HQPlayer Linux Desktop and HQplayer embedded

[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

[ajm]

I'm sure this is very subjective but to my ear, the AL sound removes a slightly sharp edge from what I hear with HQPlayer OS and detail is slightly better. These are not night and day differences but make listening more comfortable. I should add that I am running both server and endpoint on NUC's and using ramroot loading. I think you will have to pay a minimum of $59 (for 1 year another $60 for time unlimited) to use AL2 in the way I'm using it.  I am using HQP / NAA  purely as player without any upsampling or other processing with Chord M Scaler and DAVE.

Just received an Etheregen today and already find that this improves further the detail and clarity of sound.

 

Slightly surprised that Jussi does not recognise any conceivable grain of value in my report about better performance with nfs than samba because recommendations to use nsf in preference for communication between linux devices can be found in several sources.

 

Andrew

[Miska]

1 hour ago, ajm said:

I am using HQP / NAA  purely as player without any upsampling or other processing with Chord M Scaler and DAVE.

 

I can see almost heresy here!

 

1 hour ago, ajm said:

Slightly surprised that Jussi does not recognise any conceivable grain of value in my report about better performance with nfs than samba because recommendations to use nsf in preference for communication between linux devices can be found in several sources.

 

Old UDP-based NFS has issues on modern fast networks where the certain packet id's can roll over too fast. The new TCP based one comes closer to SMB and some of the past advantages are lost. User management is pain with NFS due to way it represents things, unless you use NIS or LDAP for user identities and login. Otherwise managing access and file permissions per user becomes nightmare.

 

I'm using SMB throughout, it works equally well on all three platforms (Linux, macOS and Windows) without notable access control issues. Storage access over gigabit network is not any slower than local access through external USB-connected HDD. I can get as much through as gigabit ethernet can pass.

 

Making NFS work properly on Windows is PITA, and not much better on macOS either...

 

[ajm]

Before I got DAVE, I did quite a lot of experimenting with HQP processing using previous DACs but never had a powerful enough server to provide the processing needed for good results. If I had a powerful and optimised server now, I would be interested to do some further experiments but the sound from MScaler + DAVE is very good and I don't feel the need to buy another expensive server to undertake such experiments at present.

I think you were very early to the game with NAA and I remain very pleased with the way this separation of functions works. AL2 gives the possibility to employ more than one endpoint software if needed. However, I still wish it would be made easier to use HQP for playing internet streams.

Of course, I was not talking about using nfs with windows!

 

[Outlaw]

latest version of HQPlayer embedded OS cant get to work I see naa recognizes but music wont play

[Outlaw]

Jussi got it to work but had to uncheck ipv6 ? Always use this setting but won’t work with this release ?

[elan120]

4 minutes ago, Outlaw said:

Jussi got it to work but had to uncheck ipv6 ? Always use this setting but won’t work with this release ?

In my case, IPv6 stay checked with no issue.

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

@Miska

 

I love Embedded and wish I could enjoy 4.13

 

Shutdown and Matrix profiles are much appreciated

 

unfortunately efforts to get it run did not yield any working result

 

might have created second issue..

 

1st issue : log (not saved, sorry) says something like no minCET adaptor or not connected and cannot reach address;

basically : it does not reach the NAA (on UP NUC)

 

I should have stopped wasting time when I saw something like SAHM 256 INVALID displayed for half a second before it  boots (seemingly)  normally (I etched the usb stick 4 times; in case...)

 

my HW is still good ol' MBPr 2012

 

2nd issue : one of the things I tried was to update the NAA image (on UP NUC)

 

Now once out of 2 boots, I get hooked to Up ethernet and get no (instead of getting )IP address 

 

Back on 4.12.2 : evreything went just smoothly : seems there's an issue with 4.13...

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I should have stopped wasting time when I saw something like SAHM 256 INVALID displayed for half a second before it  boots (seemingly)  normally (I etched the usb stick 4 times; in case...)

 

my HW is still good ol' MBPr 2012

 

The OS has been updated, could be that it doesn't work on a Mac anymore, I have not tested. I've tested it on NUC 7i7BNH where it works fine, and the SHA-256 validation succeeds by bootloader.

 

2 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

2nd issue : one of the things I tried was to update the NAA image (on UP NUC)

 

Now once out of 2 boots, I get hooked to Up ethernet and get no (instead of getting )IP address 

 

Sometimes DHCP servers are slow to respond. If the DHCP server is giving different IP every time, it could also run out of available leases if the NAA is just powered off instead of shutdown and booted up very frequently. Depending on lease expiry times. Shouldn't become an issue if NAA is booted less frequently than once per day (typical lease time is 24 hours).

 

But if the the older NAA image works better, you can keep using that. The NAA software is same on both, just OS got updated in the new one.

 

[cat6man]

updated to latest embedded, running under AL2, everything runs fine on NUC

 

as with @ajm, i'm a heretic running with no upsampling or processing, streaming to an ultraRendu to an r2r totaldac.

 

AL, running on a NUC with ramroot & linear power supply, clearly further improves the sound in my system and not by a small amount (soundstage, instrument separation, detail yet smooth, better defined bass) but i have absolutely no idea why or by what mechanism this occurs.  as an engineer, i'm more than a little intrigued, but what i hear is a no-brainer.

 

in any case, hqplayer embedded is a winner and one of the best upgrades i've ever made to my system

[Miska]

If you run HQPlayer Embedded that way, or up to max 384k PCM upsampling, then the new HQPlayer OS image on RaspberryPi 4 is enough. With certain filters it could possibly manage conversion even to 768k.

 

Note that reloading HQPlayer settings after changes or when booting up, it takes a while, so just wait until the web interface starts responding again.

 

Also note that running DSP things on RasPi4 requires cooling for the CPU and RAM, without cooling it will likely eventually go into thermal throttling or shutdown.

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

The OS has been updated, could be that it doesn't work on a Mac anymore, I have not tested. I've tested it on NUC 7i7BNH where it works fine, and the SHA-256 validation succeeds by bootloader.

 

 

Sometimes DHCP servers are slow to respond. If the DHCP server is giving different IP every time, it could also run out of available leases if the NAA is just powered off instead of shutdown and booted up very frequently. Depending on lease expiry times. Shouldn't become an issue if NAA is booted less frequently than once per day (typical lease time is 24 hours).

 

But if the the older NAA image works better, you can keep using that. The NAA software is same on both, just OS got updated in the new one.

 

I paid for Embedded Last Black Friday less than a month ago, felt stupid to have waited so long for a discount that proved less than the one I would have got any time if I went D3 to D4 and now am I to understand that my platform (Mac, not very exotic) is not supported any longer ?!

Please Jussi, let me and other Mac users enjoy Embedded !

 

As of second issue you're most certainly right, came from the tricks I tried to get NAA and Embedded communicate. Worked fine later. I  use my Mac for other stuff as well so HQP OS on it might get booted several times a day but the NAA NUC runs 24/24 : shouldn't be an issue any longer, thanks

[Miska]

27 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I paid for Embedded Last Black Friday less than a month ago, felt stupid to have waited so long for a discount that proved less than the one I would have got any time if I went D3 to D4 and now am I to understand that my platform (Mac, not very exotic) is not supported any longer ?!

Please Jussi, let me and other Mac users enjoy Embedded !

 

I've always said that it may or may not work on some Mac models. Linux is not officially supported on Mac hardware by Apple or by Linux developers. On most recent Macs it certainly won't work and I cannot do anything about it, reason is that recent Macs require all boot code to be signed with Apple's keys, and Apple is only OK to sign macOS and Windows.

 

Apple hardware/firmware is very PC-like, but not same as PC. I cannot start debugging Linux EFI bootloader code to figure out why it doesn't work on a certain Mac EFI firmware... I don't have that Mac model, and it would likely take me weeks or months to figure out.

 

Alternative is always to try to install supported Ubuntu Server release, Debian, or latest Fedora Minimal and the hqplayerd package there.

 

[cat6man]

On 12/12/2019 at 12:45 PM, ajm said:

  I am using HQP / NAA  purely as player without any upsampling or other processing with Chord M Scaler and DAVE.

 

 

@ajm

 

with no upsampling or dither, how many bits are you passing to the scaler/dac?

[Le Concombre Masqué]

21 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I've always said that it may or may not work on some Mac models. Linux is not officially supported on Mac hardware by Apple or by Linux developers. On most recent Macs it certainly won't work and I cannot do anything about it, reason is that recent Macs require all boot code to be signed with Apple's keys, and Apple is only OK to sign macOS and Windows.

 

Apple hardware/firmware is very PC-like, but not same as PC. I cannot start debugging Linux EFI bootloader code to figure out why it doesn't work on a certain Mac EFI firmware... I don't have that Mac model, and it would likely take me weeks or months to figure out.

 

Alternative is always to try to install supported Ubuntu Server release, Debian, or latest Fedora Minimal and the hqplayerd package there.

 

it worked perfectly well on my Mac till 4.12.2 when I decided to buy Embedded... 

have an old MAc so haven't tried but read it's easy (booting from recovery if i recall well ) to boot Linux on newer Mac

[Miska]

8 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

it worked perfectly well on my Mac till 4.12.2 when I decided to buy Embedded... 

 

I just cannot do much about it. It boots fine on both the NUC 7i7BNH and on UpSquared (N4200 based quad-core Pentium one).

 

You can of course continue using 4.12.2.

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

4 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I just cannot do much about it. It boots fine on both the NUC 7i7BNH and on UpSquared (N4200 based quad-core Pentium one).

 

You can of course continue using 4.12.2.

 

what do you plan for the future that I'll me missing (besides matrix profiles and shutdown -- works very well and so cool)?

[Miska]

15 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

what do you plan for the future that I'll me missing (besides matrix profiles and shutdown -- works very well and so cool)?

 

I have a long list of things to be done... When and what - remains to be seen.

 

As I said, you can always try to install one of the supported Linux distributions and hope it continues to work, but you never know. Next April Ubuntu will have big update with the 20.04 LTS release. Fedora rolls out new releases about every six months. Debian has been slowest of all, but they have been speeding up recently too. So can't be certain that even if current versions work on a Mac, it wouldn't break some time in future.

 

On Mac hardware safest is to stick to macOS... Although I just discarded my 2011 Mac Mini because Apple stopped providing OS updates for it. But it worked for eight years afterall.

 

[ajm]

@cat6man

 

I am using FLAC/ WAV up to 192 kHz, DXD and DSD up to DSD256 with no problems except that  DSD  files in many cases will not play by streaming with mConnect whereas all will play with Jussi's library using a remote mount of the NAS.

When I purchased E4 recently, I had the idea that I would probably use mConnect to avoid the need to have a laptop open all the time but the DSD issue meant that this was not possible. 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, ajm said:

@cat6man

 

I am using FLAC/ WAV up to 192 kHz, DXD and DSD up to DSD256 with no problems except that  DSD  files in many cases will not play by streaming with mConnect whereas all will play with Jussi's library using a remote mount of the NAS.

When I purchased E4 recently, I had the idea that I would probably use mConnect to avoid the need to have a laptop open all the time but the DSD issue meant that this was not possible. 

 

If you are on Android, you may have better luck with DSD files using BubbleUPnP. At least the combination of MinimServer + BubbleUPnP used to work. DSD compatibility tends to be more due to the UPnP Media Server than the Control Point (Bubble or mConnect). I think for example MinimServer supported only DSF files, but not DSDIFF. This could be the case for some other servers too.

 

But you could convert any DSDIFF files into DSF. I have a free command line utility for that purpose and there are other ways too.

 

[cat6man]

2 hours ago, ajm said:

@cat6man

 

I am using FLAC/ WAV up to 192 kHz, DXD and DSD up to DSD256 with no problems except that  DSD  files in many cases will not play by streaming with mConnect whereas all will play with Jussi's library using a remote mount of the NAS.

When I purchased E4 recently, I had the idea that I would probably use mConnect to avoid the need to have a laptop open all the time but the DSD issue meant that this was not possible. 

 

@ajm

for FLAC/WAV, do you have a setting for #bits?

[ajm]

@cat6man 

I have DAC bits set to default (0) which results in a report of 32bit output from HQPe if that's what you mean

 

@miska

I don't have a functional android device. All my dsd material is in .dsf files. Using mConnect also has the annoying disadvantage that gapless does not work very well

[Miska]

37 minutes ago, ajm said:

@miska

I don't have a functional android device. All my dsd material is in .dsf files. Using mConnect also has the annoying disadvantage that gapless does not work very well

 

For Tidal I think I've got pretty decent playback from mConnect, but depends on the internet connection. I've had problems in the past that MinimServer is a bit sluggish to provide data for the next track. Maybe that is due to JRE it is running on. When I tried Rygel it wasn't as sluggish.

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

On 12/17/2019 at 12:50 AM, Miska said:

 

I have a long list of things to be done... When and what - remains to be seen.

 

As I said, you can always try to install one of the supported Linux distributions and hope it continues to work, but you never know. Next April Ubuntu will have big update with the 20.04 LTS release. Fedora rolls out new releases about every six months. Debian has been slowest of all, but they have been speeding up recently too. So can't be certain that even if current versions work on a Mac, it wouldn't break some time in future.

 

On Mac hardware safest is to stick to macOS... Although I just discarded my 2011 Mac Mini because Apple stopped providing OS updates for it. But it worked for eight years afterall.

 

Don't sweat it, I can live with that till I have a HW purchase decision to make;  then I'll hope for your guidance/clarification.

 

I then will use Matrix and Convolution to switch between my convolution profiles (-1dB/octave and B&K).

When I output them from Rephase I had to lower the output to -7 and -8 (but they sound and PN measure as  loud) to keep Max Response below 0.

So QUESTION:

I currently have lowered in Convolution -7.8 to match Matrix (MCH to ST config).

Should I be better off outputting from RePhase at 0 and -1 and letting  HQP take care of  Max response level with just the current settings ?

The rest of the equation is : 4x100 watts amps + 4 x 200/Preamp set to +17 dB gain (when reviewed in Stereophile ages ago, reviewer opted for +8 and JA measured it at +12 gain, maybe an optimum then?)/on the most hungry recordings ie LA Woman 5.1 DVDA matrixed 2.0, I reach nicely fitting SPL at 3dB of the max that my volume knob permits. I'm more typically #15 dB under the max preamp output level at knob potentiometer 

[craighartley]

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