HQ Player

[Miska]

14 minutes ago, bogi said:

• If there is too less free RAM available, HQPlayer may simply not start the playback without any message. It happened me more times that for example after closing Firefox it started successfully.

 

This can happen if you DAC is selected as default audio output device for the OS. I'd recommend to make sure the DAC is not the default audio device. Browser may be keeping the DAC reserved and HQPlayer is not able to gain exclusive access of the audio device. Note that this also depends on what site is open in the currently active browser tab. For example Roon forum is keeping audio device busy.

 

Although Windows should be giving priority to applications requesting exclusive access... There's a setting for this in Windows sound settings. OTOH, Windows has annoying habit of changing default audio device by itself without asking, when new USB audio device appears... For me, Windows tends to change default audio output device to my monitor every time I turn on the monitor... :D

 

[bogi]

16 minutes ago, Miska said:

OTOH, Windows has annoying habit of changing default audio device by itself without asking, when new USB audio device appears... For me, Windows tends to change default audio output device to my monitor every time I turn on the monitor... :D

That's true... Maybe HQPlayer could perform the same thing what happens after opening and confirming the Settings dialog when playback is started but audio device is not available.

[Miska]

9 minutes ago, bogi said:

That's true... Maybe HQPlayer could perform the same thing what happens after opening and confirming the Settings dialog when playback is started but audio device is not available.

 

Reason why you need to do that may be that Windows has changed the device GUID. You could compare settings.xml before and after...

 

If going to Settings and pressing cancel is enough, then the GUID didn't change, but the engine needed complete restart.

 

[bogi]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

If going to Settings and pressing cancel is enough, then the GUID didn't change, but the engine needed complete restart.

I set default output audio device to something I don't use currently (VB-Audio HiFi Cable). I stopped playback, backed up settings.xml, plugged out USB cable, returned it back and started playback - it did not work. I did Settings&Cancel, after that playback started successfully. The settings.xml file did not change. I checked my default audio device. It did not change - still VB-Audio HiFi Cable. I read in some discussion that it is not Windows which changes default device but the device driver. Maybe VB-Audio driver is not allowing such change.

My hypothesis seem to be confirmed by the following experiment:
I changed default output audio device to Realtek. Then I plugged out and in the DAC USB cable. This time default audio device was changed to my DAC. So it seems the Realtek driver is allowing to be substituted by plugged in device, but the VB-Audio driver not.

 

But this automated change of default audio device did not have any influence to the behavior I described above. I needed to go to Settings&Cancel. I also checked settings.xml - no change.

 

It is no real issue for me, since I am starting my DAC usually only once daily. But if HQPlayer could detect this situation, it could perform automatically the thing it does with Settings&Cancel.

[Luca72c]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

OTOH, Windows has annoying habit of changing default audio device by itself without asking, when new USB audio device appears... For me, Windows tends to change default audio output device to my monitor every time I turn on the monitor... :D

 

That should not happen if you select the right audio device while your monitor is on and connected, then switch off the monitor leaving the right audio device selected. From then on, windows should remember your choice every time you switch on the monitor, unless you change again. It's an easy and logical feature of windows 10 to allow an user to have the right audio device automatically selected when connected, if he wants to, and it works very well for me (at least using recent w10 versions)...

Anyway, i sometimes use inputs in my windows hqplayer desktop setup (using Virtual Audio Cable) and all works very easily. What is important is to insert the right frequency in URI string and to remember to press play on hqp after the enter key.

[DomiJi]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Does it appear on the playlist when you press enter?

 

Yes but nothing plays 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, bogi said:

I set default output audio device to something I don't use currently (VB-Audio HiFi Cable). I stopped playback, backed up settings.xml, plugged out USB cable, returned it back and started playback - it did not work. I did Settings&Cancel, after that playback started successfully. The settings.xml file did not change. I checked my default audio device. It did not change - still VB-Audio HiFi Cable. I read in some discussion that it is not Windows which changes default device but the device driver. Maybe VB-Audio driver is not allowing such change.

 

You likely get some error?

 

So far only ASIO driver I've seen to manage properly device disconnects and reconnects without losing their internal state is TEAC's driver.

 

 

Generally with most drivers you cannot disconnect while HQPlayer is running as the DAC/driver doesn't know how to come back in the same state it was before disconnection.

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, DomiJi said:

Yes but nothing plays 

 

And no error when you press play and then start playback on the loopback source?

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Luca72c said:

That should not happen if you select the right audio device while your monitor is on and connected, then switch off the monitor leaving the right audio device selected. From then on, windows should remember your choice every time you switch on the monitor

 

Yeah, but it doesn't, instead it jumps on the monitor's audio.

 

 

[Fredc]

I have a question on playing 24/48 or 24/96 files. Am using iFi IDSD Pro Dac and from PC Windows 10 latest version of HQplayer Desktop. I cannot set HQPlayer to 48k/256, it won't play 44.1 files and on 24/48:96 files, the sound is the wrong speed somewhat slower. I can play everything on 44.1/256 but strangely with 44.1 the 24/4:96  files will not play with any sinc filters, sinc-M, L or S.It can play some gauss filters such as gauss-long but if I uses gauss-xl it plays but crashes the whole PC after a few songs.  It's not so much the CPU I think, because when I use audacity to convert 24/96 to 24/88.2 it can plays any sinc files or gauss-xla fines. I use ADSM7EC with cuda offload on RTX3060. 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Fredc said:

I have a question on playing 24/48 or 24/96 files. Am using iFi IDSD Pro Dac and from PC Windows 10 latest version of HQplayer Desktop. I cannot set HQPlayer to 48k/256, it won't play 44.1 files and on 24/48:96 files, the sound is the wrong speed somewhat slower. I can play everything on 44.1/256 but strangely with 44.1 the 24/4:96  files will not play with any sinc filters, sinc-M, L or S.It can play some gauss filters such as gauss-long but if I uses gauss-xl it plays but crashes the whole PC after a few songs.  It's not so much the CPU I think, because when I use audacity to convert 24/96 to 24/88.2 it can plays any sinc files or gauss-xla fines. I use ADSM7EC with cuda offload on RTX3060. 

 

Does your filter settings differ between 1x and Nx filters? Since 1x filter is used for 44.1k and 48k sources, while Nx filter is used for 88.2k, 96k, etc higher rates.

 

Check that you don't have "48k DSD" checked. Also check that your SDM output rate limit is set to "44.1k x256". You cannot use sinc-Mx or such filters for 48k/96k/192k sources, because those filters can do only simple integer ratios. Use suitable poly-sinc filters instead.

 

[bogi]

19 hours ago, Miska said:

You likely get some error?

No. Playback stopped. USB cable disconnected and connected. Play button pressed. After a second the play button is again active.

 

19 hours ago, Miska said:

So far only ASIO driver I've seen to manage properly device disconnects and reconnects without losing their internal state is TEAC's driver.

Yes, that's my experience with every DAC I tried.

 

19 hours ago, Miska said:

Generally with most drivers you cannot disconnect while HQPlayer is running as the DAC/driver doesn't know how to come back in the same state it was before disconnection.

OK, but if HQPlayer would be able to detect this situation during playback start, it perhaps could try to re-initialize the engine in the same way as when Settings & Cancel is done. Only as a suggestion to consider for more convenience.

[Luca72c]

9 minutes ago, bogi said:

OK, but if HQPlayer would be able to detect this situation during playback start, it perhaps could try to re-initialize the engine in the same way as when Settings & Cancel is done. Only as a suggestion to consider for more convenience.

 

Have you tried using a NAA? 

[Miska]

7 minutes ago, bogi said:

No. Playback stopped. USB cable disconnected and connected. Play button pressed. After a second the play button is again active.

 

Yeah, never disconnect a DAC while HQPlayer is running.

 

7 minutes ago, bogi said:

OK, but if HQPlayer would be able to detect this situation during playback start, it perhaps could try to re-initialize the engine in the same way as when Settings & Cancel is done. Only as a suggestion to consider for more convenience.

 

No, because it would reset the state behind your back. Like all the runtime filter and matrix profile selections are reset. Now it is clear it happens when you do it manually.

 

And the failure is usually obscure enough not to be sure why things got broken. In addition, HQPlayer doesn't know if it would succeed.

 

[bogi]

Just now, Luca72c said:

Have you tried using a NAA? 

If I well remember no such issue with NAA. What I wrote is about direct connection. I am using both, depending on place where I listen to music.

[bogi]

3 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Yeah, never disconnect a DAC while HQPlayer is running.

 

 

No, because it would reset the state behind your back. Like all the runtime filter and matrix profile selections are reset. Now it is clear it happens when you do it manually.

 

And the failure is usually obscure enough not to be sure why things got broken. In addition, HQPlayer doesn't know if it would succeed.

 

I understand your view ... but consider this quite obvious situation: If you start HQPlayer before turning your DAC on, nothing is broken, but you must go to Settings (or restart HQPlayer). Very unusual for any audio application.

 

IMO one attempt on playback start would be suitable. In the case of success some appropriate status message could be displayed on the bottom line, for example something like "Device status changed, engine reinitialized with default settings".

As I wrote, it is no real issue, only a suggestion to discuss. I could also create a small button on Windows taskbar running a suitable hqp-control2 command, then the re-initialization would be one click only.

[Miska]

2 hours ago, bogi said:

I understand your view ... but consider this quite obvious situation: If you start HQPlayer before turning your DAC on, nothing is broken, but you must go to Settings (or restart HQPlayer). Very unusual for any audio application.

 

That is not supposed to work. HQPlayer cannot present it's GUI without being able to access the DAC.

 

HQPlayer is quite unusual audio application.

 

What you are asking is equivalent of booting up a computer without CPU or RAM. And then also later removing CPU or RAM from a running computer and then putting it back on the fly and expecting things to continue working.

 

2 hours ago, bogi said:

IMO one attempt on playback start would be suitable. In the case of success some appropriate status message could be displayed on the bottom line, for example something like "Device status changed, engine reinitialized with default settings".

 

It also means all remote control connections are dropped. Essentially what you are doing now with settings is equal to restarting HQPlayer application. I could as well make HQPlayer just exit in such case, then you restart it and things are back to normal.

 

2 hours ago, bogi said:

As I wrote, it is no real issue, only a suggestion to discuss. I could also create a small button on Windows taskbar running a suitable hqp-control2 command, then the re-initialization would be one click only.

 

Except that you cannot do it from hqp-control2, since the control API being "inside" it doesn't have view of things around it, higher up in hierarchy.

 

[bogi]

29 minutes ago, Miska said:

That is not supposed to work. HQPlayer cannot present it's GUI without being able to access the DAC.

I am usually hibernating my computer, so after powering on HQPlayer is up and running. At that time my DAC is not necessarily turned on. After your explanation I at least better understand, what's happening.

29 minutes ago, Miska said:

It also means all remote control connections are dropped.

That's true, I didn't think about that.

29 minutes ago, Miska said:

Except that you cannot do it from hqp-control2

Hm, I really run for example 'hqp-control2.exe localhost --set-mode 2' and it didn't re-initialize the engine.
I think this one could do the thing:
hqp-control2.exe localhost --configuration-load <my-conf-file>.xml
but it never worked for me (I tried it already a year ago). It never loads the xml file, with no message.

[Miska]

53 minutes ago, bogi said:

Hm, I really run for example 'hqp-control2.exe localhost --set-mode 2' and it didn't re-initialize the engine.

 

Yes it doesn't. It doesn't need to... Note that for example with ASIO in many cases when you switch between PCM and DSD output modes of switch rates, you can immediately see the DAC changing mode too. Now problem would be that HQPlayer and driver thinks DAC is in DSD mode, but if the DAC got powered off and came back, it could be in PCM mode instead unless the driver knows how to restore the past state at that point. So far only TEAC's driver has been actually doing that. Most drivers just say "I'm confused, I don't know what happened".

 

53 minutes ago, bogi said:

I think this one could do the thing:
hqp-control2.exe localhost --configuration-load <my-conf-file>.xml
but it never worked for me (I tried it already a year ago). It never loads the xml file, with no message.

 

This doesn't work with HQPlayer v4. It used to work with Desktop v3 where the control API was bound to the GUI layer.

 

It may come back later at some point. But it is pretty difficult to implement properly.

 

 

[mikicasellas]

Hi Guys,

 

Yesterday I received my Terminator-II DAC and Im trying to play with Euphony with the HQPLAYER at PCM 1411/1536 and for some reason it goes up ONLY to 706 despite that with my older Terminator I never had this issue a couple of months ago when I was trying Euphony / HQplayer and I was able to play files at 1411/ 1536 full.

 

Well even with using only Euphony and tried to upsample to those numbers it just does not allow

 

For those who owns new Terminators, is there anything that i might be missing here, any ideas ?

 

Thanks a bunch !

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

57 minutes ago, mikicasellas said:

Hi Guys,

 

Yesterday I received my Terminator-II DAC and Im trying to play with Euphony with the HQPLAYER at PCM 1411/1536 and for some reason it goes up ONLY to 706 despite that with my older Terminator I never had this issue a couple of months ago when I was trying Euphony / HQplayer and I was able to play files at 1411/ 1536 full.

 

Well even with using only Euphony and tried to upsample to those numbers it just does not allow

 

For those who owns new Terminators, is there anything that i might be missing here, any ideas ?

 

Thanks a bunch !

 

 

Install the other firmware. 

[mikicasellas]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Install the other firmware. 

Thank you !

[caesee]

On 10/13/2021 at 4:06 AM, Mahler and Bach on Computer said:

@Geoffrey Armstronghas been developing an app to make the transition smoothly.  It should be out pretty soon.  

Thanks，nd where i can find any update about that app？

[MasterWarzombie]

I guess the new mac book pro announced yesterday will perfect the use of HQPLAYER with any oversampling and modulator?

[The Computer Audiophile]

I can’t wait for someone to try the M1 Max chip and HQP.