Best CPU for hqplayer

[semente]

For what it’s worth, I can upconvert 16/44.1 to DSD256 using ext2 + ASDM5EC and gentle EQ convolution with a 2018 i3-8100B mini.

 

If I use ASDM7EC instead then there’s the occasional drop out.

 

Temperature stays below 80ºC so the fan is at the lowest speed and thus silent.

[semente]

I wonder if increasing the buffer size would get rid if the drop outs... Will give it a go.

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Edit: it does work! (50ms is enough)

[Quadman]

I just built my new server based on i7-10700K CPU and a lowly Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU with 3gb ram.  Windows 10 pro.  I came from a Ryzen 7 1800x machine.  This new intel CPU so far can handle any DSD256 with EC7 modulator that I have tried (except Sinc-L), Sinc-S worked, closed form 16M worked but I have not tried Polysinc XTR mp or LP.  Zero dropouts.  I am very impressed as I got the CPU from microcenter for $277.  I grabbed a 590 series MB so upgrade to 11th gen CPU would be easy if they prove worth the extra cost.

[semente]

@Miska, in regard to CPU load which of the following are more taxing?

 

Upconverting PCM to DSD 16/44.1 vs. 24/96.

 

Upconverting PCM24/96 to DSD 44.1-rate vs. 48-rate.

 

Thanks,

Ricardo

[Miska]

6 hours ago, semente said:

@Miska, in regard to CPU load which of the following are more taxing?

 

Upconverting PCM to DSD 16/44.1 vs. 24/96.

 

Depends on your filter choice and the output rate family.

 

6 hours ago, semente said:

Upconverting PCM24/96 to DSD 44.1-rate vs. 48-rate.

 

Usually former case, but also depends on your filter choice how big the difference is.

 

[Mops911]

Best CPU for NAA

 

Trigger alert: Armchair quarterback here ;-)

 

I don't have so far real world experience with setting up a digital playback system based on HQP, but a system is coming this summer .... HQP Desktop will run on a Dell workstation with i9-10900k and Quadro P2200 in my "utility" room. The build for the NAA is still open. So my question is only about NAA here.

 

I know Miska's (educated) opinion is

https://up-shop.org/up-gateway-atom-x5-z8350-w-4g-memory-32g-emmc-board-w-vesa-plate.html

 

And while I like it too, I plan to build something around Win Server 2019. Yes, also for the NAA. And yes, I am stubborn too and I have my reasons for the time being. (It might change all down the road, once I can compare different solutions in my new "end game" system. Did I say, that I am opinionated ;-)

 

So I am looking for a "stronger" cpu either as SoC or mini-ITX. Options are outlined here

 

A xeon w-1250 (6 cores, 35w), a i7-1165G7 (4 cores, 12-25w) or a i9-11900T (8 cores, 35w)

 

outlined here:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=203895,208921,212256

 

The xeon or i9 would run in a mini-itx, the i7 is a Soc (Nuc or supermicro)

The i7 and the i9 have both AXV-512 (I doubt that NAA would need that...)

 

They could all run in a HDPlex H1

 

The i7 supports even LPDDR4x-4267 Ram which is not available so far as Dimm ;-) afaik, and the xeon supports only 2666

 

And the i7 is 10nm, so should be rather efficient...but I could never use a PCI USB card.

 

Any thought, opinions? Does it matter?

[Miska]

7 hours ago, Mops911 said:

Any thought, opinions? Does it matter?

 

For Win10 Pro based NAA (when I used such for the T+A DAC8 DSD), I used this:

https://www.onlogic.com/eu-en/computers/industrial/fanless/cl100-series/

 

But now the DAC8 DSD is connected directly to DAC-UP2 port of my i9-10900K server. And the CL100 is running Fedora Minimal 33 and NAA on it.

 

[skipspence]

Just wonder if i9-11900T (1.5 - 4.90 GHz) could do the main job as HQP server🤔?

If new Mac Mini can, so why not?

[Zauurx]

25 minutes ago, skipspence said:

Just wonder if i9-11900T (1.5 - 4.90 GHz) could do the main job as HQP server🤔?

It depends on your requirements with HQP. If you can set it to 8 cores above 4ghz, it should work.
An icore "T" is 35w but even with a 65w model, you can have fanless.

[Miska]

2 hours ago, skipspence said:

Just wonder if i9-11900T (1.5 - 4.90 GHz) could do the main job as HQP server🤔?

If new Mac Mini can, so why not?

 

Maybe, I have i5-7600T doing it. But I'd say feasible mostly with HQPlayer Embedded.

 

[hpsxrb]

On 11/25/2020 at 11:26 AM, Miska said:

 

If you want to have multichannel DSD upsampling, like for example 5.1 material, 16 cores is pretty much where to get started if you don't have a big GPU. You need minimum two cores per channel without GPU. And with GPU you need at least same number of cores as you have channels. In addition it is good to have two spare cores for non-DSP tasks.

 

Pretty much optimal point is to have five cores per output channel plus two spare ones. So for stereo case that would be 12 cores. For 5.1 channel that means 32 cores. But you always need to also pay attention to possible clock speeds, so a CPU with less cores is better choice if the high core count CPU cannot reach high enough clock boosts on the few higher loaded cores. Because adding more CPU cores always ends up eventually cutting clock frequencies. So the the computing power doesn't increase linearly with increased core count, especially because there's always some amount of cross-core communication overhead as well.

 

. . . and if we have convolution ?  Thank you

[Miska]

2 hours ago, hpsxrb said:

. . . and if we have convolution ?  Thank you

 

It depends on your filters and if you want to run it also for DSD sources, etc. But you may need to have a big GPU then.

 

[hpsxrb]

On 4/10/2021 at 1:12 PM, Miska said:

 

It depends on your filters and if you want to run it also for DSD sources, etc. But you may need to have a big GPU then.

 

Upsampling both flac and dsd to DSD512, is it possible to perform the convolution exclusively on a GPU (for example RTX 3090) ? Thank you very much.

[Miska]

24 minutes ago, hpsxrb said:

Upsampling both flac and dsd to DSD512, is it possible to perform the convolution exclusively on a GPU (for example RTX 3090) ? Thank you very much.

 

Yes, you can choose to perform GPU offloading for both filters and convolution, or just convolution. When you set "CUDA offload" to grayed it is offloading just convolution, when it is set to checked, both are offloaded. You can view offloading status in HQPlayer statusbar when playback is started.

 

[jamesg11]

23 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, you can choose to perform GPU offloading for both filters and convolution, or just convolution. When you set "CUDA offload" to grayed it is offloading just convolution, when it is set to checked, both are offloaded. You can view offloading status in HQPlayer statusbar when playback is started.

 

Any feedback on the macmini M1’s convolution capabilities?

[Miska]

26 minutes ago, jamesg11 said:

Any feedback on the macmini M1’s convolution capabilities?

 

I will try to do some testing on that front too next week. At the moment I'm running my REW based room corrections using parametric EQ export as .txt file on M1 - without issues.

 

[Account Closed]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I will try to do some testing on that front too next week. At the moment I'm running my REW based room corrections using parametric EQ export as .txt file on M1 - without issues.

 

If you are going to do some testing; it would be great to have a list of exactly which filters work and which do not work on the M1 when doing both 44.1/48 material and hi-res material up-sampling with ASDM7EC/256. Specifically, I would like to know if it is possible to use the non-2s poly-sinc family and maybe some sinc and closed form filters. I have found that I prefer the non-2s versions of some filters. The difference is admittedly small but I do notice it and prefer the non-2s. I know that certain ones like sinc-L and closed-form16M are not likely to work but I think a lot of us would like to know which do and which do not work on the MAC Mini M1. I would like to replace my HQP machine but I will want to wait to the fall when the M1X chip version should be out if the list of what works is too limited right now.

 

Anything you do is appreciated.

 

Maybe a separate thread for this so others can find it and those with M1 machines can report their results?

[Bass Concussion Racing]

Hello everyone!

New to the forum, but I'll go straight to asking for a little advice here as I couldn't find a "Say Hello" topic.  =)

I assume this is the right thread for this...

 

I'm a newbie who fell in love for HQPlayer 4 Destkop's sound quality at the beginning of this very year ("just another player" some say? yeah sure...), and who's looking to build (or have my local shop build) a quiet (dead silent, I'd say) desktop to replace my i7-9750H laptop, which gets a little too hot and loud for my current favorite DSD256,xtr-lp-2s, ASDM7, convolution, occasional crossfeed and... well open-back cans!

I'll probably be running Ubuntu or why not, maybe GentooPlayer if it allows me to do some networking.

Budget can't stretch past 1800$ / 1500€.

 

The idea was to go fanless, because i'd have if next to me in a small room, so I was wondering what setup I should be looking for... I thought about an i9-10900 + GeForce 1030 to try CUDA-offload something (then jolly standard PCIe wi-fi, 500GB SSD, 8*2GB RAM), but I'm sure some of you could have a better idea. Maybe a 10900T 35W is preferable for fanless, I think I read somewhere. You probably have a better idea.

My hope is to perform silently on my current settings, and maybe slip an even better filter in.

Not sure if DAC matters, but I'm using a modest S.M.S.L M200 through ALSA at the moment, and that's what I'll also be using with the desktop for a while.

 

Also, while I'm at it... Is it normal for only five out of twelve cores to "get lit" while HQP4D is playing on my current i7-9750H laptop? First five with Multicore half-ticked and last five when unticked/auto to be precise.

 

Thanks a lot in advance for any suggestion, gentlemen!

[jamesg11]

20 hours ago, bobflood said:

If you are going to do some testing; it would be great to have a list of exactly which filters work and which do not work on the M1 when doing both 44.1/48 material and hi-res material up-sampling with ASDM7EC/256. Specifically, I would like to know if it is possible to use the non-2s poly-sinc family and maybe some sinc and closed form filters. I have found that I prefer the non-2s versions of some filters. The difference is admittedly small but I do notice it and prefer the non-2s. I know that certain ones like sinc-L and closed-form16M are not likely to work but I think a lot of us would like to know which do and which do not work on the MAC Mini M1. I would like to replace my HQP machine but I will want to wait to the fall when the M1X chip version should be out if the list of what works is too limited right now.

 

Anything you do is appreciated.

 

Maybe a separate thread for this so others can find it and those with M1 machines can report their results?

Yes, I couldn’t wait for the improved M1, but I’ll be tempted to upgrade if it proves a major step up. I’m delighted with what I’ve got from the M1 thus far - ASDM7EC/256 with poly ext2 will do everything bar dsf256 files.

I’ll now list some other filters (I’ll base it at pcm192 files) & report back ... certainly some I tried were a no go.

[ted_b]

As some of you know, I am a longtime HQplayer user that took a couple years off while I moved the wife and I 1400 miles across the US to our new home in the Denver area (we love it).  As my very slow build of the lower level audio room continues I was able to start serious music listening once again, but this time via a one-person setup...my RAAL SR1a earspeakers (think Apogees hanging off your ears).  😎

 

My system is an older build: Roon runs on this Windows 7 desktop I'm typing on, and through a GS108 gigabit switch talks to my trusty i7-6700k Win 10 Audiophile Optimized headless HQPlayer machine; a beast in a Fractal Define R5 with Startech 4 port USB card (externally powered via Hynes lps), Optane OS, and a boatload of fans.  It sounds great through the RAALs, even though it is quite noisy (1 or 2 fans are on all the time)...I know very little about fan management so likely have one or two set wrong, but I don't care cuz I listen via the RAALs on my head.  However, this server will not cut it when, soon, I will need a quieter HQPlayer server for the main listening room on the lower level.

 

So...in the meantime I thought I would begin to dabble in improving this server, and using these experiences to start to visualize my new build for the main system.  So first thing I did was to focus on better power and went out and bought:

 

* HDPlex 400W DC/ATX converter

*HDplex 300W power supply

 

They arrived last week.  I am now realizing I am pretty ignorant when it comes to DIY.  For example, I wanted to use the two higher powered (19V/10A and 12V/10A) rails of the HDplex to power the DC-to-ATX converter (19V/10A) and the CPU (12V/10A) but fellow AS folks like the generous @StreamFidelitybelieves I won't have enough power, or it will get too hot and cause long term damage.  I have a Paul Hynes SR7EH single rail 12V-19V/6A that I could use for the CPU EPS, but worried the decent-but-not-huge amount of upsampling I do (PCM to 8fs using ext2 and LS15; DSD to 256 using ASDM7EC) will not allow me to do it with 6 amps.....and worried what will happen if I try.  Argh.  And I have no experience in figuring out how stressed my server is when upsampling.  I'm a fast learner, but an even faster forgetter.  🙂

 

I suppose I could also use the existing Seasonic 850W power supply to do one of these tasks (like CPU) but that seems like it might be a big step backward and a misuse of the new HDPlex stuff.  Additionally, I have no idea how to order (Ghent?) a cable capable of connecting either the HDPlex ps or the Hynes ps to the 8 pin cpu (orr should I just get a female dc to 8 pin cpu).  This sounds trivial but now that I'm f'ing around with power supplies I have become increasingly concerned.  Silly, right? 

 

These are all first world problems, I get it.  My server sounds great as is, and maybe I just ought to wait and, for the main room, build or buy a new HDplex 5-encased fanless server when the time comes, using more efficient modern cpus and motherboards, and use the HDPlex stuff on that.

 

Any opinions or ideas are welcome.  Thanks!

[Account Closed]

5 hours ago, ted_b said:

As some of you know, I am a longtime HQplayer user that took a couple years off while I moved the wife and I 1400 miles across the US to our new home in the Denver area (we love it).  As my very slow build of the lower level audio room continues I was able to start serious music listening once again, but this time via a one-person setup...my RAAL SR1a earspeakers (think Apogees hanging off your ears).  😎

 

My system is an older build: Roon runs on this Windows 7 desktop I'm typing on, and through a GS108 gigabit switch talks to my trusty i7-6700k Win 10 Audiophile Optimized headless HQPlayer machine; a beast in a Fractal Define R5 with Startech 4 port USB card (externally powered via Hynes lps), Optane OS, and a boatload of fans.  It sounds great through the RAALs, even though it is quite noisy (1 or 2 fans are on all the time)...I know very little about fan management so likely have one or two set wrong, but I don't care cuz I listen via the RAALs on my head.  However, this server will not cut it when, soon, I will need a quieter HQPlayer server for the main listening room on the lower level.

 

So...in the meantime I thought I would begin to dabble in improving this server, and using these experiences to start to visualize my new build for the main system.  So first thing I did was to focus on better power and went out and bought:

 

* HDPlex 400W DC/ATX converter

*HDplex 300W power supply

 

They arrived last week.  I am now realizing I am pretty ignorant when it comes to DIY.  For example, I wanted to use the two higher powered (19V/10A and 12V/10A) rails of the HDplex to power the DC-to-ATX converter (19V/10A) and the CPU (12V/10A) but fellow AS folks like the generous @StreamFidelitybelieves I won't have enough power, or it will get too hot and cause long term damage.  I have a Paul Hynes SR7EH single rail 12V-19V/6A that I could use for the CPU EPS, but worried the decent-but-not-huge amount of upsampling I do (PCM to 8fs using ext2 and LS15; DSD to 256 using ASDM7EC) will not allow me to do it with 6 amps.....and worried what will happen if I try.  Argh.  And I have no experience in figuring out how stressed my server is when upsampling.  I'm a fast learner, but an even faster forgetter.  🙂

 

I suppose I could also use the existing Seasonic 850W power supply to do one of these tasks (like CPU) but that seems like it might be a big step backward and a misuse of the new HDPlex stuff.  Additionally, I have no idea how to order (Ghent?) a cable capable of connecting either the HDPlex ps or the Hynes ps to the 8 pin cpu (orr should I just get a female dc to 8 pin cpu).  This sounds trivial but now that I'm f'ing around with power supplies I have become increasingly concerned.  Silly, right? 

 

These are all first world problems, I get it.  My server sounds great as is, and maybe I just ought to wait and, for the main room, build or buy a new HDplex 5-encased fanless server when the time comes, using more efficient modern cpus and motherboards, and use the HDPlex stuff on that.

 

Any opinions or ideas are welcome.  Thanks!

Hi Ted, I would not do a passive  cooled system again. They are limited by thermal throttling. The best cases are rated at 95W and the chips are 125W. I am going to wait for the M1X chip later this year. If you want an Intel system, I would wait for the 12th Gen chips later this year and water cool it or go with a better quieter fan system. The i9 12900K will likely not need a GPU for most HQP tasks. Avoid the noise issue by using a NAA and get isolation as well.

[ted_b]

Bob,

Thanks for the reply.  I've done many NAAs in my HQP experiences, and will do another in the new room (at least one, the exaSound S88 includes an internal NAA so that will be my multichannel solution).  However, I have not found universal NAA success...some good, some not so good.  I also have a backup plan, as I've included a small cable run from my storage area behind the wall of my new audio room, so if my server is too noisy (acoustically speaking) I can put it back there...but would rather not.

 

Yes, I plan on taking advantage of the newer chips; until then I need to figure out this HDPlex power issue.  Thx...

[Account Closed]

5 minutes ago, ted_b said:

Bob,

Thanks for the reply.  I've done many NAAs in my HQP experiences, and will do another in the new room (at least one, the exaSound S88 includes an internal NAA so that will be my multichannel solution).  However, I have not found universal NAA success...some good, some not so good.  I also have a backup plan, as I've included a small cable run from my storage area behind the wall of my new audio room, so if my server is too noisy (acoustically speaking) I can put it back there...but would rather not.

 

Yes, I plan on taking advantage of the newer chips; until then I need to figure out this HDPlex power issue.  Thx...

You probably need the HD Plex 500W. It has all the direct ATX connections. The 300W is not enough. And yes they do run hotter than you would expect. My 300 is warm and the load on it is less than 75W. Running your rig would drive it very hard and it will be hot. I would see if Larry could help with a return and swap.

[ted_b]

14 minutes ago, bobflood said:

You probably need the HD Plex 500W. It has all the direct ATX connections. The 300W is not enough. And yes they do run hotter than you would expect. My 300 is warm and the load on it is less than 75W. Running your rig would drive it very hard and it will be hot. I would see if Larry could help with a return and swap.

So no dc-ATX converter, just the direct ATX 500W power supply?  Is this a better solution than the 300W/dc-ATX converter combo for ATX and another psu for the cpu?

[Account Closed]

17 minutes ago, ted_b said:

So no dc-ATX converter, just the direct ATX 500W power supply?  Is this a better solution than the 300W/dc-ATX converter combo for ATX and another psu for the cpu?

No ATX converter needed. Whether it is better than two units I don’t know. Be careful about the total load. I think some have used two because of overload concerns with one.