HQPlayer kick start guide & feature requests

[EuroDriver]

With the best looking NAA hosting candidate (SOTM SMS100) seemingly limited to DOP and not native DSD, and the great results of WS 2012 with AO running JPlay and JRMC, then the ultimate dream system would be beefy Win 7/8 or MAC doing the heavy lifting with HQP Desktop, and then a nice quiet CAP's with a server CPU and server MoBo running WS2012, able to load ASIO drivers that can handle DSD256, and running a WS2012 version of NAA

 

I know WS2012 is data through put overkill, but it works and there are hundreds of happy users out there using Phil's AO to tweak the OS into a very quiet operating mode

 

I am confident that a collaboration between Miska and Phil would increase sales of both and hit sound quality out of the ball park !

[giannicimbalo]

A request: WDM device driver

 

I am not sure if Miska is willing to add this feature and if it is possible to add similar features to OSX and Linux platforms, however it could be very useful in various ways..............

 

I hope other users are going to second my request.

 

One for sure...will be a great improvement for a GREAT player.

[pocarrie]

One for sure...will be a great improvement for a GREAT player.

Excellent idea!! It would be a dream...?Please Miska do the miracle for all of us HQPlayer fans! ??

[One and a half]

One for sure...will be a great improvement for a GREAT player.

 

Agreed, no mention though either yay or nay, I bet he's working on it.

[Jabs1542]

Regardless of how he does it, it would be a great idea and let him escape from the GUI business. I gather from some of his responses that he is more interested in the science and SQ aspects - which is great for all of us.

[OpusOne]

There is hope. I did a bit of research and found that ALSA will have native DSD support for XMOS based USB DACs, including the iFi iDSD micro/nano). That will unlock DSD512 playback over USB that DoP is incapable of. Apparently, it will generally available with ALSA release 1.0.29 . The problem is I am a linux newbie and i do not/dare not patch the current ALSA and re-build from the source that is available... sigh! Maybe someone who is an expert like Miska can help with this and build it into the images for Rasp-pi/Cubox-i or incorporate it into a new libasound for us to grab I am not even sure if i am using the right linux lingo, so i apologize first for my shallow knowledge.

[OpusOne]

With the best looking NAA hosting candidate (SOTM SMS100) seemingly limited to DOP and not native DSD, and the great results of WS 2012 with AO running JPlay and JRMC, then the ultimate dream system would be beefy Win 7/8 or MAC doing the heavy lifting with HQP Desktop, and then a nice quiet CAP's with a server CPU and server MoBo running WS2012, able to load ASIO drivers that can handle DSD256, and running a WS2012 version of NAA

 

I know WS2012 is data through put overkill, but it works and there are hundreds of happy users out there using Phil's AO to tweak the OS into a very quiet operating mode

 

I am confident that a collaboration between Miska and Phil would increase sales of both and hit sound quality out of the ball park !

 

I have to say i like this idea a lot, and perhaps want to generalize it a little more. If Miska can make NAA run on any windows machine (WS2012 or Win7/8), a lot more people can start their journey with NAA as I am sure a lot us have old windows machine lying around.

[Freann]

I’m intrigued by a NAA solution. But from my perspective I would much rather see something else: a proper tablet + desktop combination.

 

 

The desktop app has no GUI and does three things:

- OS interaction

- library

- dac interaction

 

 

Instead everything is controlled from an app on a tablet. It’s a bit like iTunes remote, except the tablet app completely replaces the deskop GUI.

 

 

I want to sit in my sofa with an iPad browsing and discovering music. I don’t want to use a laptop, mess around with a vnc connection or semi touch interface.

 

 

I want a proper app on a glossy tablet and a seamless experience with a small computer hidden among my tube amps. Actually – forget about the “computer”, it’s about devices and touch interfaces.

[Jabs1542]

Windows RDC (Remote Desktop Connection), I'm essentially running my CAPS server on my iPad. Place HQP in full screen mode and you are good to go.

 

However, I do admit that with well over 1,000 albums it takes forever to get down to the "S's" and "T's", and filtering by genre would be huge as well.

[Superdad]

If Miska can make NAA run on any windows machine (WS2012 or Win7/8), a lot more people can start their journey with NAA as I am sure a lot us have old windows machine lying around.

 

I think porting the NAA s/w to run under Windows defeats the SQ benefit purpose of the scheme. The stripped down Linux/NAA images Miska provides run vastly fewer processes than any Windows installation ever will. So if you have an "old Windows machine lying around," just install the Linux/NAA on it. Windows serves no purpose here.

[Esprit]

Is there a "perfect for HQPlayer" NAA from SolidRun products?

[OpusOne]

I think porting the NAA s/w to run under Windows defeats the SQ benefit purpose of the scheme. The stripped down Linux/NAA images Miska provides run vastly fewer processes than any Windows installation ever will. So if you have an "old Windows machine lying around," just install the Linux/NAA on it. Windows serves no purpose here.

 

Agreed, That the general wisdom; in fact I i have gone that route, installing stripped down linux on a couple of old machines to be the NAA. However, i ran into this issue of the current ALSA driver not supporting native DSD. Hopefully, the new ALSA release will solve that.

[Miska]

Agreed, That the general wisdom; in fact I i have gone that route, installing stripped down linux on a couple of old machines to be the NAA. However, i ran into this issue of the current ALSA driver not supporting native DSD. Hopefully, the new ALSA release will solve that.

 

DoP works fine though... With the limitations, so iDSD Nano up to DSD128 and iDSD Micro up to DSD256...

[OpusOne]

DoP works fine though... With the limitations, so iDSD Nano up to DSD128 and iDSD Micro up to DSD256...

 

Yes, DoP works, but with quirks. I guess i am spoilt with the ASIO drivers for the iDSD DACs available on window platforms, not only does it do DSD512 native, it also avoids the loud pops during track switching that plagues DoP during DSD material playback know iFi is trying to mitigate this problem with a firmware update, but by all accounts, the new firmware only reduces the pops. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the new linux ALSA drivers that does native DSD will be like the ASIO drivers and deal with the track switching pops issue.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I’m intrigued by a NAA solution. But from my perspective I would much rather see something else: a proper tablet + desktop combination.

 

 

The desktop app has no GUI and does three things:

- OS interaction

- library

- dac interaction

 

 

Instead everything is controlled from an app on a tablet. It’s a bit like iTunes remote, except the tablet app completely replaces the deskop GUI.

 

 

I want to sit in my sofa with an iPad browsing and discovering music. I don’t want to use a laptop, mess around with a vnc connection or semi touch interface.

 

 

I want a proper app on a glossy tablet and a seamless experience with a small computer hidden among my tube amps. Actually – forget about the “computer”, it’s about devices and touch interfaces.

 

I'm achieving exactly this with a combination of xbmc and the remote app for xbmc on iPad.

 

A tap of an album or playlist on the iPad app causes HQPlayer to launch and play the album on the desktop machine.

 

Your computer must be running xbmc as well as HQPlayer. Additionally I've installed a Subsonic server on the computer.

 

Subsonic allows you to access your music library both locally and remotely.

 

There is an addon for xbmc that allows Subsonic to be accessed by xbmc. I modified the scripts for this addon so that the selected music will play through HQPlayer automatically.

 

I did the same thing for Qobuz.

 

geoff

[Jabs1542]

Geoff,

 

Ypu're doing some impressive stuff integrating xbmc with HQP (and other items). You had mentioned a blog and pictures in a different thread, does that exist yet? Where?

 

So the ultimate question (for me at this time) have you mastered integrating a better GUI (such as JRMC) with xbmc for selecting tracks/albums to play with HQP?

 

The current interface with HQP works but it's not really "browse friendly" with a iPad and over a thousand albums. I use the soft keyboard for filters but filters are a bit precise which works great if I already know what I want to hear - but that's not browsing.

 

Reading up on xbmc...

[bibo01]

In this post it is explained + video how to integrate JRiver, but it could be Foobar as well, with HQPlayer.

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexthardware.com%2Fforum%2Fcmp2-cmp-cplay%2F81480-hqplayer-52.html%23post916118&edit-text=

[Jabs1542]

Bibo01 - I am trying... I read the thread a few times and watched the youtube a few times but can't quite figure everything out. It looks like he is forcing HQP to remain on the top (CTRL+ T, which doesn't work for me) and is using it like pane to drag file into. Not exactly the integration I was looking for but it DOES resolve the GUzi issue and it DOES use HQP as the primary file streamer. I have admit the technique has potential for me because JRMC is by far my best GUI, I somewhat built my library around it and have 16 additional custom Views under Audio - mostly Catalog views.

 

Geoff - I downloaded xbmc / Kodi and cannot begin to figure out how to make this thing output to HQP (you mentioned an Audiophile setting in another thread, I can't find this).

 

So close - yet so far...

[Jabs1542]

I found a little utility that allows me to keep a window on the top of all windows, it also allows me to snap the edges inside a frame. With this I can place HQP in the frame on the left of JRMC underneath the Audio Views I created. This works pretty good when I am at the computer using a mouse - so I made accomplished some improvement.

 

However when I go to the iPad Mini that I use for a remote things don't work so well. The screen resizes due to resolution and aspect ration, HQP can only minimize so small (partial problem), and maneuvering within JRMC itself on a tablet isn't near as nice as it is with JRemote.

 

Now that I've played with this I have a better idea of what I am asking for - the ability for JRMC to output to HQP much like it would an ASIO driver. This would allow me to use JRemote on my iPad Mini to select music that JRMC would then command to HQP to play. I don't see this happening any time soon so I guess I'll just dream about it and use HQP the way it is - which is absolutely ok when I know what I want to listen to and am not browsing.

[bibo01]

Jabs1542,

I think you worked out that, using the utility WindowOn Top, Ctrl+T (in v1.1.9.3, in v2 it'sWin+T) allows to keep HQPlayer on top.

To solve you problem, and many others', HQPlayer would require a WDM driver (for Windows only) so all audio applications would redirect their output to HQPlayer. For example, one could even use JRemote but output is through HQPlayer. I made this request here.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Geoff,

 

Ypu're doing some impressive stuff integrating xbmc with HQP (and other items). You had mentioned a blog and pictures in a different thread, does that exist yet? Where?

 

So the ultimate question (for me at this time) have you mastered integrating a better GUI (such as JRMC) with xbmc for selecting tracks/albums to play with HQP?

 

The current interface with HQP works but it's not really "browse friendly" with a iPad and over a thousand albums. I use the soft keyboard for filters but filters are a bit precise which works great if I already know what I want to hear - but that's not browsing.

 

Reading up on xbmc...

 

The blog is at Lossless Streaming Services - Blogs - Computer Audiophile.

 

I'm afraid I haven't got around to adding the screenshots yet. The blog is my story over the last couple of years of trying to get both Qobuz and local files to play through HQP with the kind of searching and browsing features people are used to with iTunes and the remote app or J River and J Remote.

 

You may want to skip towards the end of the blog where I describe the method I'm using now for Qobuz.

 

XBMC has the advantage of being scriptable and there area many add-ons which exist for it, most of which don't interest me. There is an add-on for Qobuz though and I have simply modified the scripts for that Qobuz XBMC add-on to launch HQP and play through HQP each time an album, playlist or song is tapped on from within the XBMC remote app for IOS or Android.

 

If you're a Qobuz HiFi subscriber you just need to install this add-on from within XBMC, then go to add-on settings and fill in your username and password. Then go to the "Audiophile" tab which I've added within the settings and turn on the "Audiophile" option.

 

I've added a further option here to allow you to turn on or off Gapless playback. Gapless has the advantage of loading all the tracks from an album or playlist into HQP at once and playing from the list. The problem is that Qobuz recycles its URLs for each track, so there is no guarantee that a long album or playlist will play to the end.

 

For this reason I've enabled you to turn gapless off. This fetches the url for each track one track at a time, so there is no danger of not playing to the end of long albums or playlists. The downside is that, of course, it won't be truly gapless. I've added a slider to allow you to choose the number of seconds between each track. This needs to be enough time to allow HQP to quit and relaunch each time a new track needs to be loaded. I've found 8 seconds to be optimum so that is the default.

 

Make this value too short and you risk chopping off the end of a track before it has finished playing, too long and the gap between tracks will be too long.

 

There is also an add-on for XBMC to allow XBMC to interface with a Subsonic server. I have also modified the scripts for this add-on in a similar way. A subsonic server will need to be installed on your machine of choice and be loaded with your local music library. This doesn't suffer from the disadvantages of Qobuz's recyclable URLs, so playback is always gapless and those additional choices are not needed. Just turn on my "Audiophile" mode in the Subsonic add-on settings and everything you select to play will play through HQP.

 

The beauty of Subsonic is that it also allows you to stream your music library remotely. A bit like creating your own Qobuz type service; but using your personal music library from home.

 

My version of the Subsonic XBMC add-on is something I've not officially released yet, so PM me if you would like me to send you a copy.

 

I will try to add some screen shots this week to make it clearer. Currently I'm in hospital with appendicitis and due to have an op today. As soon as I feel up to it, I'll update that blog page as promised.

 

Just one last quick mention for Qobuz subscribers: When using the non-gapless mode you will not be able to select the most demanding poly-sinc filter within HQP. This is because it takes too long to construct this filter each time a new track is loaded. The poly-sinc-2s variant and other less demanding filters work fine in this mode though.

 

Obviously for gapless playback poly-sinc becomes viable because you only have to wait once at the beginning of an entire album or playlist.

[Jabs1542]

Jabs1542,

I think you worked out that, using the utility WindowOn Top, Ctrl+T (in v1.1.9.3, in v2 it'sWin+T) allows to keep HQPlayer on top.

To solve you problem, and many others', HQPlayer would require a WDM driver (for Windows only) so all audio applications would redirect their output to HQPlayer. For example, one could even use JRemote but output is through HQPlayer. I made this request here.

 

Thanks for the Win+T tip, that allows me to remove this little utility app - not fond of unnecessary overhead.

 

I was wondering if WDM would be the solution, so maybe there is some hope after all.

 

thanks

[Jabs1542]

The blog is at Lossless Streaming Services - Blogs - Computer Audiophile.

 

I'm afraid I haven't got around to adding the screenshots yet. The blog is my story over the last couple of years of trying to get both Qobuz and local files to play through HQP with the kind of searching and browsing features people are used to with iTunes and the remote app or J River and J Remote.

 

Thanks for the link and the thorough response. And good luck on the Op.

[Esprit]

Is there a "perfect for HQPlayer" NAA from SolidRun products?

CuBox i2 eX versus CuBox i4Pro?

[ericuco]

CuBox i2 eX versus CuBox i4Pro?

 

I am using the CuBox i4Pro. Not a huge price difference in the models so why not get the fastest.