HQPlayer Linux Desktop and HQplayer embedded

[randytsuch]

I'm getting close to setting up SW on my new PC.

 

Is there any advantage to running HQP OS vs running Debian Server with HQP Embedded?

My plan is to run this headless on a dedicated machine.  May be running minimserver or rygel on this machine too, if I need them.

 

I know HQP OS would be easier to get going, wondering if that is the only benefit?

 

As an aside, I was going to use Ubuntu Server, but did a little research this weekend and decided I'd try Debian Server.  It is supposed to be less user friendly,  but also faster because there is fewer bells and whistles.

Since this is a dedicated machine, once it's setup I don't expect to make many changes to it.

 

Thanks

Randy

[randytsuch]

2 hours ago, k6davis said:

 

HQP OS is already optimized, great sounding and crazy easy to use. You boot from the USB stick and it's ready to go. It's also the best for running headless - with its web browser interface, which you can access from any other device on the network.

 

Downsides are that it doesn't support Cuda (if you need Cuda) and that there are multiple reports that it has inferior EC performance (if you plan to use that). I'm hoping @Miska can work with us on the EC thing. If so, I'll probably switch back to HQP OS myself.

Thanks for the answer

 

I want to try EC, so am worried about what you previously said:

I have had great success with full EC DSD256 on HQP Desktop on both Windows & Linux, and with HQP Embedded on LInux Server. But on the same i7-9700K server, HQP OS stutters with even lighter EC DSD256 settings.

 

So for now, I guess its HQP Embedded with Server running headless.

 

[randytsuch]

So I spent the weekend installing different OS's on my new PC.

 

I couldn't install Debian Stretch on it, it complained it couldn't find the Ethernet interface.

If you google search this

debian 9 stretch ethernet not found installation e1000e module

I guess its a thing with the e1000e module.  I also had figured out that's what I need for the intel ethernet chip installed on my Gigabyte MB.  Its fixed in Debian Buster, but that doesn't help.

 

I could work at it, but decided to buy a cheap older ethernet card.  Should have it in a couple days and then will try again.

In the meantime, may try installing Fedora, and see if that works better.

[randytsuch]

5 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

 

Did you try Ubuntu 18.04 LTS?

Ubuntu has the same problem from what I can tell, and based on some searching.  It doesn't give me much information, but it won't install either.

And Ubuntu 10.04 server has a bug in its install, where if you don't have a network connection you can't install at all.  I think Debian might have the same bug, I can't figure out how to proceed with the install after the network driver install fails.

So waiting for a few days for my network card to come.

BTW, its even better.  There is also a problem with my wifi interface and linux.  It also needs a different driver, which I could fix if I had linux running with an ethernet connection lol

sh*tshow as my daughter would say.

[randytsuch]

8 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

 

One (last) thing to try while your network card comes:

 

Have you tried Jussi's USB bootable image (HQP OS). Burn it to a USB stick using something like Etcher. Boot from USB and that's your HQP server. It's all fully self contained, so nothing else to do (hopefully).

 

Download the latest one from here (August 2019 is latest):

 

https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/hqplayerd/images/

 

Are you using Roon or something else?

 

 

HQP OS works fine, but I wanted to be able to run headless and use a ssh console port and it doesn't support ssh.  I may play with hqp os until my network card comes, but I have other stuff to work on, need to make my naa now and connect the dac to it.

 

I don't have roon, planning to use bubbleupnp or the ios equivalent to control.  My music is on a drive attached to my router acting as a nas, and I use tidal.

 

EDIT

For anyone following along, details are

Device-1: Intel Wireless-AC 9560 [Jefferson Peak] driver: iwlwifi

Device-2: Intel Ethernet I219-V vendor: Gigabyte driver: e1000e

 

Ubuntu 18.04 and debian stretch both appear to have problems with these, although I don't think I searched for all combinations, I know it didn't install.

Debian buster has newer drivers, and works for ethernet at least.  Likely newer ubuntu will also work.

[randytsuch]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

You don't need to switch away from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to get newer drivers. They have "hwe" (Hardware Enablement) kernels that are backported from later short-term support releases and provide all the new drivers for current LTS.

 

If you want to stick to Ubuntu kernels instead of my custom one (which is anyway just 4.14 LTS release), pretty much first thing to do after Ubuntu Server installation is add the low-latency hwe kernel with:

sudo apt install linux-lowlatency-hwe-18.04

At the moment this brings in Linux kernel version 5.0.

 

(if you run any Ubuntu desktop flavor, there are similar hwe packages for Xorg to provide updated graphics drivers - not related to Nvidia's drivers though)

 

HQPlayer OS should work fine with both of those NICs...

 

There was a bug in Ubuntu Server 18.04.2 that wouldn't let you finish the install without a network connection

https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/1750819

 

I should have been using 18.04.3 though, I was tricked by the Ubuntu release page that doesn't list 18.04.3

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

 

So I'll see if I can get 18.04.3 to install, but I still might just wait for my new nic to arrive, Newegg is local to me and my NIC is en route, I figure I should be it by tomorrow latest even though it shows Thurs as the date.

[randytsuch]

I retried to install Ubuntu 18.04.3 and it goes for a bit then I get 

"probing for devices to install to failed".  Says to report a bug on Launchpad and include the log.

 

I was able to install Debian, but without a network connection.  And I don't know how to fix the problem, although I might be able to figure it out if I had to.

 

Then I installed my less than $10 NIC, reinstalled Debian, and it worked fine, with a network connection.  For now, I'll run with the NIC, and HQP seems to be working.

 

It could easily have been something wrong I did, but there aren't many places to screw up, and it seems to be a known problem with some versions on Linux.  Maybe only happens with certain HW combinations.  Maybe I'm just unlucky, but whatever it was, with my cheap nic its all good.

 

If anyone else has this problem, I bought a refurb HiRO H50303 from ebay on the newegg store.

[randytsuch]

1 hour ago, craighartley said:

Thanks for answering, but I’m afraid  that wouldn’t have helped. What I wanted to know was how to download direct from the Nvidia site using Ubuntu Server terminal. I spent half a day experimenting and failing to find a webpage and file address that would work with a ‘wget’ command. I finally gave up and downloaded the driver onto a MacBook and spent the rest of the day learning how to mount and copy it onto my Linux server (which last week was a Windows server) using a USB drive. 

 

I’m  finally up and running, but I still can’t assign a fixed IP address without losing my network connection, and I’d like to know how to auto sign-in on start-up so I can hide the Linux server away without keyboard etc. 

FWIW, I feel your pain, sound like what I would have gone through.

 

I use my router to assign a fixed IP address.  I think most decent routers can do this.  The router will use your PC's mac address, and always assign it the same IP, whatever one you give it.  So you make can make any change you want to your PC, including loading in an entirely new OS, and it will still get the same ip address.  After you make save the changes to your router, you might have to reset the PC for the PC to show up with the new fixed address.

I also keep a file where I record all the fixed ip addresses in my network, as well as other network information.  I've found that to be really handy to have sometimes, when you forget what you did 6 months ago.

[randytsuch]

7 hours ago, brother love said:

Jussi & all, 

 

If I upgrade from existing desktop v3 license to desktop v4 & stay w/ my existing i7-6700k music server connected directly to my Gustard X20 DAC w/ USB cable... I need some guidance to upsample Spotify/ Tidal without Roon by utilizing Chromecast Audio (as you have mentioned in previous posts as an option). I would utilize Wi-Fi & stream Spotify/ Tidal from a Win 10 laptop to Chromecast connected to nearby music server ...

 

If I am understanding things correctly, since my music server Gigabyte ga-Z170N mobo does not have an optical input, can I connect to “line in” with a 3.5 mm cable from Chromecast Audio?  Or can I connect the Chromecast HDMI to the music server & utilize both audio/video from laptop source & call it a day (music server is connected to plasma tv with another HDMI port).

If you use hqp embedded, you can stream tidal from an app controlling hqp.

mconnect works for ios and bubbleupnp works for android.

 

In mconnect, hqp shows up as a "play to" device.  You just have to select hqp and then setup tidal in the app and then you can play songs.  I was surprised how easy it was to get it working.

With the lite version, it doesn't remember the play to device so you have to do that every time.

The one annoying thing is I have to press play twice to get a song to play.

[randytsuch]

27 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

From Audirvana, or HQPlayer Embedded playing the files?

 

In former case Audirvana decodes FLAC or WAV into WAV stream - in both cases it looks the same to HQPlayer. While if you use some other UPnP Media Server and Control Point to play the same files, they usually end up as-is to HQPlayer.

 

In latter case HQPlayer decodes the actual file. If it makes difference in this case, next question is what kind of media is used to store the files? Advantage of FLAC is that there's about 50% less data to transfer from the storage, while advantage of WAV is that there's less processing to do.

 

I have a question related to this, kind of.

 

Can you confirm the mconnect (running from IOS but I would not expect it matters) is not actually playing anything?  I think it points to a file, and then hqp fetches the file and plays it.  I think something similar happens for tidal, except its more complicated because the fetching is done over the internet.  

 

At least, that is my simplistic view of things, hopefully they are not far off of reality.

 

Randy

[randytsuch]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, that's the case, so it is operates as UPnP Control Point should. Although with UPnP, there's no "file", there's a content URI that is streamed using HTTP protocol. So HQPlayer doesn't fetch anything, but instead streams it. For something like internet radio, content size is 0 meaning it is an endless stream. For a content backed by a real file, content size may have a value (known length).

 

Then rest depends on UPnP Media Server, whether it performs transcoding or not. UPnP spec places this burden and decision on the Media Server component.

 

Thanks

OK, so I'm running embedded (loaded into Ubuntu buster) and then using mconnect to play music.  

Is Rygel the media server?  Would Rygel transcode?

 

Randy

[randytsuch]

17 hours ago, ajm said:

Having now used D3 on AL1, D4 on AL2 and E4 on AL2 headless, I find the sound preferable with E4. I also prefer AL2  sound to HQ Player OS. Following a report by Larry M on AL thread, I also find sound preferable with non BFQ kernel.

As reported earlier in this thread, I had some problems library scanning with E4 and discovered eventually that this was because it can take a long time while nothing appears to happen. Perhaps usefully, I found with Synology NAS that an nfs mount was scanned about twice as fast as a Samba mount by E4 and the artwork also loaded better. Such observations might usefully be mentioned in HQP documentation as it would be general expectation for nfs to be quicker but not being highly knowledgeable on linux I only discovered this by trial and error.

I remain puzzled by the input screen on E4. Does anyone know what is the purpose of this screen and whether it is possible to load playlists there. If so, is there a format specification or can palylists generated from D4 be loaded in E4.

I've been wondering about Audiolinux, this is the first post I've seen with a comparison.

 

If you don't mind, can you can to describe what improves with AL vs HQP OS?  I'm using OS right now, wondering if I should try AL.

 

I didn't see a trial version of AL, so seems like I'd have to buy it?

 

Randy

[randytsuch]

1 hour ago, craighartley said:

Can anyone help or advise me? I've been trying to make a bootable USB stick with the latest version of hqplayer-embedded-4.13.0-x64. I've had not trouble in the past doing this with Balena Etcher on my Mac, but every time I download it I'm getting 'wrong checksum' messages when I try to extract the zip file downloaded from the Signalyst site. I can find a couple of extractors (including unRAR) that will extract the zip file, but then when I try to flash it to the USB stick, I get an error message telling me to check whether the file is corrupted. Any ideas?

 

thanks

Craig

I made a stick of this last night on my mac.  Runs fine, listened to new version.

 

Used https://theunarchiver.com/ to unzip then Balena Etcher to make the stick and it was fine for me.

 

EDIT:  I'm uploading it to my google drive, but will take a while to upload, hour or so.

 

Randy

[randytsuch]

2 hours ago, craighartley said:

Am I right in thinking that if I’m using the bootable HQP image, the system doesn’t actually need a hard disk to function as a HQPlayer server?
 

(reposted as I accidentally put in the wrong thread)

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.

[randytsuch]

I'm running hqp OS installed on a usb stick I boot my PC from.

Still on version 4.13.0, so decided it was time to upgrade to latest version.

 

But when I made a new stick for 4.29.1, after I installed the license file it was still in trial mode.

 

Figured out it was because the fingerprint changed.

 

I went back and forth a few times, and its consistent, fingerprint is different between the two versions.  This is booting from usb stick on same PC.

 

But I also found that the mac address changes when I change versions, so it also comes up on a different ip address.

 

Wondering if anybody has run into this before?
 

Randy

[randytsuch]

ip address changing isn't a big deal to me, what I don't understand is why the mac address is changing

 

And I really only included that as a possible reason for the fingerprint changing.

 

I tried to upload the license file, but it didn't work because the fingerprint changed, so it wasn't recognized.  

That is really the problem I'm trying to figure out here.

 

But thanks for the answers.

 

Randy

[randytsuch]

38 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

You'll likely need updated key file. Usually reason for change is that some previously undetected hardware gets detected due to OS driver updates.

 

 

Oh, that makes sense.

I remember when I was building the PC back in 2019, there were some linux driver issues.  At the time, the wifi interface didn't work.

 

I'll send email with old license info, and new key number.

 

Thanks

Randy

[randytsuch]

Can't play 48k material.

 

Running HQ OS version 4.29.1

 

If I try to play 48k material, best case is I get silence.  Worst case is PC freezes.  And its really frozen, have to hold the power button down for many seconds to turn off, where I can normally just push the power button.

 

Tried different filters this morning, didn't help.  Really don't know what else to do.

Any tips would be appreciated, but please be specific.  I've already looked at the help page to try to figure out what filter to use, changing filters made no difference.

 

SDM Output to a pi NAA to a Ian canada DAC.  My DAC should work with 48k sources, but its not. Different problem though since HQP should translate from 48k to 44.1k, and I can't figure out why it doesn't work for me

 

TIA

Randy

[randytsuch]

Works thanks.  Used poly sinc long lp.  I had unchecked auto rate before, but probably not with output rate set to right value

[randytsuch]

Thanks for the advice guys.  I will start playing with different filters now.  I'm using the online help info from the hqp OS menu to figure out if the filter is ok or not, using only filters with any in both columns for now.

 

I have a FifoPi Q2 Ultimate and the manual for it claims to support the 24k frequency family, and it has a place for the 2nd clock, so not sure why its not working. Could be my solder job, I'll pull the stack apart at some point and double check everything.

 

Randy