Best CPU for hqplayer

[Miska]

On 12/30/2023 at 3:32 PM, jkelly said:

Can I build a RPI 5 version now with RPI bookworm OS and your hqplayerd/bookworm/ files?

 

Yes, works fine...

 

[jkelly]

On 1/1/2024 at 11:02 AM, Miska said:

 

Yes, works fine...

 

 

I built hqplayerd today on the RPI5 with PI OS lite. Had a few "challenges" but got it going.

I have to run hqplayerd with sudo so I must have done something wrong.

I am using this in my second system with a M1 Mac Mini, SRC-DX and Mojo2.

The RPI5 using poly-sinc-gauss-hires-lp/Gauss1 plays 768 PCM fine.

It's only a few hours in but I am inpressed. Nice location of instruments and ambiance.

I'm not in any hurry to go back to the M1. I am going to purchase a license for this box.

 

Will you have a RPI5 OS version available at some time? Will my (new) license switch over OK?

[jkelly]

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, jkelly said:

I built hqplayerd today on the RPI5 with PI OS lite. Had a few "challenges" but got it going.

I have to run hqplayerd with sudo so I must have done something wrong.

 

64-bit Pi OS Lite is fine for the HQPlayer bookworm build.

 

If you have been running hqplayerd with sudo, I recommend uninstalling it with --purge option and then reinstalling it again. It is not supposed to be run as root and if you do so and for example write some configurations, then the access rights probably get wrong and it won't work anymore under normal "hqplayer" user as it is supposed to.

 

Once installed, you'd typically first set web interface credentials with "sudo hqplayerd -s username password", then enable the service with "sudo systemctl enable hqplayerd" and then you can start it right away with "sudo systemctl start hqplayerd". Now it will also get automatically started on each boot.

 

1 hour ago, jkelly said:

Will you have a RPI5 OS version available at some time? Will my (new) license switch over OK?

 

It has already been there for couple of releases. RPi OS is just regular Debian 12 "bookworm". So the same package works on all arm64 bookworm systems, whether RPi based hardware or something else.

 

The actual CPU cores in RPi4/RPi5 are practically same as the ones in Apple M1/M2/M3.

 

[jkelly]

The hqplayer-embeded is labelled pi4 so I thought it wasn't compatible.

Oh well, good learning experience! I'll DL that tonight and compare.

[Miska]

9 hours ago, jkelly said:

The hqplayer-embeded is labelled pi4 so I thought it wasn't compatible.

Oh well, good learning experience! I'll DL that tonight and compare.

 

At the moment HQPlayer OS supports only Pi4. But the arm64 packages for regular Linux distributions are not specific to Pi4 or any Raspberry at all. In fact only the very latest arm64 package build has been done on RPi5. The earlier ones were built on CuBox Pulse aka CuBox-M. But since it occasionally had thermal issues under heavy build process loads (all CPU cores constantly at 100% for hours), I switched over to RPi5 with the same cooling solution as you have to get rid of those thermal issues. The OS used is the same anyway, Debian 12 "bookworm" in this case.

 

ARM platforms differ from PC hardware in a way that you need to customize the OS kernel for every piece of hardware you want to run on. Since ARM lacks PC style features like ACPI, the OS needs to have preprogrammed knowledge of all hardware on the board and how each pin of every peripheral is connected to each other. On Linux, this preprogrammed knowledge is handled through something known as Device Tree which is essentially consist of small hardware connection drivers. Raspberry calls these device tree snippets "overlays". Raspberry way of handling these through the config.txt is specific to RPi bootloader implementation (ARM platforms use u-boot as bootloader). These peculiarities are isolated by the operating system, for Linux user space (application) point of view, such hardware specifics disappear.

 

[ManfredHQ]

Hello

 

I'm suing an AMD Nuc for the embedded HQ Player (using Roon) and the NAA HQ Player endpoint on my USB Streamer.

 

I think this is the best way to use hardware (high computing on the server) and reading on NAA HQ Player endpoint streamer.

 

PS:

I'm regarding also use of apple mac mini with M1 or M2 or M3 (cpu/gpu) still waiting for HQ Player to take in account the gpu ...

This is a 'plug & play' solution

 

All the best

[jkelly]

For those who want to try the RPI5 with hqplayerd I updated an install process by bipet.

Original install process by bipet.
Modified for RPI5 01/05/24

 

sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
sudo apt install -f ; sudo apt autoremove --purge ; sudo apt clean
sudo reboot

 

wget https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/bookworm/libgmpris_2.2.1-11_arm64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libgmpris_2.2.1-11_arm64.deb
sudo apt-get update

 

wget https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/hqplayerd/bookworm/hqplayerd_5.3.2-9_arm64.deb
sudo dpkg -i hqplayerd_5.3.2-9_arm64.deb
I accepted the HQ Player license here
I then had a message regarding missing dependencies. To fix:
sudo apt-get install -f 

 

If your dac is connected, select Dac and raise volume.
alsamixer 
F6 to select dac
raise volume to 100%

 

sudo hqplayerd -s hqplayer hqplayer
sudo systemctl enable hqplayerd
sudo systemctl restart hqplayerd
sudo systemctl status hqplayerd
Create Web password:
sudo hqplayerd -s username password
sudo reboot

 

Optional.
I created a music folder under pi, but hqplayer library was not able to access it.
I was able to make a music folder in home, however this required root privileges.
This made it hard to copy music files into it.

To fix this I changed the permissions of pi to 777.
sudo chmod -R 777 /home/pi

I am sure there is a proper way to do this.

[Erik Haas]

Hello Everyone,

 

I'm finally getting around to upgrading my current HQPlayer machine ( 2012 Mac Mini) but still confused on the direction I should go with the build.

 

Objective : Up sampling PCM formats (as low as 16/44.1) to 256DSD 

Channels to up sample : 5 pipeline channels using convolution 65k taps

DAC: Merging Hapi via Ravenna

 

From what I've been reading most everyone is using a traditional 2 channel system which is fine but this is where I get confused because I'm doing a multichannel pipeline for my active xo horn speakers.

 

It seems like the recommendation is 2 cores per channel PLUS a GPU or 4 cores per channel.

 

Right now this is how I am leaning:

 

1. AMD 7950x + 3090 (or) 4090 GPU

2. AMD 7050x 3D + 3090 (or) 4090 GPU

3. AMD 7960/70x Threadripper

4. Mac Studio M2 Ultra   - this option is at the bottom of the list because I dont want to use bootcamp for Audiolense and I believe Jussi mentioned something about Macs not being able to process DSD correctly? (and merging still has yet to certify the M2 Ultra units)

 

( Should I consider a Intel processor though I'm not sure if e-Core processors are recommended for multi channel?)

 

Again, any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

[Miska]

 

On 1/5/2024 at 6:00 PM, jkelly said:

I created a music folder under pi, but hqplayer library was not able to access it.
I was able to make a music folder in home, however this required root privileges.
This made it hard to copy music files into it.

To fix this I changed the permissions of pi to 777.
sudo chmod -R 777 /home/pi

I am sure there is a proper way to do this.

 

There's not necessarily much space on the rootfs for media content. If the content is on some other external media, HQPlayer OS will auto-mount it at boot time to /run/media sub-folder.

 

Another alternative is to mount media for example on /music and grant either 'hqplayer' user, or 'audio' group access to it (read-only is enough).

 

HQPlayer OS web interface mounts SMB network media under /smb which can be then scanned to the library.

 

[Miska]

On 1/5/2024 at 6:04 PM, Erik Haas said:

1. AMD 7950x + 3090 (or) 4090 GPU

2. AMD 7050x 3D + 3090 (or) 4090 GPU

 

7950X(3D) is a good option. And you can of course add a GPU later as/if needed, as long as you take that possibility into account when putting the system together.

 

On 1/5/2024 at 6:04 PM, Erik Haas said:

3. AMD 7960/70x Threadripper

 

Threadrippers can be challenging in terms of maximum core clocks. It is good idea to pay attention into clock frequencies as these can become limiting factor if not high enough (my Xeon W-2245 is a bit challenged in this respect).

 

On 1/5/2024 at 6:04 PM, Erik Haas said:

4. Mac Studio M2 Ultra   - this option is at the bottom of the list because I dont want to use bootcamp for Audiolense and I believe Jussi mentioned something about Macs not being able to process DSD correctly? (and merging still has yet to certify the M2 Ultra units)

 

This is one option, but expensive. And if Merging doesn't promise that their RAVENNA driver works properly it can become a bit painful. On Windows, the the Merging ASIO driver works pretty nicely nowadays.

 

On 1/5/2024 at 6:04 PM, Erik Haas said:

( Should I consider a Intel processor though I'm not sure if e-Core processors are recommended for multi channel?)

 

HQPlayer knows the difference between performance and efficiency cores and works accordingly. But you'd want to pay attention into number of performance cores in such multichannel cases. And at the moment AMD has better options in that respect.

 

[Erik Haas]

15 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

7950X(3D) is a good option. And you can of course add a GPU later as/if needed, as long as you take that possibility into account when putting the system together.

 

 

 

 

Which variant is preferred, has there been any multi channel benchmarking between the two?

 

I’ve also read these chips have a weird trait of slowing memory speeds when adding more than two sticks of memory.

that being said I’m assuming 64gb ram is plenty? (2x32gb)

[Miska]

7 hours ago, Erik Haas said:

Which variant is preferred, has there been any multi channel benchmarking between the two?

 

I’ve also read these chips have a weird trait of slowing memory speeds when adding more than two sticks of memory.

that being said I’m assuming 64gb ram is plenty? (2x32gb)

 

I have not seen any extensive benchmarking with HQPlayer. In theory, the bigger cache should give benefits. But these things are very complex and use case specific, so it is very hard to estimate without firsthand data.

 

64 GB is certainly plenty...

 

[AudioDoctor]

On 1/5/2024 at 10:04 AM, Erik Haas said:

Hello Everyone,

 

I'm finally getting around to upgrading my current HQPlayer machine ( 2012 Mac Mini) but still confused on the direction I should go with the build.

 

Objective : Up sampling PCM formats (as low as 16/44.1) to 256DSD 

Channels to up sample : 5 pipeline channels using convolution 65k taps

DAC: Merging Hapi via Ravenna

 

From what I've been reading most everyone is using a traditional 2 channel system which is fine but this is where I get confused because I'm doing a multichannel pipeline for my active xo horn speakers.

 

It seems like the recommendation is 2 cores per channel PLUS a GPU or 4 cores per channel.

 

Right now this is how I am leaning:

 

1. AMD 7950x + 3090 (or) 4090 GPU

2. AMD 7050x 3D + 3090 (or) 4090 GPU

3. AMD 7960/70x Threadripper

4. Mac Studio M2 Ultra   - this option is at the bottom of the list because I dont want to use bootcamp for Audiolense and I believe Jussi mentioned something about Macs not being able to process DSD correctly? (and merging still has yet to certify the M2 Ultra units)

 

( Should I consider a Intel processor though I'm not sure if e-Core processors are recommended for multi channel?)

 

Again, any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

 

If you have a 7950 and a 4090 honestly you'll be set. There really isn't anything I can't run to DSD256 (as high as my DAC goes) with that same combination. I also have 64GB of RAM.

[Miska]

Nvidia has just launched new set of 40-series GPUs.

 

RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4080 Super.

 

4070 Super mostly just bumps up the performance notably, no other changes.

 

4070 Ti Super in addition to improving performance also increases amount of RAM from 12 GB to 16 GB, making it interesting lower cost option without RAM becoming limitation.

 

4080 Super is smallest change compared to 4080, just somewhat improved performance.

 

[Carousel]

I was wondering if I would be allowed to post GPU questions on the CPU thread! If the boss can, then it must be OK! 

 

Unfortunately the prices for the present 4070 Ti GPUs have not yet been slashed for closeout sales. I bought an 8GB 4060 Ti during Black Friday which I can return until 30th January as part of Christmas sales. The CPU is a 14700K. I do not go beyond DSD256. But I do up to eight channels of this (picture below). Basically everything plays fine with poly-sinc-gauss and the 4060 Ti. Also fine is when I downscale DSD256 stereo to PCM 24-192 for room correction softwares. The 4060 Ti won't do sinc-long. But sinc-LI does work in stereo. But then I keep bumping into 44K vs 48K no-playback-at-all issues and I am not always sure if a more powerful GPU would help at all. Whatever I am trying just might not work with the combinations I selected.

 

Still, the clock is ticking for me to return the 4060 Ti on the basis of insufficient performance. Looking at specs on 4070 GPUs and 4070 Ti GPUs, it looks like each step up from the 4060 Ti is pretty substantial 

+ 4060 Ti : 8GB and 4352 CUDA Cores

+ 4070 : 12GB and 5888 CUDA Cores -- and the price step up is fine

+ 4070 Ti : 12GB and 7680 CUDA Cores -- but the price doubles vs the 4060 Ti

 

Does anyone have a view / experience here? Is the step up to the 4070 enough to make a difference? Or is it just a waste of effort and really only the 4070 Ti would have a chance with filters like sinc-long going to or from DSD256?

 

 

 

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, Carousel said:

I But I do up to eight channels of this (picture below). Basically everything plays fine with poly-sinc-gauss and the 4060 Ti. Also fine is when I downscale DSD256 stereo to PCM 24-192 for room correction softwares. The 4060 Ti won't do sinc-long.

 

sinc-long with 7.1 channels is going to be pretty heavy. But one can try to estimate. If someone has similar GPU, then 8 channels takes about four times the amount of power stereo takes. And number of CUDA cores gives idea of relative performance within same GPU series.

 

[hqpl]

Hi folks,

 

Just checking here if I'm doing wishful thinking:

 

My goal is to get DSD512 with the ASDM7EC modulators and sinc-X filters.

 

I've an admittedly old Intel i7-10710U CPU, 6 cores max 4.8 GHz, which is giving me DSD512 with the ASDM5EC-light 512+ modulator and poly-sinc-gauss-hires filter, but stuttering randomly.

 

Instead of going for complete new machine with an i9 13900k etc, I was wondering if I add an RTX 4000 GPU to the setup, will it help? 

 

Many thanks!

[nounouchet]

I didn't quite understand whether the current version of HQPlayer Embedded works on RPi5.
Is it possible to use it for a USB DAC even if this version is not optimised for Rpi5?

 

Thanks.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, hqpl said:

Instead of going for complete new machine with an i9 13900k etc, I was wondering if I add an RTX 4000 GPU to the setup, will it help? 

 

Yes, you can offload those filters to a GPU. You'll need at least 16 GB of RAM on the GPU. I'm not sure about the RTX 4000 (Ada generation?) GPU, someone else who has tested it could comment. Other alternatives could include for example the fresh 4070Ti Super, or one of the bigger ones...

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, nounouchet said:

I didn't quite understand whether the current version of HQPlayer Embedded works on RPi5.

 

Yes, you can use the Debian 12 "bookworm" package on latest 64-bit RPiOS which is Debian 12.

 

HQPlayer OS doesn't support RPi5 yet and it won't work on RPi5.

 

1 hour ago, nounouchet said:

Is it possible to use it for a USB DAC even if this version is not optimised for Rpi5?

 

Yes, the current bookworm package is as much optimized for RPi5 as possible (IOW, doesn't differ from RPi4).

 

[hqpl]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, you can offload those filters to a GPU. You'll need at least 16 GB of RAM on the GPU. I'm not sure about the RTX 4000 (Ada generation?) GPU, someone else who has tested it could comment. Other alternatives could include for example the fresh 4070Ti Super, or one of the bigger ones...

 

Many thanks!

 

What would be the least compute intensive filter to test out my current CPU for the different modulators? (Before buying a GPU)

[Miska]

2 hours ago, hqpl said:

What would be the least compute intensive filter to test out my current CPU for the different modulators? (Before buying a GPU)

 

Some two stage shorter filters, such as poly-sinc-short-mp-2s is overall nice and pretty light to process.

 

[nounouchet]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

HQPlayer OS doesn't support RPi5 yet and it won't work on RPi5.

I meant HQPlayer 5 OS.

 

So if I understand correctly Debian 12 "bookworm" is Rpi5 compatible with manual installation of HQPlayer Embedded 5 whereas HQPlayer OS Embedded 5, which is based on the same distribution, does not work with Rpi5.
So there is a checking done on the Rpi version in HQPlayer?

 

Can I find somewhere a procedure to install Debian 12 "bookworm" + HQPlayer Embedded 5 on a Rpi ?

[hqpl]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Some two stage shorter filters, such as poly-sinc-short-mp-2s is overall nice and pretty light to process.

 

Good to know. Thanks!

Regarding the SDM -> SDM conversion algos, (FIR2/XFi) do they run on the CPU or can they  be offloaded to GPU?