HQ Player

[Solstice380]

@Johnseye  Only times I’ve had that type of “pause” issue was when HQP couldn’t get the file fast enough due to either the drive went to sleep or network got messed up.

[Account Closed]

11 hours ago, Ultrarunner said:

Thanks again @bobflood. I will try your increasing the buffer from the default (0) as you suggest. If that doesn’t work I’ll get Andrew to investigate. I was getting sidetracked, being pointed in the direction of flow control and auto-negotiation.

Be sure to try all the buffer settings starting from the smallest on up. Sometimes a too large buffer is just as likely to cause this as a too small one. If that doesn't help then contact Andrew.

[AnotherSpin]

50 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

I'm having an issue with HQPlayer Desktop 4 pausing music playback.  The backend is an NAA to Hugo TT2 DAC.

Music files stored locally or on the NAS exhibit the same behavior.  Filter, dither and buffer settings don't change the behavior. 

HQPlayer Desktop is running on a Windows 10 PC.  The NAA is running on Audiolinux.

 

Playback is pausing constantly but inconsistently.  Throughout a 3 minute song it could occur 20 times randomly.  It could make it 10 seconds into a song or 40 seconds before occurring the first time.

 

For some time I was comparing Audiolinux, Euphony and Miska's USB images for NAA endpoint in combination with HQP desktop on mac mini. There were some very rare pauses when using Audiolinux. I use Miska's NAA almost exclusively now because of several other reasons, but there are no pauses either. That would be my advice, to test Miska's NAA image instead of AL to check pauses behaviour.

[Johnseye]

2 hours ago, Solstice380 said:

@Johnseye  Only times I’ve had that type of “pause” issue was when HQP couldn’t get the file fast enough due to either the drive went to sleep or network got messed up.

 

The drive the music is on is an Optane 905P.  Probably one of, if not the fastest drives available today.  To test I placed audio files on this drive which is also the OS.  It's not going to sleep.  The network interaction is something I'd like to know more about.  How does HQP4 interact with the NAA and what kind of network settings can cause issues?

 

2 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

For some time I was comparing Audiolinux, Euphony and Miska's USB images for NAA endpoint in combination with HQP desktop on mac mini. There were some very rare pauses when using Audiolinux. I use Miska's NAA almost exclusively now because of several other reasons, but there are no pauses either. That would be my advice, to test Miska's NAA image instead of AL to check pauses behaviour.

 

That's my next plan, to install Miska's NAA on my endpoint.  I believe it's a Linux image as well.  I wonder if there's a Windows to Linux compatibility issue? I can also install Audiolinux or Euphony over the current Windows 10 install.  That would be the second step if Miska's NAA doesn't resolve it. Thanks.

 

[AnotherSpin]

19 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

 

That's my next plan, to install Miska's NAA on my endpoint.  I believe it's a Linux image as well.  I wonder if there's a Windows to Linux compatibility issue? I can also install Audiolinux or Euphony over the current Windows 10 install.  That would be the second step if Miska's NAA doesn't resolve it. Thanks.

 

 

Yes, it is Linux. Never heard about compatibility issue, and it shouldn't be if Miska specifically designed it to work with any OS server HQPlayer. Please be aware Miska's NAA images come in two ways. First is single NAA image and second is a part of HQP Embedded image. There might be some difference in SQ between two images. 

[Johnseye]

53 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Yes, it is Linux. Never heard about compatibility issue, and it shouldn't be if Miska specifically designed it to work with any OS server HQPlayer. Please be aware Miska's NAA images come in two ways. First is single NAA image and second is a part of HQP Embedded image. There might be some difference in SQ between two images. 

 

I am licensed for HQP Embedded, but using that on a different Audiolinux server.  It feeds the NAA in question without too much of an issue.  Every once in a while, usually never but maybe once a song, playback will pause but I always thought it was Roon doing that until now.  I never tested HQPlayer Embedded direct to the NAA with this server where Roon wasn't involved.

[Account Closed]

1 hour ago, Johnseye said:

 

I am licensed for HQP Embedded, but using that on a different Audiolinux server.  It feeds the NAA in question without too much of an issue.  Every once in a while, usually never but maybe once a song, playback will pause but I always thought it was Roon doing that until now.  I never tested HQPlayer Embedded direct to the NAA with this server where Roon wasn't involved.

Having Roon and HQP on the same machine can indeed be problematic. There is another guy posting above with the same problem on a ST i5. I have both running on a Win 10 machine and it took some tweaking to get it to work without this issue.

[Solstice380]

16 hours ago, Johnseye said:

 

The drive the music is on is an Optane 905P. 

Cross that one off the list!!!  LOL  I'm using NAA on Win10 with the Amanero ASIO without issue.  I don't have Roon on this machine, though.

[adol290]

I have been using Hqplayer 3 and finally have downloaded version 4 to try.

I always use just 2 channel.

 

When I run PCM  88.2 and Sinc-L it takes 6 seconds before the song starts to play

When i run PCM  88.2 and Sinc-M it takes a whopping 18 seconds before the song begins to play.

 

In both cases the songs plays fine.

 

In order to speed this up i know i will need newer hardware. Just want to make sure i buy the right stuff.

 

I am currently running an i5-6600 3.3GHz with 16G Memory. Operating systems is on a 950 Nvme 250G.

All other data is on SSD drives. Video is a geforce 1660 6G.

 

I was thinking of a Z490 with an i5-10600K Processor, 4.1GHz w/ 6 Cores / 12 Threads

 Is 16G memory enough.

 

Would that be good enough or what would people recommend to speed this up. I don't want to get crazy expensive.

 

 

[Account Closed]

2 hours ago, adol290 said:

I have been using Hqplayer 3 and finally have downloaded version 4 to try.

I always use just 2 channel.

 

When I run PCM  88.2 and Sinc-L it takes 6 seconds before the song starts to play

When i run PCM  88.2 and Sinc-M it takes a whopping 18 seconds before the song begins to play.

 

In both cases the songs plays fine.

 

In order to speed this up i know i will need newer hardware. Just want to make sure i buy the right stuff.

 

I am currently running an i5-6600 3.3GHz with 16G Memory. Operating systems is on a 950 Nvme 250G.

All other data is on SSD drives. Video is a geforce 1660 6G.

 

I was thinking of a Z490 with an i5-10600K Processor, 4.1GHz w/ 6 Cores / 12 Threads

 Is 16G memory enough.

 

Would that be good enough or what would people recommend to speed this up. I don't want to get crazy expensive.

 

 

With those filters it may not be possible to speed it up much and if it is possible the GPU is what will help most.

[Johnseye]

23 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Yes, it is Linux. Never heard about compatibility issue, and it shouldn't be if Miska specifically designed it to work with any OS server HQPlayer. Please be aware Miska's NAA images come in two ways. First is single NAA image and second is a part of HQP Embedded image. There might be some difference in SQ between two images. 

 

21 hours ago, bobflood said:

Having Roon and HQP on the same machine can indeed be problematic. There is another guy posting above with the same problem on a ST i5. I have both running on a Win 10 machine and it took some tweaking to get it to work without this issue.

 

8 hours ago, Solstice380 said:

Cross that one off the list!!!  LOL  I'm using NAA on Win10 with the Amanero ASIO without issue.  I don't have Roon on this machine, though.

 

I appreciate your help with my troubleshooting.  Last night I ran Jussi's NAA and had the same issue.  Because I'm using some custom switches with the etheRegen, SOtM sNH-10G and Buffalo BS-GS2016 I decided to see if one of these were the culprit.  I swapped them all out for standard Netgear switches I had on hand.  No pauses with HQPlayer.  I then added the other switches back in one by one.  It turns out the offender is the SOtM sNH-10G.  It didn't matter whether fiber or ethernet was used.  This switch caused consistent issues with HQPlayer.

 

Question to the community, is anyone else using a SOtM sNH-10G with HQPlayer?  @Miska have you come across compatibility issues with this switch and your software in the past?  This is not a cheap switch and it will be disappointing to have to stop using it because of this incompatibility. 

[Account Closed]

2 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

 

 

 

I appreciate your help with my troubleshooting.  Last night I ran Jussi's NAA and had the same issue.  Because I'm using some custom switches with the etheRegen, SOtM sNH-10G and Buffalo BS-GS2016 I decided to see if one of these were the culprit.  I swapped them all out for standard Netgear switches I had on hand.  No pauses with HQPlayer.  I then added the other switches back in one by one.  It turns out the offender is the SOtM sNH-10G.  It didn't matter whether fiber or ethernet was used.  This switch caused consistent issues with HQPlayer.

 

Question to the community, is anyone else using a SOtM sNH-10G with HQPlayer?  @Miska have you come across compatibility issues with this switch and your software in the past?  This is not a cheap switch and it will be disappointing to have to stop using it because of this incompatibility. 

Not with that particular switch but I did have a similar problem with a 10G port on a switch so I changed over to a 1G port on the same switch and no problems anymore.

[Johnseye]

30 minutes ago, bobflood said:

Not with that particular switch but I did have a similar problem with a 10G port on a switch so I changed over to a 1G port on the same switch and no problems anymore.

 

I wish I could say the sNH-10G is a 10G switch.  The model number is misleading as it's only a 10/100/1000.

[Miska]

On 6/24/2020 at 10:58 AM, vfrpoye said:

Ok, but Is ok with ntfs partition disk ?

 

No, but FAT32 works. NTFS is Windows specific. And also ext2/ext3/ext4 for example works.

 

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Johnseye said:

Question to the community, is anyone else using a SOtM sNH-10G with HQPlayer?  @Miska have you come across compatibility issues with this switch and your software in the past?  This is not a cheap switch and it will be disappointing to have to stop using it because of this incompatibility. 

 

Only switches I have are Cisco and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE), and one ZyXEL. No problems with these. With managed/smart switches it is important to check 802.3x is enabled for all ports.

 

It is important to check that all network infra supports 802.3x, 802.1p and optionally 802.3az standards.

 

My PoE powered WiFi access points are also from HPE/Aruba. NAA is working fine over these too up to 8 channels of DSD256.

 

[Johnseye]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Only switches I have are Cisco and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE), and one ZyXEL. No problems with these. With managed/smart switches it is important to check 802.3x is enabled for all ports.

 

It is important to check that all network infra supports 802.3x, 802.1p and optionally 802.3az standards.

 

My PoE powered WiFi access points are also from HPE/Aruba. NAA is working fine over these too up to 8 channels of DSD256.

 

 

Why are 802.3x, 802.1p and 802.3az important to HQPlayer?

 

[akshaya835]

I have been using HQP on Mac and love it so far. My two sources to HQP currently are roon and AirPlay.

Airplay stream is fed into HQP via VB-AudioCable and then choosing the source manually.

 

Just wondering if there is a way to autoswitch audio input in HQP i.e. automatically switch in between two stream AirPlay or Roon depending on which one is available.

 

Has anyone tried sending shairport-sync audio to HQP via netcat? I can't figure out target port of HQP to send, i think it keeps changing port dynamically at each run.

 

Also was there any API HQP offers via which i could automate switching between VBAudioCable and Roon?

 

TIA.

[scintilla]

Ok, I got a working Catalina driver from TASCAM for the UH-7000 operational now and I still can't seem to pipe PCM into HQP as a souce.  

 

My chain is this:  Live PCM source (48k, 24b) from Accuphase FM tuner into TASCAM Digital Inputs 1 and 2, set to "Monitor Computer 1 and 2", I have Audio Midi configured for sound input from the TASCAM and I can get see input from the System Preferences Sound set up window so it is reaching Coreaudio.  What I can't get is HQP to allow me to set the input to the TASCAM and get anything playing.  

 

I have tried output to my NAD M51 DAC as normally configured or back to the TASCAM, a configuration that works with Puremusic.  What else can I try here?

[ASRMichael]

@Miska CPU manufacturer’s only ever seem to add more cores rather than higher clock speeds. Some manufacturers offering 60+ cores, but low clock speeds. 
 

So here’s my question...Can you not program your modulators across multiple cores? For example 10 cores? Spreading the work load? (I know nothing about programming) 

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

@Miska CPU manufacturer’s only ever seem to add more cores rather than higher clock speeds. Some manufacturers offering 60+ cores, but low clock speeds. 
 

So here’s my question...Can you not program your modulators across multiple cores? For example 10 cores? Spreading the work load? (I know nothing about programming) 

Great question. 

[Account Closed]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Great question. 

Jussi has said here before in response to this question that the modulators do not work on multiple cores. They do not work in a distributed architecture. He has given the technical reasons before so search the thread for them. Each channel requires one core so two cores for stereo are needed. The higher the desired output rate the higher the required clock. Using EC modulators DSD 256 requires about a 4 Ghz sustained clock on those two cores.

 

The filters on the other hand can be distributed to multiple cores. That is why offloading to a GPU works so well for the filters. GPUs are all about a distributed computing architecture.

 

If there is not going to be a GPU (cost, noise, heat) then the best chip is one that can turbo two cores to just over 4 Ghz and keep them there and that has multiple remaining cores left for the distribution of the filters and the OS processes and maybe a concurrent program like Roon. Such chips are few and far between and are not cheap. There is an entire thread about the best chip for HQP and DSD.

 

The current King of the Hill is the i9-9900KS. This chip is over $500 and is difficult to cool especially using passive and even air cooling. Under heavy load it creates a lot of heat. So a more modest chip and a capable GPU may be the way to go.

 

Jussi may have more to add but what I offer here is a summary of many prior answers to this question.

[jamesg11]

Exc summary - now copied to my hqp ref notes ...!

[Miska]

22 hours ago, Johnseye said:

 

Why are 802.3x, 802.1p and 802.3az important to HQPlayer?

 

 

802.3x to avoid packet losses and re-sends on devices that cannot cope with constant full network speed data flows.

 

802.1p to deal with traffic prioritization.

 

802.3az to keep network electrically quiet.

 

 

Note that 802.3x applies also for switches for example for cases where you have two switches connected to each other over a gigabit link. On one switch, two computers could be trying to send gigabit speed flow over to the other switch. That means 2 Gbps worth of traffic trying to go over 1 Gbps link. 802.3x is most efficient way to manage the situation. If you have a 48 port gigabit switch connected to another switch through one port, in worst case you could have 47 Gbps worth of aggregate traffic trying to go over 1 Gbps link.

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, scintilla said:

What I can't get is HQP to allow me to set the input to the TASCAM and get anything playing.  

 

Have you selected the TASCAM as input device? And then followed instructions here

https://www.signalyst.com/quickstart.html

under heading "Playing from source selection"?

 

[Miska]

21 hours ago, akshaya835 said:

Has anyone tried sending shairport-sync audio to HQP via netcat? I can't figure out target port of HQP to send, i think it keeps changing port dynamically at each run.

 

Also was there any API HQP offers via which i could automate switching between VBAudioCable and Roon?

 

Simple netcat won't work, but you could offer a raw or encoded stream over HTTP.

 

HQPlayer control API is open with example implementation, this can be used to manage sources etc.