HQ Player

[Miska]

3 hours ago, shahed99 said:

 

@Miska Can you suggest how many cores/threads I should assign to HQP? Should I also turn-off SMT for HQP? When I turn off SMT for HQP in Process Lasso, only even numbered core/threads are selected (0, 2, 4, 6, ..); probably those are on the same physical node? Would HQP also benefit from increasing priority to real-time?

 

Do not do anything. Leave SMT on and do not touch any assignments. HQPlayer assigns work to different cores by itself based on discovered CPU topology. HQPlayer also understands about SMT. HQPlayer also manages priorities itself.

 

From outside you cannot do anything other than mess up HQPlayer, because there are several threads running in HQPlayer that need to be correctly assigned to CPU cores with correct priorities. Different threads inside HQPlayer run at different priorities depending on kind of task they are executing. You certainly don't want to have something like GUI threads at real-time priority.

 

[Miska]

13 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

Is “MP” inherently more relaxed than “LP”?

 

No, depending on case minimum-phase may sound more natural on attacks/transients, while linear-phase usually gives better space presentation.

 

But if you have a multi-track studio recording that has been mixed, there's not really much space/acoustics included, for such minimum-phase can be good (rock, etc).

 

[fgribas]

3 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Do not do anything. Leave SMT on and do not touch any assignments. HQPlayer assigns work to different cores by itself based on discovered CPU topology. HQPlayer also understands about SMT. HQPlayer also manages priorities itself.

 

From outside you cannot do anything other than mess up HQPlayer, because there are several threads running in HQPlayer that need to be correctly assigned to CPU cores with correct priorities. Different threads inside HQPlayer run at different priorities depending on kind of task they are executing. You certainly don't want to have something like GUI threads at real-time priority.

 

 

When I try to limit/separate the core assignments for HPQlayer on Process Lasso, I got error messages on HQP and it quits. So now I'm leaving it alone.

 

Regarding priorities, I always used (or messed) with this on HQP. Based on my listenings, I notice great improvements when setting the process to Real-Time. I know Miska is totally against it, but I'm using real-time priority for years without a single error. And for my ears, it sounds very good! This is a trick that different player softwares on the market do.

 

But when we got this "You certainly don't want to have something like GUI threads at real-time priority", it's certainly a good point. That's why I use NAA on the same computer of the HQP server and set the NAA (networkaudiod.exe) priority to real-time. NAA runs much less threads than the server (2 vs 278 at this right moment), and the thread of "last mile commuication with DAC" is certainly there on NAA.

 

I encourage foks to try that and see how it sounds: NAA + server running on the same Windows computer, with networkaudiod.exe priority set to real-time.

 

In my case I also lock the core assignment of NAA to my last physical core and set real-time priority on HQPlayer server process too. To my ears, all of these actions improve sound by a good step.

[shahed99]

50 minutes ago, fgribas said:

I encourage foks to try that and see how it sounds: NAA + server running on the same Windows computer, with networkaudiod.exe priority set to real-time.

 

In my case I also lock the core assignment of NAA to my last physical core and set real-time priority on HQPlayer server process too. To my ears, all of these actions improve sound by a good step.

 

Wow! How do you run NAA + server on the same Windows machine? Great idea btw.

[fgribas]

3 minutes ago, shahed99 said:

 

Wow! How do you run NAA + server on the same Windows machine? Great idea btw.

 

Just run the NAA .bat file like you would do on other machine.

 

Download the NAA for windows, extract the zip file, then copy the networkaudiod_name.bat to the x64 folder (64 bit Windows here) and then run the networkaudiod_name.bat inside the x64 folder.

 

I start the NAA first, than HQPlayer server, than HQPlayer Client. It uses 4 slots on the task bar (NAA uses 2), but I really don't care, the sound is the best I can get from HQP

[shahed99]

@fgribas +10 NAA and allocating CPU affinity has enhanced the SQ. I didn’t touch the HQP as per Miskas suggestion. I noticed that HQP was consistently executed on even numbered cores. So, I selected all other (excluding HQP, naa, Roon) processes affinity on odd numbered core.  All of this has brought a nice improvement. Sound is more relaxing, less edgy, musical. Thank you!

[fgribas]

@shahed99 that's great to hear! Since you already have Process Lasso, you can also try different settings for NT scheduler on: Options -> Tools -> Tweak Windows NT scheduler parameters.

 

This settings changes processor scheduling parameters. I prefer Short + Variable + triple length which gives the Hex value 26. Every possible combination slightly changes the sound. When you change it with Process Lasso, it tells you need to reboot to get it working, but my ears tell me the result is immediate.

 

Or without Process Lasso, you can change directly on Windows Registry: 

 

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl

 

Possible values:

 

2A Hex = Short, Fixed , High foreground boost.
29 Hex = Short, Fixed , Medium foreground boost.
28 Hex = Short, Fixed , No foreground boost.

26 Hex = Short, Variable , High foreground boost.
25 Hex = Short, Variable , Medium foreground boost.
24 Hex = Short, Variable , No foreground boost.

1A Hex = Long, Fixed, High foreground boost.
19 Hex = Long, Fixed, Medium foreground boost.
18 Hex = Long, Fixed, No foreground boost.

16 Hex = Long, Variable, High foreground boost.
15 Hex = Long, Variable, Medium foreground boost.
14 Hex = Long, Variable, No foreground boost.

 

26 Hex is my preffered one, and by the way 26 is the value when you set "Adjust for best performance of: Programs " on Windows Performance Options. But is nice to know you have more options beyond these 2 of the Windows settings, and you can change to the one that gives you the sound you like the most.

 

 

 

Sorry about the off-topic here, just wanted to share some tricks to get HQP sounding even better. Computer audio is complex, don't fall on the the "bits are bits" talk, or "if it's bit perfect, everything else is snake oil". I have read sentences like that many times here and on Roon forums.

 

There are many more hardware and software optimizations that affect the sound. Sometimes a single piece of software can bring you much more sound quality than buying a new DAC (given that you already have a decent DAC), and HQPlayer is the perfect example. 

[StreamFidelity]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

No, depending on case minimum-phase may sound more natural on attacks/transients, while linear-phase usually gives better space presentation.

 

Approval. When my speakers were still more than 3m apart, I preferred mp. In the new listening room, I can only separate the speakers by about 2.20m. Now I prefer lp because of the better space.

[Miska]

9 hours ago, fgribas said:

Regarding priorities, I always used (or messed) with this on HQP. Based on my listenings, I notice great improvements when setting the process to Real-Time. I know Miska is totally against it, but I'm using real-time priority for years without a single error. And for my ears, it sounds very good! This is a trick that different player softwares on the market do.

 

HQPlayer will override that setting for everything else than the graphics things. Meaning that for many cases you give higher priority to user interface display output than for audio processing. This is not intended behavior, it steals CPU time for secondary functions such as display drawing from audio things.

 

9 hours ago, fgribas said:

That's why I use NAA on the same computer of the HQP server and set the NAA (networkaudiod.exe) priority to real-time.

 

That ruins some of the OS optimizations made in NAA. NAA runs the two threads at different priorities on purpose...

 

9 hours ago, fgribas said:

In my case I also lock the core assignment of NAA to my last physical core

 

The two threads are better running different SMT threads of the same core... It cuts out the extra time needed to context switch between the two threads.

 

9 hours ago, fgribas said:

But when we got this "You certainly don't want to have something like GUI threads at real-time priority", it's certainly a good point. That's why I use NAA on the same computer of the HQP server and set the NAA (networkaudiod.exe) priority to real-time.

 

That adds some extra overhead to send audio over network but doesn't help at all that GUI threads are getting too much priority. So there's no advantage running NAA on the same computer. Remember that the priority setting is global for the OS.

 

[Miska]

6 hours ago, shahed99 said:

@fgribas +10 NAA and allocating CPU affinity has enhanced the SQ. I didn’t touch the HQP as per Miskas suggestion. I noticed that HQP was consistently executed on even numbered cores. So, I selected all other (excluding HQP, naa, Roon) processes affinity on odd numbered core.  All of this has brought a nice improvement. Sound is more relaxing, less edgy, musical. Thank you!

 

HQPlayer uses all cores/threads, but the sibling threads (when they exist) are used for different tasks.

[Miska]

4 hours ago, fgribas said:

@shahed99 that's great to hear! Since you already have Process Lasso, you can also try different settings for NT scheduler on: Options -> Tools -> Tweak Windows NT scheduler parameters.

 

26 Hex = Short, Variable , High foreground boost.

 

I would keep it "no foreground boost" if you cannot keep HQPlayer window in focus (topmost active) all the time. Otherwise if the active window switches over time it changes priority boosts accordingly.

 

4 hours ago, fgribas said:

Sorry about the off-topic here, just wanted to share some tricks to get HQP sounding even better.

 

It upsets me a little, given how many months I've spent tuning inner workings of HQPlayer to make it run EC modulators on as many hardware as possible. And these kind of things ruin that work...

 

[lmitche]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I would keep it "no foreground boost" if you cannot keep HQPlayer window in focus (topmost active) all the time. Otherwise if the active window switches over time it changes priority boosts accordingly.

 

 

It upsets me a little, given how many months I've spent tuning inner workings of HQPlayer to make it run EC modulators on as many hardware as possible. And these kind of things ruin that work...

 

Spending years in product management in various technology companies taught me that often the best and most innovative ideas come from your customers. They often used our products in ways that we never anticipated. Customers can be a constant source of motivation to improve the product. We learned to accept that as a good thing.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, lmitche said:

Spending years in product management in various technology companies taught me that often the best and most innovative ideas come from your customers. They often used our products in ways that we never anticipated. Customers can be a constant source of motivation to improve the product. We learned to accept that as a good thing.

What's the ration of good customer feedback to what the hell was that customer thinking feedback? :~)

[asdf1000]

24 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

What's the ration of good customer feedback to what the hell was that customer thinking feedback? :~)

 

My casual observation for HQPlayer:

 

20 / 1000

 

And 10 out of that 20 is me 😁

[lmitche]

20 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

What's the ration of good customer feedback to what the hell was that customer thinking feedback? :~)

It was a different context but here goes:

 

Every year my product management team had a percent of the fixed software development staff budget allocated for product management driven changes and enhancements. This budget competed with "customer funded development" for developer time. There was so much demand for the latter, that we almost never got to the PM driven enhancements. We did manage these customer driven projects to ensure the enhancements made sense for the majority of the client base. If not, they were more expensive, and were done as a custom development. Somehow the dev team managed the code tree under these circumstances.

[Miska]

50 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Spending years in product management in various technology companies taught me that often the best and most innovative ideas come from your customers. They often used our products in ways that we never anticipated. Customers can be a constant source of motivation to improve the product. We learned to accept that as a good thing.

 

How is that related?

 

Let's say you assign priority to HQPlayer process. That is trying to set all the tens of threads to single flat priority levels, regardless of what kind of task they do. For example cover art fetcher thread and audio thread. In addition, threads come and go during the process lifetime and their affinity and priorities are set by HQPlayer when created.

 

Entire HQPlayer (and NAA) process is a dynamic system where things change over time. If you adjust something at one moment, it goes off at the other moment.

 

For me, challenge is always if someone sends me email that something is not working/performing, and then later find out that something in the system has been modified. This is like if you modify car's ECU software and then go to the manufacturer/service that something is not running as it should.

 

[lmitche]

8 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

How is that related?

 

Despite your best efforts and amazing skills you have customers that seek to further innovation.

 

Why are they doing this? What more could you do to meet the perceived need?

[Miska]

3 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Despite your best efforts and amazing skills you have customers that seek to further innovation.

 

Why are they doing this? What more could you do to meet the perceived need?

 

Well, I'd just say that I know we disagree on various technical aspects and approaches.

 

Note that I can only support systems in stock condition, where I know I have similar software setup.

 

[jimdukey]

Too many Experts here.

Luckily, I'm not one...

 

I listen to Jussi, and love his product.

Didn't one guy just say he was overriding HQ, using it in a way Jussi doesn't recommend, and thinking it was better,

only to find out HQ was overriding has bogus setting, so the guy wasn't listening to what he Thought he was listing to at all.

Pretty funny.

 

How many here have designed and produced their own Playback Software?

Raise your hands....!!!

And read the Manual.

 

Thanks to Jussi/Miska for doing what he does.

Nobody else like him!

 

Perceived Need?

I need Miska to keep improving an already great Player.

According to his Knowledge and Imagination.

I don't think he needs US telling HIM what he should do or should have done.

You have such great ideas?

Then do it yourself!

[lmitche]

10 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Well, I'd just say that I know we disagree on various technical aspects and approaches.

 

Note that I can only support systems in stock condition, where I know I have similar software setup.

 

Yes, of course. Nevertheless it is always healthy to consider the questions above. Most customers are not stupid, so it is worth pondering un-met feature demand even if they screw things up trying to satisfy those demands on their own.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

Yes, of course. Nevertheless it is always healthy to consider the questions above. Most customers are not stupid, so it is worth pondering un-met feature demand even if they screw things up trying to satisfy those demands on their own.

 

What is the un-met feature demand?

 

I've added many requested features, latest one was support for ReplayGain 2.0 spec tags.

 

[lmitche]

20 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

What is the un-met feature demand?

 

I've added many requested features, latest one was support for ReplayGain 2.0 spec tags.

 

IDK, finding the answer is the hard part. Nevertheless something is motivating people to go off-piste. Of course, you could just accept this.

 

Yes, I have seen you add many customer driven features over the years.

[Markus87]

Hi @Miska,

 

I am planning my new HQP server right now. I will take the i9-10900K but was wondering whether it makes sense to choose the KF version over the K? 

As I figured the only difference is that the KF does not have an iGPU, correct? As I will pick an RTX 2080 Ti anyways, that should not be a problem and might even be an advantage in terms of noise... What do you think? 

 

Cheers, 

Markus

[Miska]

16 minutes ago, Markus87 said:

I am planning my new HQP server right now. I will take the i9-10900K but was wondering whether it makes sense to choose the KF version over the K? 

As I figured the only difference is that the KF does not have an iGPU, correct? As I will pick an RTX 2080 Ti anyways, that should not be a problem and might even be an advantage in terms of noise... What do you think? 

 

Both should be the same, and likely have the same silicon. But probably KF is one when GPU is broken and thus disabled. Now at least they have some price difference as well. So yes, KF should be fine if you are anyway going to use external GPU. It should also reduce a little bit the risk of thermal throttling, although they are specified for the same TDP. But at least GPU is not contributing to it.

 

[fgribas]

It seems my off-topic got even more off-topic, although customer feedback and handling feature requests are interesting subjects.

 

That said, I didn't request a new feature. And I didn't tell Miska what to do or how to do things. Please don't put words in my mouth.

 

 

I suggested single Windows PC users to try running NAA on the same machine as the server with real-time priority. This has been improving HQP sound for years in my system.

 

 

8 hours ago, Miska said:

That ruins some of the OS optimizations made in NAA. NAA runs the two threads at different priorities on purpose...

 

My findings about setting real-time priority for networkaudiod.exe:

 

if I don't set the priority:

Process stays with priority 8

Audio thread stays with base priority 15 and dynamic priority 26

Other thread stays with base priority 3 or 19 and dynamic priority 3 or 4 or 19

 

If I set real-time priority:

Process stays with priority 24

Audio thread stays with base priority 31 / dynamic priority 31

Other thread stays with base priority 3 or 19 and dynamic priority 3 or 4 or 19

 

This must be the reason why I notice big improvement when setting the NAA priority.

 

Is there a reason not to use priority 31 on the audio thread? System stability maybe?

 

 

7 hours ago, Miska said:

I would keep it "no foreground boost" if you cannot keep HQPlayer window in focus (topmost active) all the time. Otherwise if the active window switches over time it changes priority boosts accordingly.

 

That makes a lot of sense, since I don't keep HQP or NAA window in focus. Funny thing is that I prefer the sound with highest foreground boost, just a matter of sound signature preference I think.

 

 

7 hours ago, Miska said:

It upsets me a little, given how many months I've spent tuning inner workings of HQPlayer to make it run EC modulators on as many hardware as possible. And these kind of things ruin that work...

 

I know how you feel. Sorry, that was not the intention. Actually I "almost" know how you feel, because my coding skills are much more limited and the softwares I deliver to my customers don't have 1% the complexity of HQP 😁

 

8 hours ago, Miska said:

The two threads are better running different SMT threads of the same core... It cuts out the extra time needed to context switch between the two threads.

 

So it makes sense to set the affinity to 1 physical core? Or to 1 physical core + its HT core? Or none of it?

 

 

2 hours ago, Miska said:

For me, challenge is always if someone sends me email that something is not working/performing, and then later find out that something in the system has been modified. This is like if you modify car's ECU software and then go to the manufacturer/service that something is not running as it should.

 

2 hours ago, Miska said:

Note that I can only support systems in stock condition, where I know I have similar software setup.

 

You're absolutely right on that. Support should be limited to the designed context. Regarding my suggestion to try process priority: If it's not a supported scenario and you get any error on HQP, just undo it. But out of curiosity: how is the support to users running different scenarios with optimization softwares like Audiophile Optimizer, Fidelizer or Jplay?

 

Thank you @Miska for the endless hours supporting user with so diverse skills, even those who don't follow 100% of your guidelines 😉