Hqplayer: best NAA with best sound quality

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, luisma said:

they don't, you need to supply these with proper "clean power", the one you provided in the link is 5V which can be powered with pretty much anything, LPS, battery+ldovr reg, you name it.

 

I'm sorry I just noticed you were referring to the Allo PS not the Allo Bridge, you are correct an LPS will deal with that.

 

I haven't tried the Allo Shanti, but if I would like to experiment I would get an ldovr double regulated 7V - 6V - 5V for this Amazon PC you sent before

the LDOVR must be under 6 Watts, assumming the mini PC does 3A at 5V

At 7V in and 5V out you will dissipate P=(7-5)*3A=6W

so you are pretty much at the limit, you could feed the double regulated PS with either a power cube or Powermax batteries like others are doing, if it does more than 3A then you can't use the double regulator and instead you will need to get a JS2 from Uptone (expensive but great), John Kennys supercaps are good and I think he is doing 3A or so, HDplex certainly,

 

 

Thanks, I have been wondering this as well.

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, seeteeyou said:

RPi CM4 carrier board w/ 54MHz OCXO clock, ultra-low noise regulators etc.

 

http://www.headphoneclub.com/thread-743935-1-1.html

http://www.headphoneclub.com/thread-744128-1-1.html

http://www.erji.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2223366

http://www.erji.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2224545

 

 

 

 

 

I'll post an update once the pricing etc. is announced.

 

Wow, I'm impressed.

[AudioDoctor]

9 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

 

It turned out to cost 850 RMB or roughly 130 bucks without 54 MHz OCXO clock

 

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=643286972960

 

SMA jack could be requested for the sake of connecting to an external 54 MHz OCXO clock, here's a potential solution from TeraDak and obviously both items are required

 

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=595681552946

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=619823458648

 

And then we could also go for SiT5711A (i.e. same OCXO clock as the ones found on both JCAT USB / NET Card XE) but the frequency must be 54 MHz

 

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=585481394277

 

±5ppb version

 

https://www.rfmw.com/products/detail/sit5711aikw33n54000000-sitime/678409/

 

±8ppb version

 

https://www.avnet.com/shop/apac/products/sitime/sit5711ai-kx-33n-54000000-3074457345644549120/

 

Will these be easily available in the US?

[AudioDoctor]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

Ps. Tried to download latest distro today but your download speed is very low I to about 1,5 hours for 260mb and will try it again on PC W8 Pro.  Or no advisable?

 

Miska, I have noticed this as well. When I click the button on the page to download the version of desktop I want, it is SLOOOOOOOOOOW. However, if I use wget to download that same version it's super fast.

 

one of these buttons:

 

[AudioDoctor]

I ran some tests.

 

1) I downloaded the arm version of desktop by clicking the button.

 

2) I tried curl on my mac from the command line, it went a little faster

 

3) I logged into my roon server running ubuntu and used wget and it went the fastest.

[AudioDoctor]

12 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

These two are from different servers, signalyst.com vs signalyst.eu

 

Very interesting. Does signalyst.eu pull the file from the eu server? I tried it just now, and while faster, still nowhere near as fast as using wget.

[AudioDoctor]

13 hours ago, Zauurx said:

@MiskaDo you have detailed information about the Zen STream, its components and especially its NAA integration?
Does it run on a proprietary Linux on ARM chip?
Will it be possible to have a pure NAA OS version?

 

https://ifi-audio.com/products/zen-stream/

 

I don't understand the limitation to PCM 384... is it only in wifi because of the speed?

 

 

I have wondered why no one had a device like this on the market yet. It seems like such an obvious idea to optimize the streaming abilities of a small ARM device in this way. I would have based it on a Raspberry Pi4 compute module, but that's just me.

[AudioDoctor]

2 hours ago, toddrhodes said:

Ok, can confirm - DSD256 is fine, haven't tried higher on the Zen Stream. But PCM384 is its limit. If I set HQPlayer to anything higher, it just fails to start playing which is odd - usually it just knocks the rate back to the highest supported one. Maybe that's new, I don't know. But PCM384/DSD256 appear to be its limits. 

 

It only lasted about 3 hours playing on my LifePO4 setup, and they needed a recharge. The Pi4 or Pi2AES can play for 8+ hours, so it's definitely pulling more juice. Not that that really means a lot. Going to use the included iPower PSU for now.

 

Was really easy to set up, so that was nice. Flipped it to NAA mode, plugged it into power, Ethernet, and USB to the DAC, HQ Player PC detected it and I was off and playing music. It's bigger than I expected, and hefty. Seems like a really solid device from a quality and fit/finish perspective.

 

Was there a sound difference compared to the Pi?

[AudioDoctor]

The best NAA I have ever heard is the Aqua Linq. hands down beats everything I have ever tried.

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, ted_b said:

Nice!  What output from the Linq?  And what dac sang best with it?  Linq has no USB, right?

 

You're right, there is no USB output. I am using the i2s output and had my Lampizator Pacific DAC ethernet input reconfigured to accept i2s.

 

I have only tried it with one DAC, so not sure which one is best.

[AudioDoctor]

26 minutes ago, Bertel said:

Can't fully confirm that

 

You can't fully confirm that it hands down beats everything I have tried?

 

How exactly did you come to that conclusion?

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, Confused said:

LinQ -> i2s to DAC is quite a specific use case. You state the LinQ is the best you have heard, may I ask what else you have tried in a similar configuration? What was next best, after the LinQ, for example? (or did nothing really compare?)

 

Next best that I have tried was the Sonore Signature Rendu Optical via USB into the same DAC. I have never tried i2s before now.

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, Bertel said:

Can I ask what you have tried so far? Always interested to learn about other interesting alternatives.

 

Raspberry Pi, a Sonore Rendu, and a Signature Rendu Optical. I feel like I am forgetting some too. I have not tried the UP Gateway. I have been planning on building an NAA in a small mini fanless pc lately, and using JCAT cards but I think those plans are on hold for the moment.

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, Bertel said:

Good to hear about the Signature Rendu, now really looking forward to receiving mine ;-)

 

You likely will not be disappointed.

[AudioDoctor]

15 minutes ago, Bertel said:

Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker

 

It's okay, I am feeling snarky is all. I apologize.

[AudioDoctor]

While my DAC will accept up to DSD 512 and PCM 768khz, the Linq will only output 384khz ppm and DSD 128. I purchased it knowing this, and knowing that they have already upgraded their DACs once to work up to these rates, and the Formula has again been upgraded to DSD 512/768Khz pcm via its USB input, and PCM 24/768 and DSD 256 via i2s and DoP. So my hope is that they will update the device at some point in the future and I can decide then how much I need that upgrade.

 

Currently, just playing with DSD 128 settings to find the one I like the most.

[AudioDoctor]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

NAA is designed to be integral part of the DAC, just like the DAC's USB port.

 

That's really cool and really opens up some neat opportunities for a DAC developer that are largely going unrealized.

[AudioDoctor]

I am still waiting to see who will be the first to buy an Ada generation Nvidia A6000 to run HQPlayer.

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, Markus8 said:

What device would you recommend? I first thought about buying a Mac Mini M2 (running a convolution filter and Upsampling to PCM 192/24) but go with your recommendation to further tweak sound quality. 

 

You could do that with almost anything, even an M1 will do that on about 1 watt of power usage.

[AudioDoctor]

31 minutes ago, dericchan1 said:

I think a RPI5 for sure, perhaps a RPI4 might be capable of doing that as well 

 

A RPi4 for sure will but you might not be able to use the most intense filters. I don't know about the 5.

[AudioDoctor]

3 hours ago, dericchan1 said:

The 5 is about 3-4 times faster than the 4 

 

I would be interested to know if a RPi4 can do sinc-long to 24/192 without cooking itself.