Roon / HQPlayer Integration

[orgel]

Apparently, my poor old mid-2011 Mac mini (2.3GHz Core i5, 8GB RAM) doesn't have enough horsepower to convert PCM to DSD on the fly without stuttering. However, if I play my ALAC files as PCM (Roon -> HQP), I can upsample and filter without a lot of issues.

 

Is there a way to set up HQP so that it plays PCM as PCM and DSF as SDM without me having to manually switch it over?

 

(I'm also willing to entertain the possibility that I'm missing something obvious and I should be able to convert PCM to DSD64 on the fly without the stuttering.)

 

--David

[orgel]

Early days, but it appears that the release version of HQP 3.12 has eliminated the stuttering with on-the-fly PCM -> DSD conversions in my system. I'm able to use HQP's poly-sinc-short-mp filter. Things are sounding really great.

 

--David

[orgel]

Man, no matter what I do I just can't get Roon and HQP to output to SDM/DSD. I've tried every suggestion here and on the CA site. HQP plays fine with all filters on its own. Roon plays fine. Roon and HQP play fine on any PCM setting in HQP.

 

Do you have other audio outputs with exclusive access set up in Roon? If so, try disabling them and see if that makes a difference.

 

I'm assuming you're using your MacBook Pro to run both apps. What processor does it have and how much RAM? Have you looked at what's going on in Activity Monitor when you try to run Roon and HQP together? What's the situation with CPU and memory usage?

 

Maybe posting screen shots of your HQP prefs and DSDIFF/DSF settings would help with a diagnosis?

 

If you can get the two applications working together, you're in for a treat, so don't give up just yet.

 

--David

[orgel]

Over on the Roon forum Jussi and Gianluca helped me figure out that my SDM output was incorrect and that it needed to be set to 282240. For whatever reason, that seemed to work and Roon and HQP are playing together.

 

Interesting. Your MBP specs are very similar to my mini's, and I can't seem to do better than DSD64 either. (I think I should be able to do DSD128 with the Mytek.) Can you point me to the thread on the Roon forum?

 

Glad you got it working, though.

 

--David

 

Edit: Found the Roon thread. Please let me know if you get DSD128 to work.

[orgel]

David, seems as if Roon is working on an update that could address this and also Jussi replied to me to try and use one of the -2 oversampling settings. This seems to work on all files for me now.

 

I tried again last night to get HQP to play DSD128 through my Mytek DAC. I copied the settings in your screen shots in the Roon thread as best I could, allowing for modifications suggested bu Jussi. Still no dice (beyond the occasional hiss or pop), although as soon as I switch HQP back to DSD64 I'm in business again … and I can run pretty much any filter I want.

 

I was using a DSF track to do the testing. Maybe that's a particular problem? (I thought it was a reasonable approach, since there was no PCM->DSD conversion involved.)

 

Oh well, maybe the next update will address this. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying Roon/HQP integration tremendously, even with the "v1.0" issues. My system has never sounded so good.

 

--David

[orgel]

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.

 

Thanks, Miska. I'd been trying with USB (up-to-date firmware) — FWIW, Audirvana shows DSD128 being available on the Mytek when I'm using the USB driver.

 

I'll try FireWire when I get home this evening. I didn't know that the 2wire checkbox pertained to FireWire. When you say that "PCM output mode doesn't function correctly in this mode," does that mean I can leave "2wire" checked as long as I'm converting everything to DSD?

 

I am really enjoying the results of all your hard work.

 

--David

[orgel]

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.

 

It works!!!!!! Music plays, and the Mytek display says "HDSD" (which I've never seen before). I can use my filter of choice (poly-sinc-short-mp), and things are sounding great. ¡¡¡Muchas gracias!!!

 

--David

[orgel]

If I replace my USB cable from my Mac Mini to my Ayre DSD Dac, with a Firewire, check off '2-wire' on HQ, should I be able to get DSD 128?

 

Does the Ayre have a FireWire input? Is it capable of DSD128? (I think the Codex can do DSD128, but not the QB-9, and it doesn't look like either one has a FireWire input.)

 

--David

[orgel]

Is HQPlayer supposed to switch sampling rates automatically based on the incoming stream?

 

My experience is that HQP doesn't change the sampling rate on its own. It just stays (usually) at whatever rate you set. In my case, using my usual poly-sinc-short-mp and DSD7, I just leave the rate set at 5644800 in the prefs (since the Mytek maxes out at DSD128) and that seems to work for whatever I throw at it.

 

(The iDSD nano at work can do DSD256, so there I double the rate in the prefs.)

 

--David

[orgel]

Priaptor, ted_b: Myself and Zorntel were able to replicate this issue, DSD64 would stop exactly at 12 minutes 40 seconds, and DSD128 at 6 minutes 20 seconds etc. Brian on Roon forum was able to track down the problem (a 32 bit signed integer overflow) and already has a Alpha that fixes the issue. Post #174 has the details.

 

Thanks a million for isolating and reporting this. I've been listening to a fair amount of Bruckner and Mahler over the unexpectedly long weekend while snowed in, and repeatedly ran into the "12:40" bug. I was going to ask today if anyone else was experiencing this.

 

--David

[orgel]

You should post your question in the Roon Community Support forum: https://community.roonlabs.com/c/support

That would be the best place to get an answer to your question.

 

+1 on what @gcoupe said, but you shouldn't have to add any artwork manually in Roon. If you're connected to the Internet, by default, Roon should go out and get all the album and artist artwork it needs.

 

--David

[orgel]

It doesn't work for files that don't contain metadata. Roon doesn't seem to be able to extract artist/album/song information from the folder and file names. As a result it is really hard to even find such files from the Roon database... As a result, bunch of files also end up with Roon's default artwork.

 

Ah, good to know. I'd never see that, because I'm compulsive about adding metadata to any new music I acquire.

 

I wonder what the minimum amount of metadata is that Roon requires to identify an album? Artist + album?

 

--David

[orgel]

Is it a must that the HQplayer is in the same computer as the roon core so it is only added as localhost? For adding other network HQplayer are they meant only for NAA?

 

HQPlayer does not need to run on the same computer as Roon Core. In HQP, be sure you have the "Allow control from network" button in the toolbar highlighted. (It's the one that looks like a globe.) Once that's done, you should be able to add that installation of HQP to Roon as a Network Device by entering the (local) IP address of the computer running HQP.

 

--David