HQPlayer Linux Desktop and HQplayer embedded

[bodiebill]

On my AudioLinux server with HQP embedded I have played DSD128 with ASDM7EC and poly-sinc-lp-2s without problem -- no stuttering whatsoever.

However after updating to version 4.11.2, there is suddenly heavy stuttering. Any ideas?

[bodiebill]

Thanks Piero, problem solved.

[bodiebill]

Trying HQPlayer OS for the first time. I can access the first page (in my case 192.168.1.28) but that's it. It says 'stopped' in the upper-left corner, and the other pages do not load. When I login as root directly on the machine, the hqplayerd service appears inactive. Am I doing something wrong?

[bodiebill]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

If you can access the web page, the service is certainly running. Have you configured it to do something through the /config page? By default it is set up for null output.

 

In my case, I can successfully ping the hqplayer PC's ip address 192.168.1.28.

Initially I can also access HQPe's main page via 192.168.1.28 but not via 'hqplayer' or 192.168.1.28:8088.

However, when I try to access the configuration page, either nothing happens, or I am asked for login/password, and then nothing happens. The page does not appear, and after that, I can no longer access even the main page.

I tried with three sticks so far, and it is the same with all.

Strange?

I am using 4.11.2.

[bodiebill]

1 hour ago, bodiebill said:

In my case, I can successfully ping the hqplayer PC's ip address 192.168.1.28.

Initially I can also access HQPe's main page via 192.168.1.28 but not via 'hqplayer' or 192.168.1.28:8088.

However, when I try to access the configuration page, either nothing happens, or I am asked for login/password, and then nothing happens. The page does not appear, and after that, I can no longer access even the main page.

I tried with three sticks so far, and it is the same with all.

Strange?

I am using 4.11.2.

 

I tried on another PC and there it works! So it is hardware related. As I am in the process of upgrading my HQP PC anyway, I think this 'ticket' can be closed 🙂

@Miska Although you just issued a license key for my HQPe, I will need another one before long if all goes well. Hope that's all right.

[bodiebill]

I just built a new PC, hoping ir would enable stutterless playback of SDM bit rate 11289600 (DSD256).

Configuration:

 

case    Fractal Design Define Nano S
mobo    Asrock Z390M-ITX/AC
cpu    Intel Core i7-7900K
cpu fan    Noctua NH-L12S
memory    16GB DDR4-2666 Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 2x8
NIC    Intel X520-D2 (not yet installed)
PSU    Seasonic 400W fanless platinum

 

I run this with AudioLinux and HQPlayer Embedded 4 from a usb stick and it works well playing DSD256 without any tweaks in the BIOS. Temperatures do not come above 45 C and CPU utilization is low.

Also I am pleasantly surprised that the PC (with its isolated case and fanless PSU) is pretty silent. I could even consider keeping it in the audio room. Not sure yet.

 

I have ordered a fiber NIC, and when this is installed I will send Miska the new fingerprint for a new license code.

 

About the PSU: currently this is not linear, but a high quality and pretty low-ripple Seasonic, for which I used the stock power cable. I made this choice assuming that the HQPlayer server is well isolated from the endpoint PC which also has a fiber NIC. I could upgrade the power cable of course.

Too early to review the sound, I think it needs some time as this is a newly built PC. If I am not totally happy I could replace the Seasonic by this combination:

PSU DC-ATX    HDPlex 400W DCATX
PSU AC-DC    HDPlex 200W LPSU (or HDPlex 100W for mobo + HDPlex 200W for cpu)

 

Any advise here on how important the PSU is for the server ('control pc') in such a setup?

Or would using the Seasonic for the mobo and a LPSU for the CPU be a good idea?

 

 

 

[bodiebill]

1 hour ago, StreamFidelity said:

 

I'm using the combo

 

HDPLEX 200W Linear Power Supply (LPS)

HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX 

 

in my Audio PC (i9-9900K) succesful. Highly recommend.

 

You say audio PC: does this mean endpoint? I have no doubt it makes a big difference there. But my question was about the HQPe server, which send its data to an isolated endpoint running NAA. The latter is already linearly powered.

[bodiebill]

Ah, thanks for explaining. I already decided to put the server in the fuse cabinet, well away from the audio room, so I will see how it goes...

[bodiebill]

On 10/17/2019 at 11:41 PM, cat6man said:

 

i don't want to disagree but i must.

in my system (hqplayer embedded, no filter/dither/dsd/etc to NAA on opticalRendu) i hear a sq improvement with wav vs. flac.

 

Same here. But I see no need to store everything as wav. From JRiver I convert an album from flac to wav in 10 seconds and it is automatically put on a RAM drive and sent from Audirvana to the server PC with HQPlayer embedded and then to the endpoint PC with NAA.

[bodiebill]

On 9/21/2019 at 10:19 AM, bodiebill said:

About the PSU: currently this is not linear, but a high quality and pretty low-ripple Seasonic, for which I used the stock power cable. I made this choice assuming that the HQPlayer server is well isolated from the endpoint PC which also has a fiber NIC. I could upgrade the power cable of course.

Too early to review the sound, I think it needs some time as this is a newly built PC. If I am not totally happy I could replace the Seasonic by this combination:

PSU DC-ATX    HDPlex 400W DCATX
PSU AC-DC    HDPlex 200W LPSU (or HDPlex 100W for mobo + HDPlex 200W for cpu)

 

Any advise here on how important the PSU is for the server ('control pc') in such a setup?

Or would using the Seasonic for the mobo and a LPSU for the CPU be a good idea?

 

Just received an HDPlex 400W DC-ATX, so I compared this (combined with the HDPlex 200W LPSU) with the fanless Seasonic 400W I used before. I must say that I can hardly hear the difference. The fiber isolation between the server and endpoint PC's seems to work well.

 

This server PC is dual boot: (1) Audiolinux with HQPlayer embedded and (2) Windows 10.

With the HDPlex 400W DC-ATX / HDPlex 200W LPSU combo the first seems to work fine. However when I boot Windows and run a demanding process (such as Handbrake converting a video file), the system hangs after 10 seconds or so. Maybe this PSU combo is not powerful enough for that? Not of major importance as this server was custom built for HQPlayer-e.  

 

PS: the HDPlex combo does have the advantage that the PC runs even less hot. Now converting 24/96 to DSD256 with ASDM7EC at 45-50 degrees Celsius.

[bodiebill]

8 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

 

Which CPU do you have? My Intel Core i9-9000k runs with 4.2GHz on all 8 cores (virtual 16) with

HDPLEX 200W Linear Power Supply (LPS)

HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX 

very stable. There are some settings to be made in BIOS. For example, I have limited the voltage to a maximum of 1.050V.

 

 

 

i7-9700k.

 

Thanks for the suggestion! I will have a look at the BIOS and see whether I can make Windows 10 work under a heavy load with maximized voltage...

[bodiebill]

24 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

There are some settings to be made in BIOS. For example, I have limited the voltage to a maximum of 1.050V.

 

Which voltage? CPU, DRAM? There are many options in my ASRock BIOS.

[bodiebill]

5 hours ago, rickca said:

Your i7-9700K is base frequency/turbo frequency of 3.6/4.9 GHz.  It can sustain an all-core turbo of 4.6 GHz.  Handbrake is most likely running multiple cores at high turbo frequencies.  Without some kind of constraints, there's no doubt you will exceed what the 200W LPS can deliver.  The 95W TDP is what's required to run 8 cores at the base frequency of 3.6 GHz.  You can easily double that at all-core turbo.

 

Your motherboard probably isn't contributing much to the load since you don't have a video card, so maybe something like 35W.  Even if you power the motherboard with your Seasonic, and just use the HDPLEX gear to power the CPU, I think you may run into the same problem.  

 

5 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

Be careful! Always save the working setting under profiles! I would still install the latest BIOS. Before that, be sure to back up the settings to USB Stick. In my BIOS, everything was overwritten with update.

 

Thanks, that is useful guidance. I may experiment with the CPU frequency and/or turbo settings, as long as they continue to enable HQPlayer conversion to DSD256 with the EC modulators.

[bodiebill]

deleted

[bodiebill]

10 hours ago, Miska said:

 

If you want to just decode a FLAC to WAV, it is easiest and fast through the official "flac" command line utility that can encode and decode FLAC and is part of the original FLAC codec delivery. "flac -d something.flac" decodes to "something.wav".

 

Audirvana will still reshuffle WAV to WAV though.

 

In Windows, with JRiver it is just (using predefined settings for format and target location):

- select tracks

- click 'convert format'

- click convert

- drag resulting wav files from RAM drive to Audirvana

This takes 10 seconds.

 

The same can be done from file explorer with dBPoweramp by right-clicking the selection and converting.

 

In my case the 'something' bits can be very long so that would be a lot of typing.

 

[bodiebill]

15 hours ago, bodiebill said:

Thanks, that is useful guidance. I may experiment with the CPU frequency and/or turbo settings, as long as they continue to enable HQPlayer conversion to DSD256 with the EC modulators.

 

Switching off turbo boost in the BIOS resulted in small dropouts when converting to DSD256 with the ASDM7EC modulator, so that is no option. I could switch off turbo mode before booting Windows.

[bodiebill]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

And I don't understand why convert the files and deal with RAM drive, but it's just me...

 

Maybe you're right. When playing with a dual PC setup I thought I heard a difference between flac and wav, and also between RAM drive and NAS. However, now with my triple PC setup, I have a hard time to hear the difference. Converting had become like a little ritual. And as it is with rituals: they give peace of mind, even if they offer no other verifiable benefits.

[bodiebill]

1 hour ago, asdf1000 said:

Hi @Miska

My i9-9900K has been running both EC modulators fine until HQP Embedded v4.13 

Now have stuttering with 4.13

Is there a known issue with v4.13?

 

Similar to my problem. I changed to 4.13 about the same time I changed to Apacer RAM. Doubling RAM to 16GB did not help: I still have occasional dropouts, even if I only upsample to DSD128, so maybe it is indeed the HQP version?

[bodiebill]

27 minutes ago, randytsuch said:

I boot directly from USB with HQP OS, so I can't imagine a ssd/hdd is required.

Didn't actually remove my ssd, although I should so it will only boot from usb.

 

Confirmed. I boot without a HD or SSD, with AL as well as HQP OS. I even deactivated SATA in the BIOS.

[bodiebill]

On 7/14/2019 at 11:21 AM, Miska said:

As a note that may be interesting to some, the HQPlayer OS image supports running HQPlayer + NAA in "multihomed" mode. This is done by running all the Ethernet interfaces in HQPlayer OS in bridged mode. IOW, they all participate in the same network.

 

@Miska Yesterday I bridged the Intel dual fiber NIC's two SFP ports on my HQPe server:

SFP NIC 1 (connected to the main router) is now bridged with SFP NIC2. The latter is connected to the NAA endpoint.

I like the SQ change!

However, I see that my HQPe has reverted back to the trial version as the fingerprint has changed.

Is this to be expected in the case of bridging?

I will not make any rash decisions as I am also expecting a JCAT net card FEMTO, and I am not sure yet whether I will end up mounting this in the server or the endpoint. But I may have to request an updated key before long.

 

[bodiebill]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

NAA should be connected to a switch instead... Bridging turns computer into a software switch and helps avoid problems of multi-homed configurations. But it shouldn't have any impact on sound though.

 

Not sure if I understand: after bridging the HQP server, NAA is connected to a switch, namely to the server operating as a switch. Correct? So this should be OK? Or do you still recommend an additional HW switch between the server and the endpoint?

 

Could not the perceived SQ improvement be the result of less devices between the server and the endpoint?

There was no doubt to my ears that SQ was better after bridging, however I always admit the possibility of placebo when we are getting into these small incremental so called improvements.

 

1 hour ago, Miska said:

No, it shouldn't happen, only changes to actual hardware devices should change it.

Please check with "ifconfig" that the same actual hardware devices are present in both cases.

 

Ah, then I know what happened. After bridging I also deactivated the on board LAN, so that was the HW change changing the fingerprint. Thanks Miska!

[bodiebill]

46 minutes ago, Miska said:

How was the setup before bridging?

 

before

main modem router => CAT7 => 1st MikroTik SFP switch => fiber => Server SFP NIC 1;

1st MikroTik SFP switch => fiber => 2nd MikroTik SFP switch => CAT6 => NAA endpoint

 

after

main modem router => CAT7 => 1st MikroTik SFP switch => fiber => Server  SFP NIC 1 <BRIDGED WITH> SFP NIC2 => fiber => 2nd MikroTik SFP switch => CAT6 => NAA endpoint

 

And soon I will receive a Cisco WS-C2960G-24TC-L switch (SFP + RJ45) and the JCAT net card FEMTO to play with.

Where would you put the latter?

[bodiebill]

12 minutes ago, Miska said:

In this kind of setup I would go with a HP or Cisco switch that have two SFP slots (remember to check that 802.3x flow control is enabled for all ports in switch settings!). But OTOH, the server doesn't need to be behind optical.

 

I will receive a Cisco WS-C2960G-24TC-L switch soon. You suggest I put it instead of the 2nd MikroTik? 

 

12 minutes ago, Miska said:

Remember to check that your copper network cables don't have metal connector body that would be connected to a shield!

 

All CAT cables are unshielded, thanks to your caveat 🙂

Suppose I would only use copper between the server and the NAA: would it be a problem if the cable is 23 meters long? 

[bodiebill]

55 minutes ago, jabbr said:

The "before" config is correct.

 

So that puts me before a difficult choice: doing what is 'correct', or what sounds 'better' to my ears... I will keep experimenting...

There are many advocates on AS for a bridged setup (the 'after' setup), but apparently you have a different view? Is this based on theory or perceived SQ, or both?

[bodiebill]

33 minutes ago, jabbr said:

I have briefly tested various brands of fiberoptic NICs on various servers, all 10Gbe or greater (e.g. 25,40,100 Gbe) and cannot tell a bit of SQ difference. Nor can I tell an SQ difference among professional quality switches.

 

So you do not believe in the concept of an audiophile ethernet switch?

As for me, I still just don't know. Just trying to find out... 

 

Quote

When I was testing endpoints 5 years ago I thought I heard an SQ improvement going from copper RJ45 ethernet to fiberoptic but that might have been bias. In any case I'm only using fiber and wi-fi at this point. For HQPlayer, wired is far more reliable at DSD512, and wifi works well at DSD256 and if the wind is blowing the right way in my house DSD512 -- I can usually pull 280 Mbs over WiFi to my NUC/NAA

 

Could it have been the same bias made me embrace fiber optics some time ago?

I do know that I now prefer copper ethernet downstream, i.e. as the last connection before the endpoint. I even removed the fiber NIC from my NAA PC.

Never tried WiFi though.