HQPlayer Linux Desktop and HQplayer embedded

[shadowlight]

35 minutes ago, simonklp said:

 

Hi Deepak, thank you very much for your advice. I shall try again and see how it goes.

 

I mentioned HQPlayer Desktop for Linux because I thought that the license of it also works for HQPe. Am I correct?

 

I plan to use HQPe as uPNP renderer. Thank you again for your kind advice.

 

 

Nope, you no longer needed the desktop license for embedded.  Miska, has added support for embedded license directly in the later 4.0 alpha/beta versions and the final releases.

 

If you plan to use it as uPNP renderer, make sure to the upnp section is in the config file.  I believe it is there by default.

[simonklp]

1 hour ago, shadowlight said:

 

Nope, you no longer needed the desktop license for embedded.  Miska, has added support for embedded license directly in the later 4.0 alpha/beta versions and the final releases.

 

If you plan to use it as uPNP renderer, make sure to the upnp section is in the config file.  I believe it is there by default.

 

Hi Deepak, thank you again for your kind advice. So, the license for HQPlayer Desktop Linux version is different from HQPe. I shall need two licenses for using both. Is that correct?

 

For the upnp section in config file, I shall take a look on it.

 

Thanks and best regards... Simon

 

[shadowlight]

23 minutes ago, simonklp said:

 

Hi Deepak, thank you again for your kind advice. So, the license for HQPlayer Desktop Linux version is different from HQPe. I shall need two licenses for using both. Is that correct?

 

For the upnp section in config file, I shall take a look on it.

 

Thanks and best regards... Simon

 

Simon, best to direct he license question @Miska, but my understanding is if you want to use both you will need both license.  If your goal is to use it upnp renderer you just need embedded license.  As far as i am aware desktop version does not have any support for renderer.

[simonklp]

2 hours ago, shadowlight said:

Simon, best to direct he license question @Miska, but my understanding is if you want to use both you will need both license.  If your goal is to use it upnp renderer you just need embedded license.  As far as i am aware desktop version does not have any support for renderer.

Hi Deepak, thanks for your reply anyway.

[twluke]

On 5/15/2018 at 10:20 PM, twluke said:

Recently, I tried to check the USB connectivity of HQP to a Manhattan II DAC for native DSD256 play. While the sound cards were well recognized on HQP log, the setting window did not show the DAC as an ALSA device as shown in the pictures below.

 

The culprit was pulseaudio. After purging the binary including config files and it's dependencies, the HQP became able to recognize the DAC as an ALSA device.

[Miska]

Quote

via /etc/network/interfaces file.

 

allow-hotplug eno1
iface eno1 inet static
        address 10.19.67.42
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        broadcast 10.19.67.255
        gateway 10.19.67.1
        dns-nameservers 10.19.67.9 10.19.67.5

 

OK, strange, as it doesn't happen for me... This is one of the many painful reasons why I don't like systemd at all...

 

[simonklp]

After trying the HQPe as the UPnP renderer using BubbleUPnP and MinimServer to stream Tidal music, I feel that the SQ appears to be not as good as that by playing the local music on SSD using HQPlayer Desktop on Linux. Is there any chance that streaming the Tidal music from the Android phone through the wireless network deteriorates the SQ?

 

Is there any tweaks available to improve the SQ in this case? I am using using Ubuntu Studio as the OS.

 

Any advice will be appropriated. Thanks in advance.

[Miska]

18 hours ago, simonklp said:

After trying the HQPe as the UPnP renderer using BubbleUPnP and MinimServer to stream Tidal music, I feel that the SQ appears to be not as good as that by playing the local music on SSD using HQPlayer Desktop on Linux. Is there any chance that streaming the Tidal music from the Android phone through the wireless network deteriorates the SQ?

 

When you do that (and things are operating correctly), HQPlayer is streaming straight form Tidal server and Android device is only involved in control.

 

But the comparison isn't completely apples to apples, because you are streaming from Tidal vs local storage. And even the mastering is not necessarily the same, or the steps in between. So you could instead compare the two playing the same content from local storage. You can control this for example using HQPDcontrol on Android.

 

18 hours ago, simonklp said:

I am using using Ubuntu Studio as the OS.

 

Ubuntu Studio being OS with desktop GUI is not usual platform for HQPlayer Embedded which would normally be used in completely headless installations without any GUI. But in this particular case this doesn't make a difference if you would anyway run HQPlayer Desktop under the same OS.

 

[m3lraaHnevetS]

Hi Jussi,

 

Still enjoying your HQP on my Win 10 config but curious about the embedded version and the improvement it might bring…

So I put the most recent image on an usb and things seemed pretty good, I could start the gui from an other computer and fiddle around a little. but the Sonore Rendu that is supposed to pass the signal on was a bit confused so I restarted things but now I get a message saying “a dependency job for hqplayerd.service failed”…check journalctl. journalctl says things like: serial getty service has no hold off time…I don’t know what this means…

 

Any advise on how to move on from here…? thanks!

 

Steven  

[gvl]

57 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

When you do that (and things are operating correctly), HQPlayer is streaming straight form Tidal server and Android device is only involved in control.

 

But the comparison isn't completely apples to apples, because you are streaming from Tidal vs local storage. And even the mastering is not necessarily the same, or the steps in between. So you could instead compare the two playing the same content from local storage. You can control this for example using HQPDcontrol on Android.

 

 

 

Is it possible the HQP somehow ends up pulling a compressed stream instead of lossless? 

[Miska]

9 hours ago, gvl said:

Is it possible the HQP somehow ends up pulling a compressed stream instead of lossless? 

 

Only if it is MQA, or if BubbleUPnP decides to transcode something. HQPlayer doesn't support MP3 or other lossy formats.

 

Most likely explanation is just that the material at Tidal is worse quality, or they don't offer a lossless version at all.

 

[Miska]

9 hours ago, m3lraaHnevetS said:

message saying “a dependency job for hqplayerd.service failed”…check journalctl. journalctl says things like: serial getty service has no hold off time…I don’t know what this means…

 

hqplayerd has only few dependencies, one for the audio hardware and another for network, so both need to be up first before hqplayerd can be started. So in this case, either one has failed.

[simonklp]

19 hours ago, Miska said:

 

When you do that (and things are operating correctly), HQPlayer is streaming straight form Tidal server and Android device is only involved in control.

 

But the comparison isn't completely apples to apples, because you are streaming from Tidal vs local storage. And even the mastering is not necessarily the same, or the steps in between. So you could instead compare the two playing the same content from local storage. You can control this for example using HQPDcontrol on Android.

 

 

Ubuntu Studio being OS with desktop GUI is not usual platform for HQPlayer Embedded which would normally be used in completely headless installations without any GUI. But in this particular case this doesn't make a difference if you would anyway run HQPlayer Desktop under the same OS.

 

Hi @Miska, thank you very much for your kind advice and comment. Do you mean that I can control HQPlayer Embedded to play the content from local storage by using HQPDcontrol? If this is the case, how to set up the arrangement?

 

In addition, if Ubunto Studio is not the usual platform for HQPlayer Embedded. Which one would be better in this case? Kindly please advise. Thank you again for your kind attention.

 

Thanks and regards, Simon

[Miska]

1 hour ago, simonklp said:

Hi @Miska, thank you very much for your kind advice and comment. Do you mean that I can control HQPlayer Embedded to play the content from local storage by using HQPDcontrol? If this is the case, how to set up the arrangement?

 

Yes, you can scan local content to HQPlayer's library using the web interface. Then you just point HQPDcontrol at HQPlayer Embedded machine.

 

1 hour ago, simonklp said:

In addition, if Ubunto Studio is not the usual platform for HQPlayer Embedded. Which one would be better in this case? Kindly please advise. Thank you again for your kind attention.

 

Bare minimum Ubuntu Server with lowlatency kernel (or my custom one), or alternatively bare minimum Debian 9 with realtime kernel (or my custom one). These will have only simple text mode console and no graphical output.

 

[asdf1000]

11 hours ago, Miska said:

Bare minimum Ubuntu Server with lowlatency kernel (or my custom one)

 

Hi @Miska

 

I'm just going through these instructions to install HQP Embedded:

https://www.signalyst.com/embedded-install.html

 

One thing that confuses me is on the main Signalyst home page I see "https://www.signalyst.com/bins/hqplayer_3.21.0-75_amd64.deb?" but I don't see where that's used in the above instructions.

 

If I'm just planning to run Ubuntu server for HQP Embedded, I don't need to worry about HQP Desktop for Ubuntu right?

 

And does HQP Embedded running on Ubuntu server (headless) still make use of CUDA, if we have CUDA compatible Nvidia card? 

 

Cheers!

 

[asdf1000]

And one more question:

 

I only see a 32-bit version of Ubuntu 16.04 for Intel CPU's here: 

http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/

 

I have an Intel i7-7700HQ, so is the 32-bit version fine to install HQP Embedded? I guess it's my only option because the 64-bit version is AMD right?

 

[lmitche]

11 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

And one more question:

 

I only see a 32-bit version of Ubuntu 16.04 for Intel CPU's here: 

http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/

 

I have an Intel i7-7700HQ, so is the 32-bit version fine to install HQP Embedded? I guess it's my only option because the 64-bit version is AMD right?

 

The AMD 64 bit version will work fine on an Intel processor.  Intel used AMDs 64 bit scheme when adopting 64 bits, rightly called AMD64 as AMD invented it.

[asdf1000]

10 minutes ago, lmitche said:

The AMD 64 bit version will work fine on an Intel processor.  Intel used AMDs 64 bit scheme when adopting 64 bits, rightly called AMD64 as AMD invented it.

 

Nice, thanks!

 

Another question for you or @Miska: 

 

The instructions I linked above say: "Install necessary packages, dependencies for these packages are available in the OS package repository. Download and install libgmpris package. And then the hqplayerd package."

 

Are there any other packages other than libgpris and hqplayerd needed to be installed on Ubuntu Server 16.04, for HQP Embedded? 

 

Cheers

[asdf1000]

@Miska one more question (getting close to the end now):

 

I'm very new to doing stuff manually in Linux (command line) but I did some Googling.

 

Is this how you download and install libgmpris package (via MacOS Terminal):

 

wget https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/xenial/libgmpris_2.2.1-4_amd64.deb

cd Downloads

sudo dpkg -i libgmpris_2.2.1-4_amd64.deb

 

And to download and install hqplayerd package:

 

wget https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/hqplayerd/xenial/hqplayerd_4.1.1-9_amd64.deb

cd Downloads

sudo dpkg -i hqplayerd_4.1.1-9_amd64.deb
 

As per earlier question, are there any other packages required, for a good HQP Embedded experience (headless).

 

Cheers!

 

 

[Miska]

That works for the packages which are not in the OS's package repository. But the "cd Downloads" is bogus. wget will download things to the current directory.

 

For rest of the dependencies, when you install those packages, the packaging system will complain about missing dependencies. You can then pull those in from the OS repository using "sudo apt install -f" because the package installation with dpkg will mark those as missing.

 

If you have Ubuntu Server installed, you likely have server optimized kernel installed too. For audio use case it is good idea to pull in the lowlatency kernel instead with "sudo apt install linux-image-lowlatency-hwe-16.04". After rebooting ("sudo reboot") check with "uname -a" that you are running this lowlatency kernel, if not, you can remove the old one and then it'll boot automatically to the remaining one. Alternatively you can install my custom kernel from the same place (same way you installed libgmpris, etc), just check what is latest version there at the moment. Right now there's "linux-image-4.14.26-jl+_6_amd64.deb". I should update it soon, but been busy on other things...

 

[simonklp]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

That works for the packages which are not in the OS's package repository. But the "cd Downloads" is bogus. wget will download things to the current directory.

 

For rest of the dependencies, when you install those packages, the packaging system will complain about missing dependencies. You can then pull those in from the OS repository using "sudo apt install -f" because the package installation with dpkg will mark those as missing.

 

If you have Ubuntu Server installed, you likely have server optimized kernel installed too. For audio use case it is good idea to pull in the lowlatency kernel instead with "sudo apt install linux-image-lowlatency-hwe-16.04". After rebooting ("sudo reboot") check with "uname -a" that you are running this lowlatency kernel, if not, you can remove the old one and then it'll boot automatically to the remaining one. Alternatively you can install my custom kernel from the same place (same way you installed libgmpris, etc), just check what is latest version there at the moment. Right now there's "linux-image-4.14.26-jl+_6_amd64.deb". I should update it soon, but been busy on other things...

 

So the latest lowlatency kernel is "4.13.0-43-lowlatency". Is that correct? Kindly please advise. Thanks.

[m3lraaHnevetS]

On 21-5-2018 at 8:49 AM, Miska said:

 

hqplayerd has only few dependencies, one for the audio hardware and another for network, so both need to be up first before hqplayerd can be started. So in this case, either one has failed.

got the embedded version working and I like the sound a lot. I already have licenses for both desktop versions, does this give me a little discount on the embedded version?

thanks

[asdf1000]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

For rest of the dependencies, when you install those packages, the packaging system will complain about missing dependencies.

 

Thanks for all the info above. What does this mean "for the rest of the dependencies"?

 

Is there a list of dependencies I need to get, for HQP Embedded to work at it's best.

 

So far I'm aware of this (from your install guide):

 

1. libgmpris

2. hqplayerd

3. linux-image-4.14.26-jl+_6_amd64.deb

 

Or are dependencies different to packages? If so, is there a list somewhere that I can refer to 

 

Or does "sudo apt install -f" sort that out fully?

[Miska]

18 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Is there a list of dependencies I need to get, for HQP Embedded to work at it's best.

 

Or are dependencies different to packages? If so, is there a list somewhere that I can refer to 

 

Every package in Linux packaging systems declare their dependencies. So the list is included inside package's metadata. The list variest a bit depending on distribution, different distros name their packages slightly differently.

 

18 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Or does "sudo apt install -f" sort that out fully?

 

Yes, when you install a package with "dpkg -i" the packaging system marks the missing dependencies as needed but missing and postpones final package configuration. When you run "apt install -f" it will pull in the missing ones from the distro's repository (one of the mirror servers), install those and trigger final configuration phase of the package.

 

So usually things go pretty smoothly this way. Maybe I'll later add a repository too instead of just standalone packages. But then you have less control about updating HQPlayer, that's why I didn't want to do it yet.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, simonklp said:

So the latest lowlatency kernel is "4.13.0-43-lowlatency". Is that correct? Kindly please advise. Thanks.

 

Maybe, things change at so rapid pace usually, that any statement about package versions may be obsolete in a day.