HQPlayer Linux Desktop and HQplayer embedded

[Miska]

Sorry, I think I am being dense but just want to confirm. I will always see "ALSA DSD not supported" if the Amanero firmware that is installed in my DAC is not 1099e even if I have DoP set. Should I see some ALSA message stating that DSD DoP is supported?

 

No, there is no such message. NAA should only report exactly what the hardware supports and nothing more. DoP cannot be detected but it is instead forced from HQPlayer side at playback time based on the setting.

[Miska]

With 3.5.0 the crazy DSD rates are gone but the "ALSA DSD not supported" message still exists even if I have DoP set, along with setting that says up convert everything to SDM it seems to be streaming PCM

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]33608[/ATTACH]

 

It mostly tells the ALSA settings, without attached display NAA doesn't tell whether it is PCM or DoP. But HQPlayer main window tells what goes out.

 

[Miska]

Hi Miska. I did not see networkaudiod 3.5.0 image for cubox-i. No need, or just haven't done it yet?

 

I haven't got time to build one yet. I will do other updates to the image too once I rebuild it, so it'll take some extra effort and will happen some time later...

 

If you are in hurry, you can always have another microSD with minimal Debian Stretch and the the provided networkaudiod package...

[Miska]

Now there's hqplayerd a14 build version available. Contains some fixes and finalizes bunch of changes. Next I'll start working on some new features so it may take a while before there are more versions.

 

...I made some changes to the stop code too...

[Miska]

* Make both desktop and embedded version leverage the same configuration file, including the settings that only apply to embedded which desktop version ignores. The reason for the request is right now there are some settings which require manual edits for embedded to stream DSD only or leverage network. Doing that will allow one to configure all settings needed for embedded leveraging desktop version.

 

Embedded will have it's own configuration application...

 

* Have ability to request and install license key with out use of desktop version (I want to avoid installing XServer and all the dependencies needed for HQPlayer). I know this request contradicts the one above of using HQPd to change configuration for HQPe.

 

Certainly, that is part of previous item...

 

* Add support for CUDA

 

For various reasons that is probably enabled as one of the last items. Mostly for the reason to keep things a bit simpler while there are lot of changes/additions going on. Technically not hard to do.

 

* Add support for systemctl configuration which starts HQPe with rygel. Currently, the alpha version includes support to start HQPe only to be used with Roon/Alchemy/Muso.

 

There's an example provided on the web page. But since Rygel (or MPRIS to be precise) requires D-Bus session-bus, it is based on another package called TLM which I've also been developing, more as part of my regular day job... The example provided is from my own setup. But I don't want to make all that mandatory for HQPlayer Embedded, that's why the systemd service file provided with hqplayerd is "standalone" without Rygel/dbus-session-bus.

 

At some point I tried to make it all work with systemd without TLM, but at least the version at that time refused to properly start session bus for hqplayerd. I personally pretty much hate systemd and it's built-in hardcoded idiosyncracies that keep changing over time... With TLM I know precisely how things work.

[Miska]

Now there is a15 build available. Quite a bunch of fixes and improvements again. And one new feature; point your browser at port 8088 of the machine where hqplayerd is running to get to a status page where you can also change some active settings. Note! Those settings can be only changed when playback is in stopped state, in other cases any changes made will be ignored.

 

Web page is very simple and made such way that it scales for both desktop and even to display of iPhone 6.

[Miska]

I now have some extraneous warbly low level noises in the background and wondering if they are amp/preamp noise (could be tube, but prevalent at zero volume too) or some sort of network noise.

 

One other person reported this kind of behavior, but with HQPlayer Desktop. Tube gear too (Audio Research), I think he is also on this forum.

 

There is not enough information yet to say much about... I can think of some possible causes, but I don't want to go too far speculating anything.

[Miska]

This is great, thank you. After an evening of listening, the only issue I've noticed with Roon is a tendency for playback to stop when using "Play Now" if something is already playing. I don't know if this is something that would need to be tweaked on the Roon end but it looks like this:

clControlThread::ParseMsg(): clHQPlayerEngine::Play(): clThread::Create(): already running!

 

Hmmh, I thought I already fixed that problem because I didn't see it anymore. I'll look into it and make a new build once I find the problem. There may be a time window somewhere where the playback is being stopped and then next playback is being asked while the stop procedure is still ongoing. These kind of timing problems are hard to catch in testing...

[Miska]

May I suggest to concentrate on release of finalized and well documented official APIs.

 

APIs are "finalized" already unless something new is needed. Documentation is in form of example code.

 

Release of web pages, APPs and whatever will follow by themselves.

 

Mmm, no? Adding the current control web control feature took me almost two weeks. Then there's quite a bit more work to be done for configuration GUI. I understand editing the XML file is not particularly friendly way.

[Miska]

The mention of timing made me wonder whether this could be latency or some subtle interaction of the wired and wireless connections

 

Could be, but good that it got spotted early on. Of course timing variations shouldn't mess up things...

[Miska]

I meant, external developers can follow up quickly.

 

Maybe, just haven't seen it happening yet...

[Miska]

Could be, but good that it got spotted early on. Of course timing variations shouldn't mess up things...

 

I uploaded build a16 with some serious state management rework, I hope the problem is now gone...

 

 

P.S. I will land the same fixes to Desktop 3.15.2 too, if things seem to work for a16.

[Miska]

But if the album playing is a Tidal stream and the new album is a Tidal stream, the "Already Running" error is reproduced virtually every time, on my setup anyways.

 

Can you email me a full session logfile snippet when this happens?

 

Edit: I tried again, both with a Tidal playlist (at least with Roon stream changes for every playlist item) and switching from album to another and I don't manage to reproduce this...

[Miska]

Piero just put a17 on the AUR. I will switch from Win10 back to AudioLinux and install it. Jussi, where does a17 fall in relation to the version numbering on Windows HQPlayer desktop (like 3.5.1)?

 

I've been rebuilding the a17 the entire day (12 hours now) trying to nail down the timing bug. I hope I now finally fixed it and just re-uploaded a17. So better check what you have matches the one on the web server.

 

The 4.x series of Embedded is quite different beast from the 3.x Desktop and growing further away all the time. But I port fixes I do both ways between the two. So fix-wise it corresponds to the to-be-released 3.15.2, and also most DSP code version is the same.

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, arglebargle said:

Anyone out there listening to a19? Hopefully not jumping the gun to install it, I seem to have a sixth sense for when an update is available So far everything is working pretty smoothly with Roon and a Cubox i4pro NAA running 3.5. None of the showstoppers like playback stalling;  the only issue that reappeared  for me is the slight post-pause echo of whatever was playing.  Wish I could recall what version cleared that up. I recall there was at least one other person who was experiencing the same. 

 

I managed to get that happen once yesterday and I hoped I nailed it in a19 because I didn't get it anymore in the final build... Happened on Pause -> Stop transition.

[Miska]

3 hours ago, arglebargle said:

Just a tip in case it helps anyone out there: despite the targets being correct for the systemd unit, one of my machines somehow has a mistaken idea about what constitutes the network being "up" so hqplayerd fails to start on boot—too many retries. Adding RestartSec=5 to the unit file prevents this, and hqplayerd starts without manual intervention. Even two seconds would probably do, ymmv. 

 

OK thanks! Usually the problem happens when DHCP is used, because sometimes DHCP servers are slow to respond and annoyingly systemd doesn't wait for those to really come up, even with network-online.target...

 

I'm configuring network with static IP using /etc/network/interfaces file so it comes up fast.

 

I'll add two seconds setting to the service file, there is not much point in spinning the restart loop faster than that.

[Miska]

7 hours ago, shadowlight said:

@Miska,

 

Something to fix in the next version of HQPe, is the following error message on a brand new Debian Stretch install.

 

cp: cannot stat '/etc/hqplayer/hqplayerd.xml': No such file or directory

Yeah, I'll take that away. Not critical though, it is just trying to make backup copy of previous configuration file which of course fails.

 

[Miska]

32 minutes ago, cat6man said:

1.  do i need a new fingerprint/key for 4.x or can i install over my existing 3.x version?

 

Yes, you need a new key file, fingerprint is the same for the same hardware. Key files are named differently, so both can co-exist in case you want to switch versions.

 

Other things may be fixed in 4.x. Except the gapless may not necessarily change.

[Miska]

27 minutes ago, cat6man said:

fired up bubbleupnp on my android phone, found v4 renderer and selected music to play, and.........nada, no sound.  eventually debugged the signal path to find that bubbleupnp somehow turned the volume all the way down (it had been fine with v3 hqplayerd previously).

 

Great to hear things are working!

 

You can configure startup default volume setting in the settings XML file in "defaults" element attribute "volume".

 

Or if you prefer to have fixed volume setting you can have for example <fixed volume="-3"/> in the settings file.

[Miska]

Now starting with a21 there's a new fingerprinting algorithm and obtaining the fingerprint doesn't need HQPlayer Desktop anymore. HQPlayer Embedded now operates for 30 minutes in trial mode just like Desktop and one can get the fingerprint (and some other info) by pointing browser to for example something like http://mymachine:8088/about

 

 

P.S. Keys with old fingerprint continue to work as before...

[Miska]

7 hours ago, arglebargle said:

@Miska Was going to report that sample rate changes were stalling out again on a22 but it's no longer an issue after installing today's newly announced 4.0.0 Beta 1. 

 

Do you have any idea what might cause that little blip of sound a few seconds after pausing a track in Roon?  I recall you caught it at least once in your testing. I'm still getting that here; it's the one thing keeping me on the a17 release.  

 

Track changes seem even quicker and cleaner on the new beta though, so I might just stick with it.

 

Cheers! 

 

When the engine is in paused state, all buffers are full of audio. Transitioning from pause to stop should reset all buffers instead of flushing to output. Since Roon doesn't have a stop button as such, normal press of pause in Roon will cause transition first to paused and then after some seconds Roon will send stop command. Long press of pause in Roon should go to full stop immediately.

 

Maybe there is some buffer or filter that is not reset. Which filter are you using?

 

[Miska]

11 minutes ago, bibo01 said:

@Miska

In HQPE 4.0.0b1 you announce "There is also a new mobile device compatible web-based control and configuration interface." ,

How is it possible to get detailed info about it?

 

There's some more info in the readme.txt, but generally the web server responds at port 8088. For security reasons, some of the pages require authentication and there are instructions in the readme.txt on how to setup the username+password for it. So there is no default password and it requires some server side manual actions to set one.

 

Later on I will add a hqplayerd command line argument for setting the username+password. It just didn't make it yet into this one.

 

P.S. The CSS file is in /etc/hqplayer/web and can be changed from the config file too. In case someone wants to play with the layout.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, shadowlight said:

@Miska,

Any plans to add option to change DAC via the web interface?  I am using alpha21 right now but will update to beta1 tonight.

 

Well, it is kind of there already on the configuration page...

 

1 hour ago, shadowlight said:

Edit: Also, any plans to add support for CUDA?

 

Yes, eventually. I just first want to get other things right first.

 

[Miska]

8 hours ago, shadowlight said:

Do we need to restart HQPlayer Embedded once you make changes via configuration?

 

It will restart itself when you save the changes...

[Miska]

14 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

4) Go to localhost:8088/auth, give the username and password, and click on "key"

5) Upload hqplayerd 4 key.

6) Go to localhost:8088/config and set your configuration.

 

Note: a direct connection to localhost:8088 is giving "access denied" without password prompt

 

You can also restore the original key and config at this point. The only point is that hqplayerd needs to be in unconfigured state for setting password. In unconfigured state only some of the URLs are allowed because others, like the main page for example need it to be in configured state.

 

The config backup/restore functionality is also useful in case someone wants to edit the configuration manually outside of the box and then send it back... For example convolution/matrix/speaker configurations are not yet in the web interface, so those would need to be configured manually. Those XML elements can also be copy-pasted from HQPlayer Desktop configuration.