HQ Player

[bibo01]

I am now able to play Redbook->DSD256 with poly-sinc-*-2s and Redbook->DSD512 closed-form both with ASDM7. I have a 2014 MacBookPro. I have enabled CUDA and pipeline SDM, I also use the convolution engine for applying EQ. Previously I had stuttering only when HQplayer was not in the foreground. Not sure How I missed it but AppNap was enabled for HQplayer. I was not able to right click on HQPlayer app and select prevent app nap (as the option was not available).

 

I had to use command 'defaults write -app HQPlayerDesktop NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES' This did the magic and now I am back to enjoying Roon + HQplayer without any issues.

 

Hope this helps anyone having similar issues.

+1

I am glad you solved your issue.

 

Although I do not know OSX well, I said in the beginning that it could be HQPlayer not working well in b.g. (resources or priorities not allocated as necessary).

[bibo01]

I post here because this info may interest many people, including Miska and his DIY DSD DAC.

 

The news is about Amanero USB board and DSD played on Linux -

 

I have just finished to talk on the phone with Domenico, the producer of Amanero USB boards.

We had a very friendly chat, also because he comes from a town 60Km away from me.

He explained that it already exists a firmware capable of DSD512 under Linux, but he just offered the tools to designers and at the moment it is up to each one of them to patch OS in order to work in DSD natively.

I suggested to contact ALSA maintainer to make such patch public as part of Linux next release.

He will do so and keep me informed.

So sooner or later Amanero board will be able to play DSD in bitstream (non DoP) on Linux.

[bibo01]

Just because Miska owns those DACs and he can give full assistance for those models. However, HQPlayer can of course be used with any DAC device.

[bibo01]

Miska, do you have a recommendation for settings for the UD-501? I'm using poly-sinc ADSM7 which seems the highest the DAC can handle via OS X, Mac mini i5.

Here he was recommending "5.1" as best modulator, which was substituted with the present "5.2". I think modulator ADSM5/7 did not exist at the time of measurement.

[bibo01]

TY Jud, but I am not sure if it is my router, MB controller or the mSATA wireless card in my computer that is the bottle neck. With the many permutations of RDT, remote UI, server and NAA using Muso and Roon there are lots of options. My hope is to understand my issue first before cutting holes in my floor and/or running wire hither skither. At the moment I have CAT5 in the wall next to the wirelessly attached aforementioned endpoint. My question is then, what sort of data rates do I need to effectively run an NAA at DSD512, and how do I test it properly. Can I simply send some large files to and fro or do I need to study the flow more closely to see if there are spikes in the transmission?

 

If it can be helpfull, a DSD512 file is around 5.4MB/s

[bibo01]

Hmm, OK, but I assume one needs to at least multiply by two for stereo, and how does this translate into what is actually being transferred? Are we talking bits or bytes, and then is Bibo incorrect? It seemed as if I was sending 20M bps, not 22.5M bps.

I was talking Mega Byte

5.38 x 8 = 43.04 Mbps (DSD512)

43.04 / 2 = 21.52 Mbps (DSD256)

[bibo01]

Munchoba,

 

You also want to adjust DSD output bitrate in HQPlayer Settings to 5644800

[bibo01]

Munchoba,

 

also disable Exclusive mode in Roon

[bibo01]

Seems to lag a bit when playing hi res files (24/96); should I try a less difficult filter?

Regards

 

In that case you should try, if your DAC allows it, to output at 3072000 and eventually 6144000

[bibo01]

I use HQPlayer with an Yggdrasil.

 

Though I love HQPlayer's filters with other DACs, the Yggdrasil sounds better to me when I send it native files.

 

So I set both filter and dither/noise shaping to none in HQPlayer.

 

Even though I'm not having HQPlayer do any upsampling or noise shaping with the Yggdrasil, it (HQPlayer) still sounds better to me than other players do.

 

Out of curiosity, have you tried closed form filter/NS9 as well at PCM4x? What was the difference compared to no filter?

[bibo01]

Thank you for the suggestion. I looked at Muso too this morning but it does not have an android app so I wont be able to control it. To my way of thinking, there is no point in having a great library and playback software if I cannot not easily browse and play my music. For me this means a nice app I can run on my Android phone/tablet. I really do not want to have a PC + monitor + keyboard in my music room.

 

You can use any web browser, so also on Android, and digit IP address of Muso PC

 

[bibo01]

Hi All, absolute HQ Player noob here so please excuse my ignorance if this has been discussed as an issue already, I did try and search for other users of my DAC. While trying roon recently, and now testing the HQplayer integration I realised the DAC in my Moon NEO 430ha-d is DSD compatible. I decided to jump onboard with trying to convert PCM to DSD256 in HQplayer. I am on OSX and had a little trouble getting anything at first although now it seems to be working when I select any of the standard rate DSD modes, but when I try to run with the 256+fs modes, the link is broken between roon and HQplayer. I checked and the DAC is definitely compatible with DSD256 via usb which I am using from my iMac. Does anyone have any ideas as to why HQplayer isn't playing nice with these modes?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Your Mac is probably connected directly to your DAC. OSX supports DSD through DoP and for your Moon maximum rate is DSD128.

[bibo01]

Just to be more clear, the restriction isn't so much the Mac or OS X--except for the fact that Coreaudio requires DoP to send DSD (unless you have a custom ASIO driven DAC like exaSound). It is the DoP 50% overhead required for framing. So a DoP capable USB input board/DAC (such as your Lampi when updated) that can accept the rate for 512 can be driven by a Mac/DoP setup to DSD256.

If your DAC can only go non-DoP to 256, then DoP will only take you to 128.

 

Yes, for this reason probably Lampizator has taken the Linux route for their PC offering.

[bibo01]

With version 3.12.0 what does the "control by network" icon do?

 

Miska on FB:

"When not selected (button up), control connections (Muso, Roon, hqp-control) are allowed only from the same computer (localhost). When selected (button down), control connections are accepted from other devices, such as other computer or tablet on the local network. Setting is remembered over restarts. This for security and convenience of laptop users who frequently use their computers at home and while traveling."

[bibo01]

Ashok, that is precisely my question. It would be VERY cool. I am hoping that hqp-control gurus like Peter (bogi) and Geoffrey Armstrong would know a way.

 

A friend of mine - "realmessy" who sometimes is active here too - has developed a little app for Android.

A few screen captures:

 

 

"I can browse music by Composer -> Genre (Orchestral, Vocal, Chamber etc etc) -> Opera -> Artist / Year

or change the mode 'display at will (Genre, Artist, etc etc). The application connects to a server-side software developed in Python, so it can be installed anywhere - I have it on the same PC (Windows 10) with HQPlayer, but it could on a NAS where Music resides. It performs music indexing and it is responsible for connection with HQPlayer. Indexing is very fast, just over 40 seconds to perform a scan of 480 GB of flac, saving all the metadata in a NoSQL database. Once the data is saved on the db, it can do all possible and imaginable searches.

It uses TCP protocol. No playlist. It's possible to see the current playlist on the first tab. No track fwd/bwd as I do not use them."

 

He intends to add support for covers and stop there. Then he will release code on Github so someone can eventually improve on it.

[bibo01]

Indeed. The "Komputer" is a Linux beast....

 

...and it should soon be able to do DSD non-DoP

[bibo01]

Where's the 3.13b located ? I will do a try this evening and post.

 

Have a nice day. Massimiliano

 

Usual place: Signalyst - Installing HQPlayer beta

[bibo01]

It seems that Meridian is the only company so far to come out with a dac that claims it is "MQA ready". I find it interesting that they are very careful not to give any information about the components in this dac (although it is only listed as 24/192). At least nothing I could find. I thought that to actually hear this you need some new dac chip but I don't know who makes one? Is this something from TI, AKM, Burr Brown, etc? Or is this all done with software?

 

I also like Bogi found the sound very clean and interesting on first listen but without the proper dac I don't known how much is to be gained from this. Is this designed to be used only with pcm or is it compatible with DSD as well?

 

I am interested in learning more about this technology but so far it seems Meridian is the only company claiming its use without any hard information about their implementation.

 

In The General Forum section there is a long thread about MQA with many interesting measurements by Miska (which he published in his blog) and others.

[bibo01]

I have 3.13 beta 2 installed on Windows and I don't see this auto setting in the drop down list? Is there a newer beta 3.13 b3?

 

Chiodi, you are ahead of the game!

...probably in next beta or final version.

[bibo01]

Thanks. I've got the system working with this involving ROON + HQ Player on a server and dedicated NAA connected to the e18 DAC. My server is an upgraded CAPS Zuma V3 with settings (PCM) being poly-sinc-shrt-mp / NS5 / 384kHz with 96kHz filters generated from Acourate. The current issue is that whilst it's all working I'm hearing crackle / static on occasion. My first thought was that this might be because the server is under-powered but that doesn't seem to be the case as the latency on start-up is only about 5-10sec whilst CPU is running at 25% and Memory at 3.5G of 8G. Any ideas on how to diagnosis the issue would be much appreciated.

 

I would start to get chain components out of the picture and gradually restrict possible causes. For example, try direct connection with no NAA involved; not use Roon; simpler upsampling at 4x and then 2x; ...

[bibo01]

Weird. I've removed the NAA and am playing direct from HQ Player without Roon but still getting the same crackle / static. This behaviour is occasional and occurs irrespective of the filtering (to test I've tried TPDF down at 96kHz as well as no filtering). My DAC is exaSound e18 and convolution is being done at 96kHz filters. Any suggestions as to the next step to diagnose the issue?

 

Have you tried with no convolution too?

Have you tried with Foobar?

[bibo01]

Where can I download the latest beta release?

 

Signalyst - Installing HQPlayer beta

 

It seems to be a recurrent question!

[bibo01]

Looking for help. I'm a newbie to HQ Player... heard it and sounds fantastic.

 

Put HQP 3.12.0 on my CAPS server and I'm a little lost in starting... wondering what is the easiest way how to get music tracks into the play window.

 

My music is on a D Drive" SSD (separate from the "C" drive OS SSD).

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Mike

Thanks.

On OSX you can drag and drop from iTunes or Finder.

Another more expensive solution is to employ Roon as library manager sending signal to HQPlayer for processing and output.

[bibo01]

For those who are not on FB, HQPlayer Desktop and HQPlayer Embedded 3.13.0 released!

 

- Multichannel speaker distance adjustments are now available also in DirectSDM mode.

- New set of keyboard shortcuts reflecting the function button layout on Apple keyboards.

- Fine-tuning of DSD7 modulator and new filter for cleaning up MQA encoded content.

- Automatic output mode and rate switching.

- Plus usual performance improvements and bug fixes.

[bibo01]

...

Sadly I have yet to be able to get the GTX970 to work with any Linux build (tried Ubuntu 14.04 and 15.10). I'm currently auditioning audio-linix...which is based on arch linux...but that is still a no go as well...but still trying. The Nvidia linux drivers are being really temperamental on my machine.

I have seen that Piero of Audiolinux has managed to solve CUDA/Nvidia installation problems. Are you fine now?