HQPlayer settings to upsample everything to DSD512

[Allan F]

I have recently purchased a T+A DAC 8 DSD and an i7 music server capable of upsampling to DSD512. It is my intention to convert/upsample all my PCM and DSD files to DSD512 using HQPlayer. I have tried, unsuccessfully to find a complete set of recommended settings for HQPlayer to get started to accomplish this. I have looked at Miska's User Manual and Geoffrey Armstrong's HQPlayer Kick-Start Guide. However, I find some of the descriptions confusing and I don't see anything specific to Settings page there are settings for both PCM and DSD. How do I indicate that I want all output to be in DSD?. How do I specify that I want everything, including all PCM files, converted/upsampled to DSD512? What modulator and bit rate limit should I set?

 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated as I am a babe in the woods at this point.

[Allan F]

For upsampling to DSD512, should default SDM max bit rate be set to 44.1k x 512 or 48k x 512?.

[Miska]

6 hours ago, Allan F said:

I have recently purchased a T+A DAC 8 DSD and an i7 music server capable of upsampling to DSD512. It is my intention to convert/upsample all my PCM and DSD files to DSD512 using HQPlayer. I have tried, unsuccessfully to find a complete set of recommended settings for HQPlayer to get started to accomplish this. I have looked at Miska's User Manual and Geoffrey Armstrong's HQPlayer Kick-Start Guide. However, I find some of the descriptions confusing and I don't see anything specific to Settings page there are settings for both PCM and DSD. How do I indicate that I want all output to be in DSD?. How do I specify that I want everything, including all PCM files, converted/upsampled to DSD512? What modulator and bit rate limit should I set?

 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated as I am a babe in the woods at this point.

 

Did you look at my quick start guide and the included PDF manual?

http://www.signalyst.com/quickstart.html

 

Default settings get you started...

 

24 minutes ago, Allan F said:

For upsampling to DSD512, should default SDM max bit rate be set to 44.1k x 512 or 48k x 512?

 

Depends on the DAC, but with T+A, 48k x 512.

[Allan F]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Did you look at my quick start guide and the included PDF manual?

http://www.signalyst.com/quickstart.html

 

Default settings get you started...

 

 

Depends on the DAC, but with T+A, 48k x 512.

 

Thanks, Miska. And what would be recommended initial settings for SDM Modulator and DSDDIFF/DSF Integrator for upsampling to DSD512?

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Allan F said:

Thanks, Miska. And what would be recommended initial settings for SDM Modulator and DSDDIFF/DSF Integrator for upsampling to DSD512?

 

The defaults, meaning ASDM7 modulator and IIR integrator...

 

[Allan F]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

The defaults, meaning ASDM7 modulator and IIR integrator...

 

Thanks again, Miska. I seem to have HQPlayer running now and upsampling to DSD512. My T+A display shows 24M6. Is that what it should be showing.

[beerandmusic]

On 12/14/2017 at 1:59 PM, Allan F said:

Thanks again, Miska. I seem to have HQPlayer running now and upsampling to DSD512. My T+A display shows 24M6. Is that what it should be showing.

since you figured it out, can you share....from default, what did you change?

 

can you make in clear numbered steps, e.g.

 

1. Open hqplayer

2. click file | settings | DSD

3. select this

4. select that

 

 

[GUTB]

Yes, 24Mhz is 48k sample rate for DSD 512.

 

Check auto rate family to let HQPlayer automatically pick 44.1 or 48 based on the input file.

 

Most people seem to like poly-sinc, poly-sinc-shrt, -shrt-mp, etc. Don’t use a -2 filter, those trade quality for less CPU. The one exception may be poly-sinc-xtr due to the insane CPU usage.

[beerandmusic]

18 hours ago, GUTB said:

Yes, 24Mhz is 48k sample rate for DSD 512.

 

Check auto rate family to let HQPlayer automatically pick 44.1 or 48 based on the input file.

 

Most people seem to like poly-sinc, poly-sinc-shrt, -shrt-mp, etc. Don’t use a -2 filter, those trade quality for less CPU. The one exception may be poly-sinc-xtr due to the insane CPU usage.

 

Are you saying the only 3 steps necessary to configure hqplayer (from default settings)  to upsample everything to DSD512 are these 3 steps (or are you responding to something else?):

1. select 24mhz

2. select auto rate

3. select poly-sinc

 

[beerandmusic]

On 12/14/2017 at 1:59 PM, Allan F said:

Thanks again, Miska. I seem to have HQPlayer running now and upsampling to DSD512. My T+A display shows 24M6. Is that what it should be showing.

can you share all the settings you changed from default values?

[tboooe]

18 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

can you share all the settings you changed from default values?

Not Allan F but here are my settings to play everything at DSD512:

 

[beerandmusic]

20 minutes ago, tboooe said:

Not Allan F but here are my settings to play everything at DSD512:

 

thanks for this.

For my particular interests, i would like all pcm upsampled to DSD512, but if it is already dsd, i want it to NOT upsample...is that possible without having to change setting back and forth?

[tboooe]

9 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

thanks for this.

For my particular interests, i would like all pcm upsampled to DSD512, but if it is already dsd, i want it to NOT upsample...is that possible without having to change setting back and forth?

Yes, in DSDIFF settings, check DirectSDM.

[Sloop John B]

I only have PCM and I’m upsampling to DSD 512 into Singxer>ultraRendu >Holospring. 

 

I’m presuming that whether directDSM is checked or not should have no difference in my case. 

 

Am I correct in this?

 

.sjb

 

 

 

 

[Allan F]

On 3/26/2018 at 2:36 PM, Sloop John B said:

I only have PCM and I’m upsampling to DSD 512 into Singxer>ultraRendu >Holospring. 

 

I’m presuming that whether directDSM is checked or not should have no difference in my case. 

 

Am I correct in this?

 

.sjb

Yes, its purpose is to play DSD natively rather than upsampled. It should have no effect on PCM.

[Whitigir]

Is there a guide to offline convert pcm into dsd512 for newbie ? I am trying to work around with the file>setting but the window option of setting is too long and I can’t scroll down or minimize

[Ben-M]

As far as I knew, HQPlayer doesn't allow offline upsampling and saving of any files for later playback. It does all conversion on the fly.

 

Am I wrong about that?

[sbenyo]

I just moved from hqplayer 3 to 4. I am using poly-sinc-xtr-lp.

I have T+A DAC8 dsd. Everything is upsampled to 512. I am using 48kx512 and auto rate. 

 

From some reason this filter does not work as good as version 3 xtr. I have a  few songs (hires) that get a few, very short stops during play. This did not happen before. The stops are changing if I limit to 44k x 512 or remove the auto rate but they are still there.

 

Wonder if anyone has a similar experience

[Miska]

On 8/23/2019 at 7:58 PM, sbenyo said:

I just moved from hqplayer 3 to 4. I am using poly-sinc-xtr-lp.

I have T+A DAC8 dsd. Everything is upsampled to 512. I am using 48kx512 and auto rate. 

 

From some reason this filter does not work as good as version 3 xtr. I have a  few songs (hires) that get a few, very short stops during play. This did not happen before. The stops are changing if I limit to 44k x 512 or remove the auto rate but they are still there.

 

Wonder if anyone has a similar experience

 

I assume you have checked the "48k DSD" box in Settings to allow 48k DSD rates? In v4 the adaptive output rate setting is tri-state, so to gain same operation as v3 it needs to be checked.

 

[sbenyo]

I did. I also tried with adaptive rate checked and unchecked. I am testing songs which are 24/192K, 24/96K or even 16/48k. It seems that everything related to 48k is having an issue. Regular 44.1k songs play fine.

 

These songs up sampled to DSD512, suffer from the "freezes" issue during play. DSD256 seems to work fine. Resource usage does not seem to be an issue. It is fine (35-40% CPU).

It only happens with the poly-sinc-xtr-lp. It does not happen with other filters (e.g. ext2).

[Miska]

8 minutes ago, sbenyo said:

I did. I also tried with adaptive rate checked and unchecked. I am testing songs which are 24/192K, 24/96K or even 16/48k. It seems that everything related to 48k is having an issue. Regular 44.1k songs play fine.

 

These songs up sampled to DSD512, suffer from the "freezes" issue during play. DSD256 seems to work fine. Resource usage does not seem to be an issue. It is fine (35-40% CPU).

It only happens with the poly-sinc-xtr-lp. It does not happen with other filters (e.g. ext2).

 

If you need to convert between rate families with something like single stage poly-sinc-xtr it is quite heavy. From 48k-base to 44.1k x512 output, GeForce RTX2080 can do it for me. Some filters simply cannot do the conversion (refer to the table in manual for details).

 

Two-stage filters certainly solve this problem.

 

[sbenyo]

Thanks. No sure if I fully understand. I am trying to avoid converting between rate familities if not needed.

I have T+A DAC8 which should be able to use 48k-base. I wonder why I am having issues even when not trying to covert.

 

I also cannot use GPU with poly-sinc-xtr-lp. When offload is fully checked,  it does not work at all. When I just mark it to do convulotion, GPU is not used.

 

In summary I am not sure what is the problem and why I should have it if DAC should be capable of doing 48k. I also wonder if anyone experience the same of is able play 48k DSD512 with T+A DAC8. I wish I could use the poly-since-xtr-lp with 48k DSD512 properly.

 

[CJH]

Not being able to listen to all files being upsampled to DSD512 (even though your DAC is 512 capable) is common due to your computer not having enough computational power to complete the conversion quickly enough. There is lots of this discussed under Software-- HQ Player.

CJH

 

 

[gdpr]

14 hours ago, Miska said:

 

If you need to convert between rate families with something like single stage poly-sinc-xtr it is quite heavy. From 48k-base to 44.1k x512 output, GeForce RTX2080 can do it for me. Some filters simply cannot do the conversion (refer to the table in manual for details).

 

Two-stage filters certainly solve this problem.

 

 

Hi Miska

 

I am still struggling with the difference -  non-difference between the single stage filters and their two-stage variant.

 

Is the end-result of the filter calculation of .e.g. poly-sinc-xtr and poly-sinc-xtr-2s filters the same before sent to the DAC, or is there a difference?

If no difference, why would one use a single stage filter?

 

Thanks for your insights and feedback

 

Dirk

[sbenyo]

5 hours ago, CJH said:

Not being able to listen to all files being upsampled to DSD512 (even though your DAC is 512 capable) is common due to your computer not having enough computational power to complete the conversion quickly enough. There is lots of this discussed under Software-- HQ Player.

CJH

 

 

 

I am using AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920x which is similar to the 1950x (same large L3 cache) only less cores.

The CPU does not go above 40% when using poly-sinc-xtr-lp.

 

@Miska You mentioned GeForce RTX2080 works for you. Can a better GPU help resolve this? I have an old GTX 1060 but it not being used when I used xtr-lp (if I set it to full offload nothing works. I leave it on convolution only) 

 

I will be surprised if HW is a limitation. I would like to hear if anyone using 1920x or 1950x has the same issue.