HQPlayer Linux Desktop and HQplayer embedded

[bodiebill]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

That is counter-intuitive, that's the place where fiber matters as it keeps the NAA fully isolated from rest of the network.

 

I understand. However I have the impression that FMC's and fiber NIC's are noisy and that could be worse than the isolation advantage.

 

My post was in reaction to @jabbr's post, but I appreciate your answers! Learning all the time...

[bodiebill]

22 hours ago, jabbr said:

@bodiebill ... and others ... Let me give my overall impressions:

 

1) The best thing you can do with HQPlayer is NAA which gives Ethernet isolation and a low powered quiet machine attached to the DAC.

Agreed. NAA enables me to run a very low footprint endpoint. I have one without any harddisk or SSD (SATA is disabled in BIOS) which runs GentooPlayer or Audiolinux from RAM. I once measured the maximum current draw and it was very low. It is easily powered by a 2A SR4.

 

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2) I use fiberoptic Ethernet for isolation

Me too. However I found that I like the sound best if the last bit downstream is copper ethernet (RJ45), however counterintuitive this may seem. It makes the sound less thin/strident.

 

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3) I got my Mellanox (100gbe) switch because I got a fantastic deal on it, and I got my prior Brocade (10Gbe) switch for the same reason.

A few days ago I received a Cisco 2960G and I prefer it to the MikroTik it should be replacing. However, it is much too noisy, so I ordered one without a fan. Luckily they are cheap (approx. € 50).

The JCAT net card FEMTO arrived today. I will try it in the endpoint PC.

 

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4) I find that Wifi works reliably for me up to DSD256 where wired is reliable to DSD512, so I'm currently looking at whether ASDM7EC/DSD256 compares with AMSDM7/DSD512 that said, I think the dropouts/latency with Wifi is likely much more of a factor regarding SQ than perhaps EMI (my house has a *very* active Wifi situation going on right now with multiple kids doing home schooling/videoconferencing on laptops, also TVs which wifi netflix/amazon etc) 

 

Thoughts on ASDM7EC/DSD256 compared with AMSDM7 etc./DSD512?

I definitely prefer ASDM7EC/DSD256 to AMSDM7/DSD512 and even to AMSDM7/DSD1024 (which my Denafrips DAC accepts).

[bodiebill]

Just now, bodiebill said:

Agreed. NAA enables me to run a very low footprint endpoint. I have one without any harddisk or SSD (SATA is disabled in BIOS) which runs GentooPlayer or Audiolinux from RAM. I once measured the maximum current draw and it was very low. It is easily powered by a 2A SR4.

 

Me too. However I found that I like the sound best if the last bit downstream is copper ethernet (RJ45), however counterintuitive this may seem. It makes the sound less thin/strident. I don't know why.

 

A few days ago I received a Cisco 2960G and I prefer it to the MikroTik it should be replacing. However, it is much too noisy, so I ordered one without a fan. Luckily theyare cheap (approx. € 50).

The JCAT net card FEMTO arrived today. I will try it in the endpoint PC.

 

I definitely prefer ASDM7EC/DSD256 to AMSDM7/DSD512 and even to AMSDM7/DSD1024 (which my Denafrips DAC accepts).

 

[bodiebill]

16 minutes ago, craighartley said:

I can hear enough between the dropouts to know that I definitely prefer ASDM7EC/DSD512 to ASDM7EC/DSD256. Very tantalising!  
 

This is with T+A DAC8 DSD. 

 

Better not to know 🙂

I only compared dropout-free settings...

[bodiebill]

16 minutes ago, lmitche said:

In my experience, at a general level, this is the best practice topology for SQ.

 

Recently I replaced the last downstream fiber bit to my NAA endpoint with CAT6 because it clearly sounded better to my ears. Some others have confirmed this effect. But I guess it depends on the quality of the fiber-capable devices.

Setup now:

router => CAT8 => server / JCAT net card FEMTO bridged => Cisco 2960G switch => fiber => MikroTik 305 => CAT6 => NAA endpoint

(Apologies to Jussi, works well for me.)

[bodiebill]

In Linux it should be possible to create a virtual ALSA output device that writes a stream to a file, f.i. by putting code similar to the following in /etc/asound.conf or ~ / .asoundrc:

pcm.writeFile {
    slave {
        pcm null
    }
    type file
    "raw" format
    "out.raw" file
}

 

When this output device is selected in HQP (Linux Desktop or Embeddded) this should make it possible to use HQP to perform offline conversion/upsampling. 

Does anyone have experience with this?

[bodiebill]

8 hours ago, randytsuch said:

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

 

Did you check the filter list in a recent HQP manual? Did you try a filter with 'Any' in the the before-last column? 

[bodiebill]

Is there a setting that makes HQPlayer embedded automatically update the local music library when it changes? Or do I always have to manually scan the music folder after each change?

 

And after sync, the same question for HQPDControl.  

[bodiebill]

10 minutes ago, Miska said:

No automatic scans, as I consider it bad idea since it usually happens at inconvenient moments and causes unwanted resource usage.

 

So it has to be done manually. One possibility is to start the scan before going to sleep for example. But overall, it is usually pretty quick for library where most content is already known.

 

Thanks, I thought so much: avoiding unpredictable cpu usage seems like a good idea.

 

I update often as I convert and move files to another location before playing, so my HQPlayer local library is temporary and not the same as my main library.