 

Yes, in such case you would disable the hqplayerd system service and run it under a normal user session instead.

 

 

Maybe there is, but I have to say I don't know. But I would say such is especially prone to synchronization issues, so likely you would never have decent lip-sync.

 

 

I'm not sure why in your case you don't get the available rates enumerated to the list. Are you sure you are using latest version of HQPlayer?

 

 

HQPlayer retains a playlist, but audio inputs are not playlist...

 

Naa is connected to rme adi-2 (new version 4493), and cannot output dsd native to adi2! Does naa need to be set? How to set it up?

[shang_2000]

@Miska，?

[shang_2000]

@Miska,my adi-2 id:USB\VID_2A39&PID_3FD3&REV_0001
USB\VID_2A39&PID_3FD3

[shang_2000]

@Miska,The problem has been solved, just set dop dsd!

[rickca]

@Miska I'm trying HQPlayer Desktop 4.2.1 on Windows 10 Version 1909 on an i7-6700K.  Hyperthreading is disabled.

 

Converting redbook to 44.1K x 256 with ASDM5EC with

poly-sinc-xtr-lp-2s for Oversampling 1x and Nx

 

It works (with occasional dropouts) if Multicore DSP is blank or checked.  However, if Multicore DSP is greyed out, I get maybe a few seconds of output and then it stops and the play time reverts to zero.  Can you please offer an explanation of this behavior?

 

Also, can you please help me understand what is oversampling 1x vs oversampling Nx?

[Miska]

2 hours ago, shang_2000 said:

@Miska,The problem has been solved, just set dop dsd!

 

Yes, ADI-2 supports only DoP, it doesn't have any other way to do DSD.

 

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

@Miska I'm trying HQPlayer Desktop 4.2.1 on Windows 10 Version 1909 on an i7-6700K.  Hyperthreading is disabled.

 

Converting redbook to 44.1K x 256 with ASDM5EC with

poly-sinc-xtr-lp-2s for Oversampling 1x and Nx

 

It works (with occasional dropouts) if Multicore DSP is blank or checked.  However, if Multicore DSP is greyed out, I get maybe a few seconds of output and then it stops and the play time reverts to zero.  Can you please offer an explanation of this behavior?

 

I don't know why such would happen, but there is probably explanation in the log file. However I would recommend to keep HyperThreading enabled. HQPlayer understands it and can utilize it in certain cases where it makes sense. And it also helps with the OS, since OS can have it's things on the sibling cores. HT reduces overhead of context switching between processes.

 

7 minutes ago, rickca said:

Also, can you please help me understand what is oversampling 1x vs oversampling Nx?

 

1x filter is used for 44.1k and 48k source content, these are so called "1x rate". Nx filter is used for 88.2k and higher source content.

 

Idea is that you can set different filter for "midres" and "hires" content. For example things like steep and apodizing filters are important for 1x rate content, but much less for higher rates.

 

[rickca]

27 minutes ago, Miska said:

there is probably explanation in the log file

The only thing of interest I can find is

clHQPlayerEngine::Execute(): push to FIFO failed

 

What does that indicate?

 

I do get a few more seconds of play time before it quits if I enable CUDA offload to my GTX 1060.

[Miska]

2 hours ago, rickca said:

The only thing of interest I can find is

clHQPlayerEngine::Execute(): push to FIFO failed

 

What does that indicate?

 

I do get a few more seconds of play time before it quits if I enable CUDA offload to my GTX 1060.

 

There is probably something before indicating that the DAC/driver has stopped accepting data. That error happens when DAC has not asked for more data in 10 seconds.

 

Do you have "Buffer time" set to "Default"? Which kind of DAC configuration is this using? (interface from HQPlayer towards the driver and type of DAC)

 

[Allan F]

18 hours ago, Allan F said:

Since recently updating HQP from 3.24 to 3.25, upsampling from 16/44 to DSD512 seems to take noticeably longer before playback starts. Has anyone else noticed the same thing?

 

That should have read from 3.25.4 to 3.25.5. Just updated to 3.25.6 but symptom remains the same.