HQPlayer Linux Desktop and HQplayer embedded

[ericuco]

16 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

One solution to simplify the setup and make it more flexible is to use a wireless bridge between the floors. No need for tricky multi-homed setups and much more flexible network.

 

So you could have a switch both downstairs and upstairs and connect wired network equipment to these switches. And then wireless access-point/bridge connected to both switches with a link created between the two. This keeps the entire network as one.

 

 

 

This type of network setup is what I have successfully used for years. Currently using Google Wifi units to wirelessly connect my music system on the first floor to my router on the second floor. Combining wireless bridges and switches as Miska suggests makes it really simple to do and works great.

[ericuco]

20 minutes ago, Spindrift1414 said:

Really enjoying the HQPlayer embedded setup on an Intel NUC - working great!.

 

Quick question re monitoring - wanted to see cpu utilization - but as total novice with Linux - not sure how to do that.  I’ve searched this very helpful thread and found the top command which shows me activity which is great - but I’ve tried htop command but doesn’t seem to work . . Any suggestions would be great.  

 

Cheers

 

I have used two system monitors GKrellM and conky.  GKrellM is good right out of the box. Conky is better overall but you need to also install the Conky Manager in order to tailor it better.  Miska was the one that suggested GKrellM to me several years ago.

[ericuco]

6 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This is from SGC

 

Perhaps this discussion should be moved to one of the Sonore threads since this is their “recommendation” which runs contrary to what @Miska and others have recommended. Let them provide the technical support for this.

[ericuco]

9 minutes ago, tieuphi2006 said:

Help me how to connect hqpe to Nas Synology?

 

Is your NAS mounted onto your Ubuntu computer? If not, you may need to edit the fstab file.

 

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab

 

If it is already mounted, you can usually just drag-and-drop album folder from file manager into HQP. As mentioned earlier, Roon can do all this and provides a much better UI.

[ericuco]

2 hours ago, Timbre Lock said:

Hi there again. 

 

I was talking to a friend about an issue I'm experiencing, and she told me she was having the exact same problem on her setup. I've tried to find some help about it, but I've had no success. 

 

We both have similar sygnal paths: we listen to music played via Tidal upsampled to 512 using HQPlayer, Ultra Rendu and T+A DAC 8 DSD. Our only difference is that, in my case, I use a sonicTransporter with HQPe as music server, and she uses PC with HQP. And I use mConnect Player to access Tidal, while she uses Roon. The rest remains the same.

 

It occurs to us that music simply "gaps" during the playback. It's like a hiccup during the song: it goes mute for half of a second or so, and continues playing like nothing happened. It occurs in an aleatory way: sometimes more than once in a song, and others after longer periods of listening.

 

To make it worst, sometimes the DAC simply loses the sygnal. The display starts to show "PCM ----" (no sygnal) while just a moment ago was "DSD 512" and playing. And to solve it we have to reboot the Rendu.

 

First we thought it could be network issues - but then we thought nor I or her have had this before with previous DACs (although those DACs, iFi Black Label, have showed to be pretty unstables in several ways).

 

Then we thought it could be the newest DAC firmware - but other friends with the same item seems to be doing well.

 

Then we thought it could be something with internet connection, and increased the buffer on HQP to 100 ms. But the problem persisted.

 

Then we thought it could be the Tidal interface - but she's using Roon, I'm using mConnect Player, and we both experience the same thing.

 

Then we thought it could be the Ultra Rendu somehow (we're using the 2.7 software version). So I took it off of the path here, and so far it's playing well. But she said the problem persisted on her setup, even without the Rendu. 

 

As you can see, we're a bit lost on this matter, and still can't understand in which link of the chain the problem is.

 

Has anyone experienced this... any suggestions?

 

Thank you all in advance.

 

 

I have experienced a similar behavior, sudden gap of maybe 1-2 seconds then starts up again. I thought I solved when I replace a few SFP modules in my fiber network but the issue has recently returned after a few weeks (months) of no issues.
 

In my setup, I play local files from my NAS which is located in another part of my home network so the files have to travel through several devices (switches) as well as WiFi. I have I moved the NAS closer to my music system network so that is connected to the same switch but that didn’t help.

 

Not sure what my DAC does because I turn off the display. I always send DSD256 to my opticalRendu (HQP NAA mode) so it is usually displaying D256. Might be interesting to turn on the display to see if it switches to PCM. That said, I have not had the oR lock up due to this issue.
 

The only other thing to point out is that I run one of the EC modulators at DSD256 so I am pushing two of my i7 processors fairly hard. Then again I am pretty sure this issue was happening before I moved to the EC modulators.
 

It would be good to get this resolved.

 

 

[ericuco]

30 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

Hi @miska

 

I am running HQP Embedded on Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 LTS - hqplayerd_4.19.1-53_amd64.deb

 

If I update Ubuntu to 20.04 LTS via Ubuntu's desktop updater app, do I need to do anything else regarding HQPlayer?

 

Or it should work fine?

 

Or 20.04 LTS is not yet officially supported for HQP Embedded, so I should wait?

 

Thanks!

 

 

I asked Miska the same question about HQP Desktop on Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS and never got a reply.

 

Another member did respond that they had been running HQP on 20.04 for several weeks (months) without any issues so I went ahead and upgraded to 20.04 a few days ago and have not had any issues.

[ericuco]

8 minutes ago, Louie said:

Where I can find your custom kernel for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS?

Is this what you are looking for: https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/

 

The link is located at the bottom of the HQPlayer Desktop webpage.

[ericuco]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

sudo systemctl set-default multi-user

 

Thanks, very helpful to know. I used this for both my Roon server (Intel NUC - Ubuntu 20.04 minimal) and HQP NAA (fitlet2 - Linux Mint) for which I typically only access via SSH (PuTTY) and no need for GUI.

[ericuco]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

How to find HQPlayer Embedded on the network when running on Ubuntu?

 

I know the IP of the machine, I can reach it on the network and can SSH into it. 

 

or, make sure it's even running...

Lookup the systemctl command which reports on services and their status.

[ericuco]

@Miska I got Jammy installed using the "do-release-upgrade -d" command. Everything got upgraded successfully from what I can tell.

 

I then installed the Jammy version of Desktop using dpkg -i command Got some errors so issued apt install -f command. Desktop did not launch and got Ubuntu error message. Reinstalled Desktop again and did not see any errors. However, Desktop will still not launch. Any thoughts?

 

I know that @Quadman is having a similar issue.

[ericuco]

24 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

What error do you get if you try to start "hqplayer4desktop" from terminal?

 

 

Here is the output using Terminal to start hqplayer4desktop.

 

[ericuco]

15 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Strange... I made a new build with explicit dependency on the qpa plugin package. Maybe it helps.

 

 

That (14.19.0-90avx2) seems to have worked. Desktop is launching. I had to issue "sudo apt install -f" again.

 

Thanks as always.

[ericuco]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but given some here use Roon with HQP, I updated my Intel NUC which runs Roon server to Ubuntu 22.04 using “do-release-update -d” and everything is working.

[ericuco]

27 minutes ago, mvilla said:

Thanks El Guapo for your answer. 
Indeed, I’ve always downloaded the most recent HQPlayerd image because usually Jussi fixes bugs or improves his own software. I prefer to keep alignment. But, I do not know which of the two (sse42 vs avx2) it is better for my NAA hardware. 
Other points of view?

Thanks

Massimo
 

If the Up Squared CPU is Atom-based, then use the sse42 version. That is what Miska told me to use for my fitlet2 which is Atom- based.

[ericuco]

46 minutes ago, mvilla said:

Thank you Ericuco. 
How can I check if it is Atom based?(forgive me if it is a silly question!)

Massimo

Assuming this is what you have, then it is Atom-based

 

https://up-board.org/upsquared/specifications/

[ericuco]

11 minutes ago, musicbuff said:

After all, it was legitimately paid for.

You paid the HQP 4 upgrade fee?

 

 

[ericuco]

6 minutes ago, musicbuff said:

No, I didn't. I bought a brand new computer and transferred HQP 3.25.4 from the old computer to the new one. 3.25.4 was paid for. But when I open it Signalyst shows it as a 30 day trial version. I can't enter the keys proving I already paid for this version or get the conversion for the key to work. I also downloaded the 30 day trial version of HQP 4. Honestly I find HQP 4 much more difficult to use than the 3 version. Are you implying there's no going back to a previous version and that my only option is to upgrade to HQP 4?

For HQP Desktop version, you can move the license from one computer to another. I have moved my Desktop license several times now without an issue. If you have installed the v3 software on your new computer, the v3 license should work but @Miska would know for sure. It has been some time since v4 was released. Also, not sure if v3 is supported on Win 11 or not.

 

If you haven’t purchased the upgraded v4 license, then of course the v4 software isn’t going to work.

 

As always, it is your choice whether to upgrade or not but with most software products older versions aren’t always supported on newer OS’s.

[ericuco]

14 minutes ago, bobflood said:

The license key is hardware specific. You need to email @miska and request a new key for your new hardware.

For HQP Embedded license is hardware specific. HQP Desktop license is not hardware specific. I have moved my Desktop to new hardware several times.

[ericuco]

7 minutes ago, Mike Rubin said:

Thank you.  That is what I tried, but I am sorry to say that I still have the same inability to play to the NAA's in my system, so I may have a NUC hardware issue.  I am going to reinstall Windows on the NUC now and, if that allows me to play to the NAA's, I may just move my Desktop license there and see if I can get my rendus to play music from HQPlayer.  If it won't, I will conclude the NUC is the issue.

If you are installing the HQP Embedded OS and only want to use the NAA piece, then you need to stop/disable “hqplayerd”.

 

systemctl stop hqplayerd

systemctl disable hqplayerd

 

The first line “stops” hqplayerd and the second prevents it from restarting if you need to reboot NUC.

[ericuco]

Upgraded to HQP Desktop 4.20 but it seems to require more compute resources that is causing stutters going to DSD512 (48k) so moved back to last 4.19 version. Curious what others are finding. 
 

During installation it required new(?) dependencies as well.

[ericuco]

3 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Which build on which CPU? Based on the last sentence I assume it is Linux, maybe generic (not AVX2) Ubuntu build?

 CPU is Intel i7-12700K, OS is Ubuntu Desktop 22.04, HQP Desktop from website download (amd64)

[ericuco]

13 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

On that CPU, I strongly recommend to use the AVX2 build (under Other downloads) instead of the generic one.

 

If you have Atom or a CPU older than 8th Gen, or just a dual/quad core, then the generic one may be better. (AVX2 build won't even work on Atom or CPUs older than 4th Gen)

 

That did the trick, significantly lowered CPU usage! Just used to using the download from website for years (decade?) now. Old dog new tricks.

[ericuco]

20 minutes ago, Sunny_Player said:

Ideally a cat 7 cabel with its shield not connected to the connector bodies, right? 

No, as @Miska noted, Cat6 or Cat6a.

[ericuco]

30 minutes ago, jslateiv said:

Thanks dknk,   so I have been to that page and thus my confusion.  at the top under prerequisites,  it lists having installed ubuntu (or other) OS.  Are you saying that is not needed if you are running the hpqlayer-embedded from a USB..  The HQPlayer-embedded download link to USB is an ALL-in-one solution including the linux OS?  Sorry if I'm being think headed here..   the build is a Intel 13900K so AVX2,  yes?  Def. appreciate the help and guidance!

You can disregard the prerequisites section. 
 

Under the “Downloading and configuring bootable image” header, use the link for “ hqplayer-embedded image” which will take you to an online directory where you can download the appropriate version.