HQ Player

[Miska]

2 hours ago, FlashingBlade said:

I've just purchased HQPlayer and run it through Roon. I'm looking for some help with finding the optimum settings for my DAC which is a Matrix Audio Sabre Pro as some of the settings are beyond my current technical knowledge. I'll hold my hands up and say I'm still learning having previously just used a 'plug and forget' DAC. 

 

I did try a seperate thread but it was suggested I post here to keep it in one place and maybe get @Miska to help out. 

 

I've attached how I've currently got HQPlayer setup and feel free to pull it apart and suggest what I've got wrong. 

 

Depending on how much available CPU power you have, I would recommend for example ASDM5EC or if not enough CPU power for that, ASDM5.

 

If you have 48k DSD checked (assuming it works correctly with the DAC in question, for most DACs it doesn't), you can also make Adaptive output rate checked and set Bit rate to 48k x256. If it doesn't work correctly, leave it unchecked, and leave Bit rate and Adaptive output rate as they are now.

 

[bibo01]

Hi @MiskaAre you going to offer Black Friday discount this weekend? 15% coupon?

[AnotherSpin]

8 hours ago, Luca72c said:

 

Sorry to take it this long, i feel uncomfortable having to insist so much, as a customer, to have my (and of many others, who i can't understand where are now) request for a functionality fix to be taken into consideration by a commercial developer. I am sorry to see there is not much of an interest for customers requests here, something i have already seen for many others like - just to say one - support for VST plugins. Sometimes i see attempts from you to demonstrate to customers that their needs are wrong, irrational or simply ignorant, that is absolutely impolite and unfair (this could be done in some extent about ANY need, except breathing, eating and drinking... Are you sure you can evaluate each user needs? ), and that your software is ok as it is. Surely it's a great software that has no competition about sound quality, but this doesn't mean it shouldn't be constantly improved adding useful functionality upon customers requests too, where possible (and the fix i request IS possible, maybe relatively easy too): that should be normal for any commercial product.

 

Anyway, things are not as easy as you say in the post i quoted.

Roon is a commercial software, isn't this clear? You have to pay to use it. You have to pay MUCH. It's a brilliant piece of software, perfect for some needs, but not for my needs. I don't care about smart, good looking interface, infos database and 90% of its functionalities. I'm perfectly comfortable with HQPlayer client. Roon support for HQPlayer is an half step, not allowing to remotely change HQPlayer settings. Its library is a mistery to me, with no strict connection to actual physical directories on disc, i like HQPlayer client organizaed library management much more. So why should i pay (on a 2 years base) more than HQPlayer's lifetime license for a software that i wouldn't use, just to have a functionality that could easily (it's half way done actually) be incorporated into HQPlayer itself? I want to pay for HQPlayer, not for Roon! How much should i pay just to listen to Qobuz streaming via HQPlayer? Qobuz licence + Roon licence + HQPlayer licence... this would mean a lot of money for a single functionality!

About Kodi, i tried Supersonic addon by Geoffrey Armstrong but unfortunately i had no success, many things changed from 2018 and it didn't get updated (for something it simply couldn't). Geoff himself told me that he doesn't support Supersonic anymore. So no HQPlayer support in Kodi.

Internet radio is supported by HQPlayer only in flac format, but the vast majority of internet radios are not flac.

Even playing from youtube or the likes, it's true that frequency is fixed, but as i said current reproduction using loopback audio drivers is not stable, i have to spend many tries each time before getting it to work. Maybe the problem is in those loopback drivers, maybe in my hardware, i don't know, but it surely would be much more stable and easy to use for everyone if the stream was passing via software in a much more direct way like UPNP or Jriver allow, avoiding too many complications.

So we remain still with a difficult to use and uncomfortable functionality, a great idea that only some of us (Linux users and additional hardware users) can really exploit at its best. It's a pity, but ok, you are the developer and i can't force you to do what i need if you don't want to. Thank you anyway

 

1. There is certain distance between wanting a good thing and implementing it within a real product in working form. 

2. Customer-driven marketing has its own, quite often very serious shortcomings.

3. There is a recent mentioning in the Qobuz feature requests thread that the effort on integration with HQP is in progress.

[matthias]

2 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

There is a recent mentioning in the Qobuz feature requests thread that the effort on integration with HQP is in progress.

 

I would very much appreciate Qobuz integration with HQP as well.

 

Matt

[giordy60]

46 minutes ago, matthias said:

 

I would very much appreciate Qobuz integration with HQP as well.

 

Matt

+ 1 😊

[giordy60]

9 hours ago, bibo01 said:

Hi @MiskaAre you going to offer Black Friday discount this weekend? 15% coupon?

why only 15%?... 🤔

 

😉

[Bob Stern]

Thanks for adding the IIR PEQ plugin!  It is a feature I've always wanted.

 

Question:

According to the Desktop 4.8.0 user guide, there is no gain parameter for the notch & peak filter types.  Is that correct?

[bibo01]

2 hours ago, giordy60 said:

why only 15%?... 🤔

 

😉

Better ask Miska that. :) Anyhow, I think that is the discount offered previously.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Bob Stern said:

According to the Desktop 4.8.0 user guide, there is no gain parameter for the notch & peak filter types.  Is that correct?

 

Not for notch, but there is for peak. Maybe I have a mistake in the manual if it is missing there.

 

Peak can be either positive or negative gain. Notch is always just a cut at certain frequency with some Q.

 

[CJH]

Hi @MiskaAre you going to offer Black Friday discount this weekend?

+1

CJH

[Theobetley]

My compliments to Jussi on the new version of HQP. sonically very very smooth with no loss of detail. Thank you

[Luca72c]

6 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

Thanks for adding the IIR PEQ plugin!  It is a feature I've always wanted.

 

Great functionality! Thanks Miska

[dmccombs]

1 hour ago, Theobetley said:

My compliments to Jussi on the new version of HQP. sonically very very smooth with no loss of detail. Thank you

Are you referring to HQPlayer Desktop, or was the embedded/client software also upgraded?

 

Is there a link to release notes for the various versions?  I couldn't any on the HQP website.

[Miska]

12 minutes ago, dmccombs said:

Are you referring to HQPlayer Desktop, or was the embedded/client software also upgraded?

 

Is there a link to release notes for the various versions?  I couldn't any on the HQP website.

 

Yes, Embedded got the new features first. The convolution engine split feature however was made after latest Embedded release and thus landed in Desktop first. Same goes for the frequency/phase response plotting feature for matrix pipeline.

 

Release notes are on the front page.

 

[Account Closed]

With the new 4.8 release, I am no longer getting the dropout problems that I was having with 4.7, 4.7.1 & 4.7.2. I am still going to keep 4.6 handy but for now the issue seems resolved for me at least.

 

Thank you Jussi.

[StreamFidelity]

2 minutes ago, bobflood said:

With the new 4.8 release, I am no longer getting the dropout problems that I was having with 4.7, 4.7.1 & 4.7.2.

 

Absolutely great! Jussi, thank you very much for this early Christmas present. For me, HQPlayer 4.8.0 runs just as well as 4.6.0 in the fanless Audio PC. Even better! 👍

 

 

[Account Closed]

3 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

 

Absolutely great! Jussi, thank you very much for this early Christmas present. For me, HQPlayer 4.8.0 runs just as well as 4.6.0 in the fanless Audio PC. Even better! 👍

 

 

I was hoping you would see my post. Was going to PM you but now I don't need to.

[Yviena]

@MiskaHmm so how do i apply one peaking filter to both right, and left channels, or do i need to type it in twice, for example if i want a peaking filter at 54hz with Q at 0.60 for both channels how do i type that in?

 

EDIT: Ok  so i found out what to type in but, still unsure if i can make it apply to both R, and L channel instead of typing it in twice.

[mikel]

Hello Miska

First of all thanks for the new release.

I love the WavPack support with DSD.

One thing I observed:

WavPack only converts ID3.2 tags, not later tag standards.

For WavePack conversion from DSD to WV, I use the original WavePack command from the developers homepage.

After conversion from .DSF to .WV, HQplayer is not showing the artwork anymore.

Checking with Yate (Music-Tagger on Mac), the Artwork Tag is still in the file but for some reason not shown in HQPlayer 4.8.

Can you reproduce that?

Otherwise, I can send you a sample file.

Regards, Mike

[LoryWiv]

22 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Depending on how much available CPU power you have, I would recommend for example ASDM5EC or if not enough CPU power for that, ASDM5.

 

If you have 48k DSD checked (assuming it works correctly with the DAC in question, for most DACs it doesn't), you can also make Adaptive output rate checked and set Bit rate to 48k x256. If it doesn't work correctly, leave it unchecked, and leave Bit rate and Adaptive output rate as they are now.

 

I have Matrix X-Sabre Pro as well and can confirm ASDM5EC is an excellent choice. I do have 48k DSD checked with no issues, but prefer to leave adaptive output rate off as it's quite easy to adjust for best setting at start of album playback. Just my 2 cents.

[mirekti]

I used to use miniDSP to do a bit of room correction. Used to measure with REW, but never was truly happy. What worked for me was to throw the signal range 20-200Hz, and mark frequencies at which the room was "booming". It was a very simple task to do.
Is this something I could do with HQPlayer alone? Let's say I'd wanted to do 40Hz -6db and 90 Hz -9db.

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, mirekti said:

I used to use miniDSP to do a bit of room correction. Used to measure with REW, but never was truly happy. What worked for me was to throw the signal range 20-200Hz, and mark frequencies at which the room was "booming". It was a very simple task to do.
Is this something I could do with HQPlayer alone? Let's say I'd wanted to do 40Hz -6db and 90 Hz -9db.

 

You can do it with the parametric Eq. With the "peak" filter. You can either use filter Q or bandwidth argument to adjust slope width and just put -6 or -9 as gain.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, mikel said:

After conversion from .DSF to .WV, HQplayer is not showing the artwork anymore.

 

At least for now you need to use detached covers. The embedded cover stuff is not standard in the APE specification. And it is good to have thing always anyway, because it makes retrieving album covers faster to the client / remote control.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Yviena said:

@MiskaHmm so how do i apply one peaking filter to both right, and left channels, or do i need to type it in twice, for example if i want a peaking filter at 54hz with Q at 0.60 for both channels how do i type that in?

 

EDIT: Ok  so i found out what to type in but, still unsure if i can make it apply to both R, and L channel instead of typing it in twice.

 

You need to have it on "Process" line of all pipelines/channels you want to apply it on. There is no assumptions about wanting to have same thing for all channels.

 

[mirekti]

4 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

You can do it with the parametric Eq. With the "peak" filter. You can either use filter Q or bandwidth argument to adjust slope width and just put -6 or -9 as gain.

 

Where would that be in the Menu, please?
Is that under Convolution setup under IR file? If so, any example of syntax of the file?