Roon / HQPlayer Integration

[firedog]

It works well for me. Do have an occasional problem with loss of connection. But as John said, this is solved with a click on the volume icon in Roon, and then a click on the "disconnect" (broken link) icon. After that you can restart playback.

 

Outlaw: Does your Roon setup show that it recognizes and is connected to HQP? If HQP works on it's own, it should work with Roon. All Roon is doing is sending a digital stream to HQP.

 

To repeat: Are your Roon server installation and your HQP setup on the same PC? If so, define HQP as "localhost" in Roon. If they are on different PCs, then define HQP with the home network IP of its' machine in your network.

 

Worth it to look at the Roon Community thread on how to setup HQP integration. Also the Roon people are really good with support, I recommend asking support questions in the support section. There's already an HQP thread.

[firedog]

Somehow I agree with you.

I plan to hack my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10" with a newer unofficial kernel, then report.

 

Don't forget that until further developments occur, Roon only runs on Android tablets running ARM chips. I don't know your tablet, but if it is an Intel chip, Roon won't run on it.

[firedog]

Not sure exactly what you are describing. But there are various reports of playback stopping at the end of tracks, playlists.

The easy solution is to click on the volume icon in the lower right corner of Roon, and then on the volume control icon (picture of chain link) that appears. This stops the link to HQP that is "stalled". Then just click on play in Roon and play will resume. No need to close and restart Roon.

[firedog]

I have this problem too, and have to restart either Roon or HQ Player, or both. I tried clicking on the volume control, as advised here, but it doesn't do anything. Says volume is fixed. I have Roon and HQ Player running on my main PC, and I'm controlling it from the Roon app on my iPad Air 2. Everything works fine if I play an album from start to finish, but if I want to play individual tracks, and either decide to change halfway through, or change after the track has ended, I cannot play anything else. It shows as playing in Roon, but isn't handed off to HQ Player.

 

Colin

 

It isn't clicking on the volume control in Roon, it's clicking on the volume icon and then on the icon of the "chain link" that appears, then clicking on play in Roon again. Clicking on the "link" icon, breaks the connection that's not working and lets it start again when you click play. My Roon display also says volume is fixed, but this procedure works.

 

Sometimes Roon will start playing again if you simply click on the main "play" icon in Roon, even without trying the "link" icon.

[firedog]

I'm away so cannot try but have a question: How does HQP know to listen to localhost? Wouldn't you have to tell HQP to do this?

 

Thx.

 

HQP doesn' have to "know" to listen to localhost. You are telling Roon that the HQP is installed on localhost - i.e., the same machine as the Roon installation. That way when you playback something in Roon, it knows how/where to send the digital audio signal - to HQP installed on the same machine.

[firedog]

 

The above are my settings withRoon/HQP with the Mytek 102 DSD running through a SOtM SMS-100 as an NAA. The SMS-100 will only do DSD64.

 

 

Below are my settings with Roon/HQP if I connect my server directly to the Mytek over USB - no NAA and set to playback 128 DSD. (w/latest Mytek USB drivers, firmware 1.81, not 1.83)

 

 

This also works.

[firedog]

Are you using USB to Mytek? Do you have latest Mytek firmware, or at least 1.7.6? I'm not sure if DSD128 works on Mac through the USB. But I have iMac -> Thunderbolt -> Firewire -> Mytek running at DSD128. I never got Mytek working correctly with the USB3 ports of iMac, and I've been very happy with the Firewire connectivity.

 

You could try with the same way as the Firewire works, by setting the "2wire" checkbox in HQPlayer settings. Note that PCM output mode doesn't function correctly in this mode and needs to be disabled for PCM output mode to function correctly.

 

AFAIK, Mytek 192 to MAC USB DSD 128 has issues. At one point, a year or two ago, it wasn't supported at all. I'm not sure if it is now or not, and if so, how well it works. Has there been a recent FW driver update?

[firedog]

Additional feature of new build that will interest some users: The Roon Android app now works on tablets with Intel based processors - a new feature.

 

I've tried it - it works great and looks great, too.

[firedog]

They've weighed in on this over at the Roon Community and have said they are working on some new solutions with Jussi. Many (not all) of the problems seem to be connected to manual manipulation/changes to the playlist. Anyway, these solutions are being tested by Alpha testers of the next Roon version. Before too long there should soon be an updated version that will improve the "disconnect" issue when outputting to HQP.

 

see the end of the thread:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/build-94-hq-player-connection-problems/6898/36

[firedog]

Roon build 99 is released. So, far much better with HQP - fewer losses of connection. Now we just need final build of HQP 3.13.

[firedog]

HQP doesn't automatically switch sampling rates.

[firedog]

1. The new Roon and HQP builds have solved almost all the "dropped connection" issues for me.

2. Tidal: varies. Sometimes I have sound as good as a CD, sometimes not. Don't forget that the Tidal album may be a different master than the CD in your collection, so it isn't necessarily an apples to apples comparison.

[firedog]

I'm having almost no issues with 3.13b5 or b7 and updated Roon. Only a very occasional disconnect, and I mean very occasional. All formats and all types of upsampling \ resampling work fine.

[firedog]

Since installing 1.2, if I pause playback in Roon for more than a few minutes, Roon loses connection with HQP and HQP loses the connection to the NAA (the NAA stops showing up in the "device" box in HQP settings).

 

Roon itself is still connected to the network, as is the NAA.(I can see both in browser/network interfaces).

The DAC still shows it is connected to the NAA device, but there isn't a connection for playback. As I said, the NAA stops showing up as a "device" in HQP. This didn't happen before 1.2.

 

Just rebooting Roon or HQP - or both - doesn't help.

The only workaround is to reboot the NAA device itself.

 

I'm running RoonServer and HQP Desktop on Win10, and the NAA is an SMS-100 (Sonic Orbiter OS).

 

The software is all up to date.

 

Anyone else experience something like this?

 

BTW, also submitted this at Roon forum.

[firedog]

Clicking the allow network control button also worked for the problem I mentioned above. I must have unclicked it by accident.

 

Thanks

[firedog]

Is your Roon server/core on another machine from HQP or are you saying you needed to allow network control even with Roon/HQP local, for the problem to go away? I've had a couple of instances now, with my new HQP build, where HQP loses the NAA (no device drivers shown) while Roonserver is running (local) and unused. Seems to have stopped when I quit Roonserver (using drag and drop for the time being while testing new build so Roonserver is right now not a need).

 

Just getting back to this, as it turns out the "allow network control" isn't the issue.

 

I'm simply losing connection to the NAA at random intervals - sometimes after one minute, sometimes after a few hours. I'm getting the "lost control of endpoint" message in Roon, and the only way I seem to be able to restore the connection is by rebooting the NAA, which is a time consuming and annoying process in my setup (as that requires me to also shut down the Mytek and the amp).

 

I'm not seeing any pattern or cause to the loss of connection to the NAA. It may be somehow connected to no signal coming from Roon, but today it happened between songs while playing an album. It's become enough of an issue that I've stopped using the NAA device for now.

 

In answer to your question, my RoonServer core and HQP desktop are on the same server.

 

Before the Roon 1.2 update I had an absolutely rock stable connection - with all the same hardware.

 

Hopefully this will get figured out soon, as I just ordered a microRendu, and would much prefer using it as an NAA, and not just as a Roon endpoint.

 

Thanks for your help.

[firedog]

Do you still have this problem ?

 

I have the same, and I suspect it is NAA SW that can't re-establish connection.

Miska has so far not given any explaination why a reboot seems to be the only solution.

I've asked if he or others can test / simulate powerloss or network loss in order to confirm that the NAA SW does not recover if a short (non detectable) error occor.

 

I don't even know if some sort of hw error causes this, but at least if several does the same tests, like power off and on their NAA, we can at least know if all or only some get the same result/error.

 

If I understand Miska correctly, he stats connection should re-establish itself.

 

My posts are in another thread I think.

No, in the new versions of software I don't have the problem.

[firedog]

Hi

 

I have just started using Roon/HQP (with a Lampi Superkomputer) and I am periodically (about once every one or two hours) losing my music with the Roon screen showing "Lost Connection...Trying to reconnect". It then reconnects about 5 or 10 seconds later.

 

Does anyone know what is going on please

 

Philip

 

Are you also using an NAA? It happens to me once every day or two. AFAIK, some kind of network issue involving HQP and the NAA. Generally solved by restarts - usually software, occasionally it means I have to restart either the router or the server.

I've also found that it can happen when using the 'radio" function in Roon or with mixed playlists. If the items in the playlist are in different formats, HQP doesn't "switch over" fast enough when songs switch, and this causes a lost crash/lost connection issue with HQP.

[firedog]

Response of CTO of Roon about integrating HQP and other software controls within the Roon interface:

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/control-of-hq-player-within-roon/21419/12?

 

This is part of a somewhat bigger project to support additional "playback controls". Several Roon Ready partners also want this for switching filters/phase at the DAC, doing channel trimming controls, and other stuff like that. HQPlayer is one of about 10 partners that would benefit from this sort of integration. In addition, we would make the same capabilities available via the Roon API so people could attach extra controls of their own (or integrate with other things).

 

I think we'll add support for this via the Roon API, via the RAAT SDK (for Roon Ready partners), and in all likelihood for HQPlayer, too, using its control interface (and even if we were to de-prioritize the HQPlayer specific piece for some reason, it would be possible to accomplish the same using the Roon API anyways).

 

I noticed some implication that we might "focus on our own DSP" or that there might be business reasons not to do this. I don't really see it that way. We don't lose anything when our users use HQPlayer, and we don't gain anything when they use our DSP. Both should remain viable options and work well. Just because we have a little bit of overlap now doesn't mean we intend to marginalize that integration.