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2 minutes ago, MemoryPlayer said:

@Miska Do you agree?

 

poly-sinc-ext2: Fantastic grip, instrument separation, gradations, and quiet. Better than the poly-sinc-ext. Decent amount of textural cues as well. Not very warm but not cold either.

 

Yes. poly-sinc-ext2 is also totally different filter from poly-sinc-ext. I like ext2, but never really the ext. So I expect large differences.

 

4 minutes ago, MemoryPlayer said:

sinc-L: By far the most resolving filter on this list. It digs DEEP but remains very analog sounding. I could start to hear the individual members of the audience. Cymbals and hi-hats have more “clang” and material to them. There’s an organic weight and presence to all instruments and performers. Very transparent and separation is uncanny. Amazing filter if you enjoy an uncolored sound. Personally, I prefer a more warm-blooded tone.

 

I disagree about this. Since it is non-apodizing it is not very good for uncolored sound, because it leaves the high frequency aliasing mess in place. So cymbals and such will have some unnatural glare and sheen around them due to the aliasing components. It will also put out about million times more (120 dB) ultrasonic noise than ext2 or sinc-S.

 

I'd say sinc-S is the "most resolving" filter, but may have too much edginess and hardness in the sound for many albums.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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11 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Yes. poly-sinc-ext2 is also totally different filter from poly-sinc-ext. I like ext2, but never really the ext. So I expect large differences.

 

 

I disagree about this. Since it is non-apodizing it is not very good for uncolored sound, because it leaves the high frequency aliasing mess in place. So cymbals and such will have some unnatural glare and sheen around them due to the aliasing components. It will also put out about million times more (120 dB) ultrasonic noise than ext2 or sinc-S.

 

I'd say sinc-S is the "most resolving" filter, but may have too much edginess and hardness in the sound for many albums.

 

I'm receiving an iFi Diablo DAC/Amp that uses a dual BB1793 ancient DAC chipset, so for these ones ASDM7EC is better than ASDM5EC?

BTW, sounds as the T+A HA200 uses the same DAC chipset only for PCM, am I right? Do you use ASDM7EC with your HA200?

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2 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

It doesn't help, because you would still need OS and HQPlayer code built and optimized for the ARM variant that the CPU has.

 

Since you have been able to build and optimize an ARM variant of HQP for MacOS, may I conclude that what we would need is the success of the teams working at delivering a decent ARM/Apple Silicon compliant Linux and that it is those efforts you don't believe in? 

Too bad for I loved the idea of using your dedicated OS + I would have kept a better integration with Audirvana (I think I'll keep using it for Library mgmt with 2 more steps : reveal in Finder on my laptop the folder containing the music files and then D&Drop them in HQP)

Is it a good idea to trim MacOS in order to optimize SQ since I will use it only for music and films ? How?

I read that some run their Mini not only headless but even without Screen Share : how is it possible ? ethernet cable to a machine running HQP Client ? simply wifi ? does it improve SQ?

One advantage I perceived as belonging to Desktop was the capability to run all sound (Netflix, Web radios, IINA for videos, etc) via Audio Hijack/Loopback but I failed (see my second post) ; is there a better alternative or something I did wrong ?

Thank you

HQ Player 4 Mac Mini M1

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Dear Miska,

I have been having a new issue since (I believe) the last upgrade.

After a certain number of hours that I am not playing any music, but with all equipment turned on, maybe 8-10 hours later when I go back to my room and press play in Roon... Nothing happens. All seems normal on the Roon panel. I quit Roon and come back, no music. I quit HQP and come back, now the music will play when I press Play.

 

Am I alone with this issue?

Mac Mini Late 2014 (16G/SSD) w Uptone JS-2 w OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini RAID (JS-2) / Roon

Aqua LinQ w EtherCon cable (Ghent) w Uptone EtherRegen w Uptone JS-2

Aqua Formula xHD w Ocellia RCA Interconnect & Shunyata Delta NR

Kora TB 200 Integrated Amplifier w Audio Art Power Cable

Magico V2 w Ocellia speaker cables w Shunyata Dark Field Elevator & JL Audio E-Sub e110 X 2

All equipment, including subwoofer on Modulum platforms (modulumaudio.com)

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3 minutes ago, jacques_racine said:

Dear Miska,

I have been having a new issue since (I believe) the last upgrade.

After a certain number of hours that I am not playing any music, but with all equipment turned on, maybe 8-10 hours later when I go back to my room and press play in Roon... Nothing happens. All seems normal on the Roon panel. I quit Roon and come back, no music. I quit HQP and come back, now the music will play when I press Play.

 

Am I alone with this issue?

It happens to me invariably when I am away from it for a few hours.  I simply (via TightVNC) go to settings (as if I am going to change filters, etc) and hit ok.  Seems to work every time, and no need to close either Roon or HQP.

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29 minutes ago, ted_b said:

It happens to me invariably when I am away from it for a few hours.  I simply (via TightVNC) go to settings (as if I am going to change filters, etc) and hit ok.  Seems to work every time, and no need to close either Roon or HQP.

I find the same and more frequent since 4.18.1. Go back and try it for a few days to confirm.

 

I found that separating HQPe and NAA to be a good thing. Both machines running HQPeOS (as opposed to NAA image) with just the appropriate daemons running, respectively.

 

Asrock x370 Pro gaming via USB to Holo May would simply go poof and reboot after a few hours or a few minutes. Disabling Matrix processing helped but the convolution files are unchanged for over a year. New copies didn't help if there was any corruption.

 

Separating the two processes has helped so far to become as stable as 4.18.1 was for me but it's only been a couple days and not more than 30 mins. before a restart. I've requested a license transfer but I hope Jussi is taking the weekend off :) The man works nearly nonstop and we bless him for it.

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22 hours ago, MemoryPlayer said:

I'm receiving an iFi Diablo DAC/Amp that uses a dual BB1793 ancient DAC chipset, so for these ones ASDM7EC is better than ASDM5EC?

 

ASDM7EC is better for BB/TI chips, especially if you select AFIR4 analog filter on the chip.

 

How this is represented by iFi varies.

 

22 hours ago, MemoryPlayer said:

BTW, sounds as the T+A HA200 uses the same DAC chipset only for PCM, am I right? Do you use ASDM7EC with your HA200?

 

At least on earlier models like DAC8 DSD it was 4x PCM1795.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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22 hours ago, Jean Paul D said:

Since you have been able to build and optimize an ARM variant of HQP for MacOS, may I conclude that what we would need is the success of the teams working at delivering a decent ARM/Apple Silicon compliant Linux and that it is those efforts you don't believe in? 

 

Yes, because Apple has never supported running Linux on their hardware and they don't provide necessary hardware specifications and such for people developing Linux that would run on their silicon. Especially with their own silicon Apple is certainly only interested in making macOS run well.

 

22 hours ago, Jean Paul D said:

Is it a good idea to trim MacOS in order to optimize SQ since I will use it only for music and films ? How?

 

No, likely it will just break something. Apple has already optimized macOS.

 

22 hours ago, Jean Paul D said:

One advantage I perceived as belonging to Desktop was the capability to run all sound (Netflix, Web radios, IINA for videos, etc) via Audio Hijack/Loopback but I failed (see my second post) ; is there a better alternative or something I did wrong ?

 

In any case it won't work decently for video use, because there is over one second processing delay.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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38 minutes ago, Miska said:

No, likely it will just break something. Apple has already optimized macOS.

 

For music or something else? What criteria do you use to rate this?

 

I was just taking a screenshot of my McBook Air (Intel i5 Core), where Google Chrome is annoying me again with a high load. I only have this page open. Almost 400 processes (twice as many as Windows unoptimized) and almost 1,500 threads, the majority of which are definitely doing something other than playing music. I only use my Air for the remote control of Roon / HQPlayer.

 

40809904jv.png

 

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2 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

For music or something else?

 

For multimedia and many other media use cases.

 

2 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

What criteria do you use to rate this?

 

Why would they purposefully ship a product in a very competitive space that they would have made intentionally bad performance-wise?

 

I believe they have spent enormous amount of effort to optimize the OS for their hardware. And they can do it very well, since they have all the possible information about the hardware.

 

4 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

where Google Chrome is annoying me again with a high load

 

That's not Apple's software. Don't install Chrome at all in first place. Use Safari... Or Opera which uses same engine as Chrome, but is much better... ;)

 

4 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

Almost 400 processes (twice as many as Windows unoptimized) and almost 1,500 threads, the majority of which are definitely doing something other than playing music.

 

It doesn't matter, since most of them are sleeping and not being executed by the CPU at all. Like for example this Linux development workstation I'm using right now has 513 processes of which 511 are sleeping most of the time (like right now). And at least 508 sleeping practically always. They get woken up when they have some work to do.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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2 hours ago, Miska said:

Why would they purposefully ship a product in a very competitive space that they would have made intentionally bad performance-wise?

 

Because they don't see audio applications as their main purpose?

 

2 hours ago, Miska said:

I believe they have spent enormous amount of effort to optimize the OS for their hardware.

 

I think so. It corresponds to the philosophy of Steve Jobs that hardware and software cannot be separated from each other.

 

2 hours ago, Miska said:

That's not Apple's software.

 

Yes, but all software is tested by Apple before it is approved for MacOS.

 

2 hours ago, Miska said:

It doesn't matter, since most of them are sleeping and not being executed by the CPU at all.

 

It should happen that not all processes simply sleep, but wake up at an inconvenient time. If the processes are not there, that cannot happen. 😉

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On 3/21/2021 at 8:47 AM, Jean Paul D said:

Is it a good idea to trim MacOS

 

Disclamier: I dont know much about this but ... ;-)

 

My understanding is that OSX in general and M1 specifically are NOT a good audio platform. OSX does not support native DSD for once, and I never read/hear that people prefer it sound-wise. Its either some Linux flavor or windows10 or 2019 server.

 

M1 looks like very interesting hardware but is not well supported software wise, see above. Maybe Microsoft will support arm better in the future but totally  unclear now as much as I understand.

 

So if you  insist on a Mac, go Intel mac mini and use bootcamp for your linux or windows of choice

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Bootcamp (or other bootloaders) can be used with either Windows or Linux, I believe.

 

I see no reason to suppose MacOS with M1 is bad for audio, though I do wish Apple would enable native DSD, allowing the CPU to work half as hard.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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1 hour ago, StreamFidelity said:

Because they don't see audio applications as their main purpose?

 

They have traditionally seen multimedia applications as one of their major markets. That includes audio, video, graphics and media creation. They optimize quite a lot specifically for this area.

 

Microsoft does similar for the Windows 10, since gaming is one of their major application categories.

 

1 hour ago, StreamFidelity said:

It corresponds to the philosophy of Steve Jobs that hardware and software cannot be separated from each other.

 

Their strength is that everything is under single roof. While for example Microsoft needs to co-operate with Intel and AMD to get things together properly. OTOH, Intel spends a lot of effort working directly on Linux (I was working there on that area too).

 

1 hour ago, StreamFidelity said:

Yes, but all software is tested by Apple before it is approved for MacOS.

 

Haha, no it is not. They don't test HQPlayer either. They have just some automatic tests for certain specific items. Same goes for iOS applications too, but it is more strict there (as well as macOS App Store).

 

1 hour ago, StreamFidelity said:

It should happen that not all processes simply sleep, but wake up at an inconvenient time.

 

It doesn't matter usually. At least I haven't experienced much audio drop-outs due to such. And macOS scheduler is surprisingly clever - total opposite of Windows one.

 

Sure if you want something really streamlined, HQPlayer OS is the right one for you.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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58 minutes ago, Mops911 said:

My understanding is that OSX in general and M1 specifically are NOT a good audio platform.

 

I don't share that opinion... ;)

 

58 minutes ago, Mops911 said:

OSX does not support native DSD for once

 

That is true, but OTOH, if you bypass CoreAudio altogether for example by using Linux-based NAA for audio output, macOS doesn't have slightest idea whether application is playing DSD or something else. So in other words, it doesn't need to know about DSD.

 

1 hour ago, Mops911 said:

Its either some Linux flavor or windows10 or 2019 server.

 

Windows doesn't support DSD either. Only because ASIO drivers bypass the Windows audio stack and thus just like above, Windows doesn't have slightest idea what application is playing.

 

Linux does actually support DSD...

 

1 hour ago, Mops911 said:

M1 looks like very interesting hardware but is not well supported software wise, see above.

 

I think for the sake of this thread it is enough that HQPlayer specifically supports it,  on macOS.

 

1 hour ago, Mops911 said:

Maybe Microsoft will support arm better in the future but totally  unclear now as much as I understand.

 

Personally, I couldn't care less about Microsoft supporting something...

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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24 minutes ago, Miska said:

I don't share that opinion... ;)

 

now that I have your ear ;-)

 

a) you say that the SQ does  NOT depend on the OS HQPlayer runs in?

b) what about NAA (besides that OSX does not support native DSD)? Any potential differences in SQ here between OS?

 

Common knowledge in this forum is that OS matters. Not trying to troll here in any way, just to get your opinion why people "hear" differences in OS and where it might come from.

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4 minutes ago, Mops911 said:

a) you say that the SQ does  NOT depend on the OS HQPlayer runs in?

 

Not directly no. Sometimes indirectly depending on the hardware and system in question.

 

5 minutes ago, Mops911 said:

b) what about NAA (besides that OSX does not support native DSD)? Any potential differences in SQ here between OS?

 

The most electrically quietest hardware runs Linux particularly well, or Linux is even the only OS option available (for lot of ARM based hardware). You'd generally want low power device and OS that keeps power consumption low. And you wouldn't want any graphical things.

 

NAA is specifically created for Linux. But there are versions for macOS and Windows too, in case you really really cannot run a minimal headless Linux for the purpose (rare case).

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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