HQPlayer kick start guide & feature requests

[EuroDriver]

A NAA version that will run on Windows Server 2012 Essentials R2

 

As nearly all DAC's have Windows drivers, and many have very good ASIO drivers, it would be nice to have an NAA version that could run WS 2012

 

Then HQ Player would leave no stone unturned, when it comes to sound quality !

 

I have become hooked to the sound of Polysinc with DSD 7, throughly enchanted !

 

If you are a dedicated Mac user please do not read the following. Windows 8 ASIO sounds noticeably better than MAC Core Audio . . . . but if you have not heard Windows ASIO, you won't know what you are missing ;-)

[manisandher]

As nearly all DAC's have Windows drivers, and many have very good ASIO drivers, it would be nice to have an NAA version that could run WS 2012

 

I'm confused. The NAA doesn't use any Windows drivers - it uses Linux drivers. What am I misunderstanding here?

 

Mani.

[EuroDriver]

I'm confused. The NAA doesn't use any Windows drivers - it uses Linux drivers. What am I misunderstanding here?

 

Mani.

 

It would be nice to have NAA software functionality on a Windows platform, so that DAC's with out Linux drivers could be hooked up to a minimalist NAA running under WS 2012

 

WS 2012 has become very configureable, the user can turn off almost service and thread, and reportedly its the best sounding OS out there.

 

Whether true or not, I have no idea, but server optimised CPU's are supposed to sound better . . . .

[manisandher]

OK, so why not just use HQPlayer ASIO on WS2012? But I'm sure you're doing this already, no?

 

In any event, my understanding is that the Network Audio Adapter is just that, i.e. an adapter - a lightweight interface between a (potentially powerful) PC (performing all sorts of DSP) and a DAC. If you connect a WS2012 PC directly to a DAC, I don't think it's an NAA anymore.

 

Miska?

 

Mani.

[EuroDriver]

OK, so why not just use HQPlayer ASIO on WS2012? But I'm sure you're doing this already, no?

 

In any event, my understanding is that the Network Audio Adapter is just that, i.e. an adapter - a lightweight interface between a (potentially powerful) PC (performing all sorts of DSP) and a DAC. If you connect a WS2012 PC directly to a DAC, I don't think it's an NAA anymore.

 

Miska?

 

Mani.

 

For a high end playback system it makes sense to do the heavy lifting on a PC with a GUI, and then the rendering on a small box with no GUI.

 

For WS 2012 to sound it's best on the small box hooked up to the DAC, everything needs to be turned off, especially the GUI

 

There are people running 2 PC arrangements with WS 2012 on each machine, the heavy lifter with GUI and the player running almost nothing, talking to each other over the player's fixed IP address so that the player can have its DHCP requests turned off.

 

I don't know if such extreme measures to quieten the player's thread count is necessary, but a 2 PC solution allows for this. The small box can also be battery powered

[manisandher]

Ah OK, I understand now. If only DAC manufacturers would supply Linux drivers as standard, people wouldn't need to go to such extremes...

 

Mani.

[Superdad]

I'm still waiting for the answer to the question I posed (might have been in the other HQP thread) about if Miska or anyone has been successful in creating an NAA boot image for an Intel Mac mini. I tried for a week with Miska's help (he even sent me several boot images that I burned and tried), but in the end we both gave up. I have two i7 minis--one on my desk and one headless in the music rack, and I would really like to make the split HQP/NAA work.

Please help...

Thanks.

[Elberoth]

Does the HQPlayer have an iPad app ?

[bibo01]

Does the HQPlayer have an iPad app ?

No, it doesn't, nor an Android one, but it works well on a Surface Pro.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Does the HQPlayer have an iPad app ?

 

You can use a Remote Desktop Connection client on an iPad and then run HQPlayer in "Fullscreen" mode. Works quite well for navigating your library; etc.

 

Miska designed Fullscreen mode for touch screen devices.

[Miska]

For a high end playback system it makes sense to do the heavy lifting on a PC with a GUI, and then the rendering on a small box with no GUI.

 

Windows itself is built around assumption that GUI is always there, ASIO API itself takes in applications window handle (HWND). I'm not sure how many drivers would accept NULL handle there.

 

In any case, Windows always requires fairly powerful PC, while NAA is designed to run on light weight and possibly battery powered hardware. Such as 400 MHz ARM9 with 64 MB of RAM. I've run NAA myself off four standard AA batteries.

 

Mac OS X is least suitable, because it lacks lot of performance features of Windows or Linux. Windows lacks some of the performance features available on Linux. But Linux is the only one that can scale down to run on a stamp-size computer that doesn't have any cooling fans, consumes minimal power and has whisper-quiet EMI/RFI footprint..

 

Technically it could be possible to make Windows version of NAA, but I'm not really sure if it makes sense.

 

Most commonly used NAA has been SolidRun's CuBox-i. Of current models CuBox-i2eX is way more than enough, i4Pro is overkill for NAA use.

[Miska]

I'm still waiting for the answer to the question I posed (might have been in the other HQP thread) about if Miska or anyone has been successful in creating an NAA boot image for an Intel Mac mini. I tried for a week with Miska's help (he even sent me several boot images that I burned and tried), but in the end we both gave up. I have two i7 minis--one on my desk and one headless in the music rack, and I would really like to make the split HQP/NAA work.

 

IIRC, the image I created worked fine on my latest generation Core i5 Mac Mini, just holding down Alt at the boot time and then the USB stick appeared on the BootCamp menu. But you could also try to download standard Debian Wheezy network install image and install it (base, without any package selections) on a USB stick and then install the networkaudiod package I provide on it. I think it should work just fine.

http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.6.0/i386/iso-cd/debian-7.6.0-i386-netinst.iso

 

But I still think something like Mac Mini is an overkill for NAA use. If you use PC hardware for NAA, I would recommend looking for some Atom based mainboard (MinnowBoard, etc) or some suitable Alix board. Otherwise I'd recommend going for some ARM board, both "armel" and "armhf" architectures are supported.

[Superdad]

Hi Miska,

In the other thread you implied that you had gotten a Debian/NAA image to work on an Intel Mac. Is that correct? If so, I'd really like to try again to make that work.

 

My new i7 Mac mini (overkill for an NAA I know) has reduced EMI via linear power of its quiet fan (circuit part of a kit we start shipping next month), an external LPS, no hard drives or wifi, and the only cable connections to it are the DC cord, Ethernet (straight to other i7 mini, not into EN switch), and the USB (with power cut) to the DAC. I boot from SD card, so I'd prefer to image the Debian/NAA onto one of those after first having success on a USB flash drive.

 

I am sure that I am not the only person interested in running your NAA on a Mac.

 

Thanks,

Alex

 

EDIT: Sorry, you must have been typing your answer at the same time as I was re-asking my question. And yes, when I have time I might get a little board to run NAA. Thanks again.

[Miska]

As an upshot of this only the last one, which is named HQPlayer Desktop can be selected from within J River to use as an external player and gets launched. I want the ASIO version to be launched as an external player because I'm using the exasound, which has native ASIO drivers.

 

If you can specify extra command line parameters for the application to be launched, add "--asio" there and you'll get HQPlayer launched with ASIO backend. The only difference in the three launch shortcuts are command line parameter given to the executable.

 

I find it very confusing in Windows to have these 3 separate versions, which don't appear to really be separate programs at all; but just a way of organising different usages of HQPlayer depending on the endpoint device.

 

There was a technical performance reason why it was done this way on Windows, but it got broken by Windows 8 (worked on Vista and 7), so that feature was removed and the three shortcut launch model is only for historical reasons. Upcoming 3.4.0 will have backend selection in Settings/Preferences on all three platforms. The old way is still supported, but is not necessary.

[Miska]

2/ Each separate track from an album or playlist causes a separate instance of HQPlayer to be launched with just that track in its transport area.

 

This is a bug in J River, it should be giving all the files/directories/playlists/whatever as multiple arguments when launching the player executable, instead of launching one player executable for each file separately.

 

By user request, HQPlayer is not restricted to single launch, but can be run as multiple parallel instances with different configurations for each.

[EuroDriver]

Technically it could be possible to make Windows version of NAA, but I'm not really sure if it makes sense.

 

for compatible driver availability, every DAC has a windows usb driver !

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

If you can specify extra command line parameters for the application to be launched, add "--asio" there and you'll get HQPlayer launched with ASIO backend. The only difference in the three launch shortcuts are command line parameter given to the executable.

 

 

 

There was a technical performance reason why it was done this way on Windows, but it got broken by Windows 8 (worked on Vista and 7), so that feature was removed and the three shortcut launch model is only for historical reasons. Upcoming 3.4.0 will have backend selection in Settings/Preferences on all three platforms. The old way is still supported, but is not necessary.

 

Thanks Miska, I've only just seen this. I'm trying to figure out a way to add the --asio parameter in J River using their expression editor.

 

It's good news though, that version 3.4.0 will avoid this necessity.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

This is a bug in J River, it should be giving all the files/directories/playlists/whatever as multiple arguments when launching the player executable, instead of launching one player executable for each file separately.

 

By user request, HQPlayer is not restricted to single launch, but can be run as multiple parallel instances with different configurations for each.

 

I accept that this is probably a bug in J River and I'll post that on their forum. Somehow though, Foobar manages to work around this bug and assemble all files from an album or playlist into its own single playlist.

 

Let's see what the folks at J River have to say.

 

Thanks,

 

Geoff

[Miska]

Somehow though, Foobar manages to work around this bug and assemble all files from an album or playlist into its own single playlist.

 

Probably the subsequent launches just add the given files to already existing instance, instead of launching second instance of the application. For example many web browsers do the same. However, this of course means that you can have only one instance running.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Probably the subsequent launches just add the given files to already existing instance, instead of launching second instance of the application. For example many web browsers do the same. However, this of course means that you can have only one instance running.

 

Ok, I understand. Of course I would only ever want a single instance of HQPlayer running at any given time though and I think that would be the same for most people.

 

It is possible to pass arguments to an external player using J River's expression language. I'm trying to figure out how that works to see if there's a solution there.

[Miska]

Ok, I understand. Of course I would only ever want a single instance of HQPlayer running at any given time though and I think that would be the same for most people.

 

I think there were two cases where people wanted to have multiple instances running. One was radio stations playing out different playlists on different channels. Another case was people playing back different music to different NAA's from one server (or one set locally and another one to a NAA).

[wappinghigh]

HQ Player would need to be able to mount a UPnP share for it to be any use to me. That's my only real request.

 

....Other than seeing an NAA device like a Cubox Pro configured with HQ player working straight out of the box....

 

Thanks for this very practical thread BTW. Much appreciated.

 

Cheers.

[wappinghigh]

Does the HQPlayer have an iPad app ?

That's one of it's major deficits..

[Bob Stern]

Technically it could be possible to make Windows version of NAA, but I'm not really sure if it makes sense.

 

for compatible driver availability; every DAC has a windows usb driver!

 

Not mine! (Alas.)

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I think there were two cases where people wanted to have multiple instances running. One was radio stations playing out different playlists on different channels. Another case was people playing back different music to different NAA's from one server (or one set locally and another one to a NAA).

 

Perhaps it could be an option in the next version, whether or not to allow multiple instances? I've seen this in other software. Actually I think it was J River.