Hqplayer: best NAA with best sound quality

[ted_b]

Ok good point, I haven't compared.  I assumed the Holo DSD-only options would be good.  My bad.

[lpost]

On 7/17/2021 at 10:51 PM, ted_b said:

So what is the consensus (or at least the best two or three) NAAs that is compatible with the Holo May at 32fs (i.e Intel USB chip), and available in the US?  I will have a remote headless Win10 HQP server feeding it.  Thx

Up Gateway is available at Mouser. https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/AAEON-UP/UP-GWS01-A20-1432-A11?qs=XeJtXLiO41RgX%2B9BTRGE%2Bw%3D%3D

 

Works perfectly with NAA image, PCM 1.5M and DSD512. 8w consumption. 

 

I've used it for a few months, I've had the May for 4 months and used 1.5M PCM until I updated my HQPe machine to be able to handle DSD256 ASDM7EC. No comparison for me, it bests 32fs PCM easily, but preferences do differ.

[ted_b]

deleted

[ted_b]

Ordered the fitlet2 direct, on Thurs morn July 22 (i.e last Thursday).  It arrived (Denver, CO, USA area) via DHL today. 

 

I'm not nearly ready for it, but that was fast!!

[brother love]

I'm getting excellent NAA performance w/ a modest fanless 2gb ram Intel Atom z8350 w/ bootable USB stick- HQP naa-4112-x64.7z image & iFi iPower. I've got minimal Ubuntu 20.04 OS installed on 32gb SOC hard drive, but running headless for NAA-only operation.

 

Which brings me to some questions ...

 

Can the bootable NAA image be installed on the hard drive w/ no OS present (or is HQP OS required)?  If so, would performance be improved over current set-up? (Downside would be more effort to update w/ new images down the road).

 

I use startup disk creator for bootable USB stick. I'm not sure if Live Ubuntu USB or some other method is utilized to best accomplish this.

 

Thanks for any input re: guidance, recommendations, or don't bother w/ that.

[Confused]

My Zen Stream arrived last week.  First impressions are good. It is far from a luxury hifi item, but considering it's price point it seem to be very solidly built, it is quite heavy for a small device, and it actually looks and feels a lot nicer than it looks in photographs. It also runs "slightly warm", which is a nice change from stuff like the microRendu that I used to have that would almost burn your fingers if you touched it.

 

It is by far the simplest NAA type device that I have used with HQPlayer, I connected it up, loaded HQPlayer on my PC, I could see the iFi in the HQPlayer settings, selected the iFi, hit play, got music.  No additional software needed on the PC, no messing about with IP addresses or similar, it just worked.

 

I spent some time at the weekend comparing it with my SOtM sMS-200ultra and tX-USBultra. This was interesting.  Both devices were feeding my Mutec MC3+USB, the SOtM kit via USB, the iFi by S/PDIF. What surprised me was just how similar the two sounded, I had great difficulty discerning any difference between the two.  It look a few seconds to swap between the two, a case of changing the input settings on the Mutec and the device settings in HQPlayer. With much swapping between the two, there were times I felt that the iFi was a little better, maybe a touch better sound stage, a bit better bass definition. There were other times when maybe I though the SOtM kit was better, a fractionally better mid range. But to be honest, the margins of difference were small, and with much switching one way or the other I started to wonder if they did actually sound pretty much identical and that any perceived differences were imagined.

 

I started with a simple plan, try the iFi, if I did not like it, send it back. If I preferred the iFi to the SOtM kit, then the SOtM kit could be sold.

 

I am now not sure what to do, so in the short term I will keep both, try a few things, then make up my mind. I have a few ideas of things that I want to try and I would rather take my time rather than rush things and maybe make the wrong decision.  If nothing else, I'd like to run the iFi for more long term listening in my system and see how I get on with it, rather than messing about with A/B testing.

 

I have to say that I am very impressed with the iFi, it seems to work perfectly (in my set up at least), it sounds great.

 

I am also beginning to suspect that it does actually sound a fraction better than the SOtM kit, and when you consider that the iFi is a fraction of the cost of the SOtM kit, that is rather impressive.

[Miska]

22 hours ago, brother love said:

Can the bootable NAA image be installed on the hard drive w/ no OS present (or is HQP OS required)?  If so, would performance be improved over current set-up? (Downside would be more effort to update w/ new images down the road).

 

I use startup disk creator for bootable USB stick. I'm not sure if Live Ubuntu USB or some other method is utilized to best accomplish this.

 

Thanks for any input re: guidance, recommendations, or don't bother w/ that.

 

Yes, you can dump the image on eMMC as well, and in most cases it should work. It is all self-contained with partition tables and everything, so it must be written on a raw base device.

 

[brother love]

Thanks Jussi.  It hit me early this morning that I could clear out the eMMC & just copy the bootable USB HQP folders/ files on to it.  So I used Live USB Ubuntu 20.04 flash drive w/ GParted, reformatted eMMC partitions to Fat32, copied NAA files over, & voila !  Having said that... after A/B comparisons, I can't really tell a difference between the 2. Learned something new though 😁

[Miska]

21 hours ago, brother love said:

Thanks Jussi.  It hit me early this morning that I could clear out the eMMC & just copy the bootable USB HQP folders/ files on to it.  So I used Live USB Ubuntu 20.04 flash drive w/ GParted, reformatted eMMC partitions to Fat32, copied NAA files over, & voila !  Having said that... after A/B comparisons, I can't really tell a difference between the 2. Learned something new though 😁

 

You don't need to format or partition the eMMC at all. My images contain partitions and formatting, etc. So you just need to "dd" it to the destination media. This will overwrite any existing partitioning or formatting there.

 

[ted_b]

So I tried to get the Fitlet2, configured with fiber SFP+, to be my NAA.  I am in test mode (haven't brought system to lower level audio room yet; still in office).  I first tried via my Mikrotik CSS610, which hangs off my router.  Wired 50 ft ethernet down to Mikrotik, 50 ft fiber back to my office and to NAA (my HQP server, Roon server and this office desktop is on another switch, a simple Netgear GS108).  Once I found the right combo of SFPs I got a link confirmation via Mikrotik webpage (and lights on NAA SFP port).  But neither my home network nor my HQPlayer desktop could discover it.  After several attempts I assumed it was because they were on separate switches so I connected the NAA (aka fitlet2) to my Netgear office switch via rj45.  Still nothing.  I can see it on the router webpage but neither Windows network nor HQplayer is discovering it.  And the NAA (Jussi's image via USB boot) loads fine via monitor hanging off fitlet2.  Weird.  Any ideas?  I could move this to optical network threads but right now everything is copper.

[firedog]

On 8/4/2021 at 2:32 PM, Confused said:

My Zen Stream arrived last week.  First impressions are good. It is far from a luxury hifi item, but considering it's price point it seem to be very solidly built, it is quite heavy for a small device, and it actually looks and feels a lot nicer than it looks in photographs. It also runs "slightly warm", which is a nice change from stuff like the microRendu that I used to have that would almost burn your fingers if you touched it.

 

It is by far the simplest NAA type device that I have used with HQPlayer, I connected it up, loaded HQPlayer on my PC, I could see the iFi in the HQPlayer settings, selected the iFi, hit play, got music.  No additional software needed on the PC, no messing about with IP addresses or similar, it just worked.

 

I spent some time at the weekend comparing it with my SOtM sMS-200ultra and tX-USBultra. This was interesting.  Both devices were feeding my Mutec MC3+USB, the SOtM kit via USB, the iFi by S/PDIF. What surprised me was just how similar the two sounded, I had great difficulty discerning any difference between the two.  It look a few seconds to swap between the two, a case of changing the input settings on the Mutec and the device settings in HQPlayer. With much swapping between the two, there were times I felt that the iFi was a little better, maybe a touch better sound stage, a bit better bass definition. There were other times when maybe I though the SOtM kit was better, a fractionally better mid range. But to be honest, the margins of difference were small, and with much switching one way or the other I started to wonder if they did actually sound pretty much identical and that any perceived differences were imagined.

 

I started with a simple plan, try the iFi, if I did not like it, send it back. If I preferred the iFi to the SOtM kit, then the SOtM kit could be sold.

 

I am now not sure what to do, so in the short term I will keep both, try a few things, then make up my mind. I have a few ideas of things that I want to try and I would rather take my time rather than rush things and maybe make the wrong decision.  If nothing else, I'd like to run the iFi for more long term listening in my system and see how I get on with it, rather than messing about with A/B testing.

 

I have to say that I am very impressed with the iFi, it seems to work perfectly (in my set up at least), it sounds great.

 

I am also beginning to suspect that it does actually sound a fraction better than the SOtM kit, and when you consider that the iFi is a fraction of the cost of the SOtM kit, that is rather impressive.

If after a while you can't really tell the difference or think the iFi MIGHT be better, it probably means there really isn't a difference.

 

Really intense listening sessions attempting to hear differences also effect our perceptions, and I think also distort perceptions - it's a kind of expectation bias ( the brain really WANTS to hear a difference). And even if you accurately hear a small difference, it's probably something you won't hear in normal listening for enjoyment, as your brain is working differently.

 

If your present results continue, trust your perceptions and sell the SOTM. 

I did something similar and "downgraded" to a streamer that costs about a third of what I had before. Haven't regretted it.

[TRIODE4]

If I was to use HQPlayer for IFI Zen Stream, do I buy the desktop or the embedded version? Does the HQplayer improve the web radio player sound quality in the Zen Stream, or is it not possible to use it for that?

[Miska]

9 hours ago, TRIODE4 said:

If I was to use HQPlayer for IFI Zen Stream, do I buy the desktop or the embedded version? Does the HQplayer improve the web radio player sound quality in the Zen Stream, or is it not possible to use it for that?

 

Either version works same way with ZEN Stream. For HQPlayer NAA operation, you turn the selector in ZEN Stream to "NAA" mode and then it is solely that function - HQPlayer endpoint - and nothing else.

 

What ever you want to play through HQPlayer, you use HQPlayer for playback. There are some ways to play web radios through HQPlayer, depending whether you are on Desktop or Embedded and how you arrange things.

 

[TRIODE4]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Either version works same way with ZEN Stream. For HQPlayer NAA operation, you turn the selector in ZEN Stream to "NAA" mode and then it is solely that function - HQPlayer endpoint - and nothing else.

 

What ever you want to play through HQPlayer, you use HQPlayer for playback. There are some ways to play web radios through HQPlayer, depending whether you are on Desktop or Embedded and how you arrange things.

 

Thank you for your quick response! I'm assuming the desktop version will be more future proof in that it has a wider adaptability in case my system changes. Once I have bought the software it is mine to use on whatever devices I choose?

[giordy60]

hi Jussi
I used the last naa image you created (the 4122 x64)
it boots smoothly but fails to start ....
I am attaching two images

first stop here .....

[giordy60]

and then here

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just an FYI post for people. I totally forgot that CAPS 20.1, using a LattePanda Alpha 864S, has a microSD slot. I decided to write the newest NAA image to a microSD card and test it. It works great and it’s simple to replace when an update is issued. 
 

I output PCM at 1,536 kHz to it last night, connected to a Denafrips Terminator II, without any issues. 
 

The Alpha 864S is a great little computer. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 minutes ago, giordy60 said:

and then here

It’s booted up just fine. That’s only a status message. 
 

Do you have a USB DAC connected? Does it work?

 

The error is related to your internal sound card I believe. 

[giordy60]

yes, the dac is connected with the usb .....
but the naa does not start .....
and obviously not seen by HQP.

[giordy60]

14 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The Alpha 864S is a great little computer. 

isn't it noisy?
i saw a fan .....🙄

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, giordy60 said:

yes, the dac is connected with the usb .....
but the naa does not start .....
and obviously not seen by HQP.

Hit enter on your keyboard, do you go back to the login prompt? Can you login using username root and no password?

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, giordy60 said:

isn't it noisy?
i saw a fan .....🙄

I use it fanless. Just get the fanless case add-on. 

[ted_b]

26 minutes ago, giordy60 said:

yes, the dac is connected with the usb .....
but the naa does not start .....
and obviously not seen by HQP.

What you showed is the NAA start screen.  All looks fine.  Why do you say it didn't start?  Did you restart HQP?

[Miska]

1 hour ago, giordy60 said:

hi Jussi
I used the last naa image you created (the 4122 x64)
it boots smoothly but fails to start ....
I am attaching two images

first stop here .....

 

Looks OK. What kind of hardware are you running it on? More than one ethernet port?

 

[giordy60]

server 2016 and usually with your nad, a network port connected via switch