Hqplayer: best NAA with best sound quality

[blueninjasix]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Likely the compute module is already different from RPi3 and in this application would need a separate device tree file describing the connections.

 

Remember that on ARM platform there is no such thing you have on a PC called ACPI that can describe to the OS what parts are there and how they are connected. On ARM platforms device tree file is needed to describe this information to the OS kernel.

 

Ropiee XL has managed to incorporate HQP NAA and it works very well on the USBridge Signature. I was just hoping to be able to get your own version of NAA working on it.

[bipet]

1 hour ago, blueninjasix said:

Ropiee XL has managed to incorporate HQP NAA and it works very well on the USBridge Signature. I was just hoping to be able to get your own version of NAA working on it.

Thats interesting! I am still using Gentooplayer with my USBridge Sig. I finally got it all working a couple of months ago, but i wonder if I should try Ropiee XL now! Ideally it would be great to have Miska's minimal NAA.

[sledwards]

So I just finished building a new machine to run NAA. I have been using the USB bootable image 4.1.1 and everything has been working fine, until I added the last two pieces of my build...a JCAT USB-XE card and a JCAT Net Femto card.  My basic question is, should the bootable NAA image recognize these two cards? So far no luck making music. When I boot into the NAA and try plugging a keyboard into the USB XE rather than a USB motherboard port, it does not work. It seems to recognize the JCAT Network card when I switch from the onboard LAN, although I see no activity lights on the JCAT network card. Do I need to be running a full Linux OS with NAA installed to make this work?

 

Steve

[Randomrunner]

Dear All,

 

I'd like to contribute some of my recent findings now that in California I've been confined at home by "shelter in place", over 6 months now.

 

1) The Up Gateway NAA PC Jussi suggested is very sensitive (at least in my system) to its power supply.  Jussi recommends a 6A 5V medical grade power supply, I believe he's using one of the Meanwell power supply.  The PC vendor's website specifies it to be a 4A device.  However, I've been able to run it and compare with various power supplies with lower current specs:   iFi iPower, iFi iPower X, Meanwell Medical Grade, a taobao 5V LPS around $100, and finally I settled with a KECES P8 LPS (one to power the Atom PC, the output to power my network switch.)  I'd say this atom PC is very sensitive to what power you feed it with.  Also, I know people don't believe it, but I have one of those audiophile Cat6 LAN cables, and it works best paired this machine, i.e., the last PC in the signal chain right before the DAC.

2) For HQPlayer, I have a DIY i9-9900K fanless PC with Streamcom DB4 case.  I've installed windows 10, windows server (with various commerical optimization software) with HQP desktop version.  I also tried installing aother optimized Linux OS with HQP embedded, but at the end I settled with HQP OS that Jussi provides. 

3) I use Roon as my interface.  The RoonServer is running on a 3rd PC, which is an Airtop 3, with Intel® Xeon E-2288G Processor and NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000.  This machine sits in my study for email and other office work.  I also use it as as Plex Server, very powerful, and because it's fanless, it's quiet.

 

This is all of course very much system dependent, and I don't do much upsampling, only going up to 96KHz PCM because that's (what I was told) where native convolution is run at in my Lyngdorf MP-50.

 

I am just writing these down for you to take consider, since that combo is so far what I am most satisfied with.

 

Enjoy the music  :-)

[AnotherSpin]

7 hours ago, Randomrunner said:

[..] Also, I know people don't believe it, but I have one of those audiophile Cat6 LAN cables, and it works best paired this machine, i.e., the last PC in the signal chain right before the DAC.[...]

 

Also, try your CAT6 in both directions. My Meicord CAT cables do not sound the same after changing direction.

[Miska]

13 hours ago, Randomrunner said:

Also, I know people don't believe it, but I have one of those audiophile Cat6 LAN cables, and it works best paired this machine, i.e., the last PC in the signal chain right before the DAC.

 

Just be careful that it doesn't have shields that would connect grounds of the NAA and any upstream network device. So it absolutely must be UTP type! Otherwise it spoils the galvanic isolation Ethernet otherwise provides. So check that the Ethernet connectors have plastic bodies, not metallic!

 

Shielded Ethernet cable may also make the device seem sensitive to PSUs because you'd have a link between PSU ground, USB ground, and what ever the Ethernet wire leads up to. And if there are more shielded cables on the network, to all those too. This would allow dirty ground currents flow through the device.

 

The Meanwell medical grade PSU I use is a good one, it is also a floating one with two pin power mains connection.

 

[Randomrunner]

14 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Also, try your CAT6 in both directions. My Meicord CAT cables do not sound the same after changing direction.

 

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Just be careful that it doesn't have shields that would connect grounds of the NAA and any upstream network device. So it absolutely must be UTP type! Otherwise it spoils the galvanic isolation Ethernet otherwise provides. So check that the Ethernet connectors have plastic bodies, not metallic!

 

Thank you both for your comments!  My CAT cable does have a direction marking, and I just confirmed with the manufacturer that indeed it has a UTP connector.  Thanks again!

 

[Confused]

I note that  few people here are running products like the Allo USBrigdge Sig and Digione Signature.  Has anyone ever been able to compare these Allo products with anything in the Sonore Rendu series or SOtM sMS-200 range? 

 

I am intrigued by this, there seems to be a general view that products like the ultraRendu are better, but I have seen very few direct comparisons, so I am not so sure.  Measurements look good with the Allo products, and you can use a decent quality power supply of your choice. (which seems to matter with all "end point" type products)  Are the Sonore and SOtM items really any better?

[firedog]

10 minutes ago, Confused said:

I note that  few people here are running products like the Allo USBrigdge Sig and Digione Signature.  Has anyone ever been able to compare these Allo products with anything in the Sonore Rendu series or SOtM sMS-200 range? 

 

I am intrigued by this, there seems to be a general view that products like the ultraRendu are better, but I have seen very few direct comparisons, so I am not so sure.  Measurements look good with the Allo products, and you can use a decent quality power supply of your choice. (which seems to matter with all "end point" type products)  Are the Sonore and SOtM items really any better?

Some will tell you yes. Some will disagree. Some will always say the newer more expensive device is better. Others disagree. There's no consensus. Have you compared your SOtM to anything else? Compare it unsighted to another device - even a $40 Raspberry Pi, and see what you think. 

[Confused]

20 hours ago, firedog said:

Some will tell you yes. Some will disagree. Some will always say the newer more expensive device is better. Others disagree. There's no consensus. Have you compared your SOtM to anything else? Compare it unsighted to another device - even a $40 Raspberry Pi, and see what you think. 

Actually, I have searched for comparisons between the Allo options and SOtM / Sonore options and found very little, hence my earlier question here.  For example, I have not been able to find any mention of someone trying an Allo product versus the sMS-200Ultra or ultraRendu and concluding the Allo product is better.  If someone could point me to such a comparison i would be interested.

 

As for my own comparisons, yes, I have tried other things.  Other than the sMS-200ultra Neo, the best result I have obtained is by feeding my Mutec MC3+USB via S/PIF from a 7 year old Arcam Blueray player, playing files from a USB thumb drive.  This obviously takes convenient streaming and HQPlayer out of the chain, but it was tantalisingly close in performance to the sMS-200ultra / tx-USBultra / HQPlayer.  Hence my curiosity as to how something like the Digione Signature might perform feeding the MC3+USB.

[Confused]

Is this capable of running NAA?  To be clear, I note that the product is not offered with NAA, I am simply curious if the device is intrinsically capable of running NAA, should the manufacturer choose to implement.

 

https://en.wattson.audio/emerson

 

https://en.wattson.audio/

[firedog]

5 hours ago, Confused said:

Is this capable of running NAA?  To be clear, I note that the product is not offered with NAA, I am simply curious if the device is intrinsically capable of running NAA, should the manufacturer choose to implement.

 

https://en.wattson.audio/emerson

 

https://en.wattson.audio/

Isn't any way to know for sure. One can assume it runs a fairly common SBC and a version of Linux, so theoretically it can be hacked and NAA installed. But without knowing what HW and software is inside, can't know for sure. 

The best thing to do would be to lobby the manufacturer and have them update the device.

[Confused]

8 hours ago, firedog said:

Isn't any way to know for sure. One can assume it runs a fairly common SBC and a version of Linux, so theoretically it can be hacked and NAA installed. But without knowing what HW and software is inside, can't know for sure. 

The best thing to do would be to lobby the manufacturer and have them update the device.

As it happens, I did send them a query.  Their response was a little vague and non committal.

 

Part of the response as follows:

 

On the other hand, I don't know what the NAA implementation would imply on our side. The overall concept looks technically really interesting, and we could add the NAA in our wish list for a possible future implementation, but is is not in our planning for now.

 

The above leaves me none the wiser, hence my earlier post, I was simply curious if NAA implementation was likely to be possible or not.

 

In terms of lobbying the manufacturer, I did send them a follow up response and have seen no reply to date.  For me it is relatively simple, if they implemented NAA, I would likely buy the product, if they never do, I will not. 

 

What I am looking for is a decent quality end point with S/PDIF output, a 10MHz reference clock input would be nice too.  Just about the only products with S/PDIF output are the Allo Digione Signature, and maybe some (very expensive) products from Antipodes, nothing quite ticks all the boxes.  I am tempted to give the Allo a try, but then change my mind and think I should simply be happy with what I have already.  (which is the cheapest and simplest solution!) 

[Crom]

On 9/26/2020 at 11:56 AM, Confused said:

I note that  few people here are running products like the Allo USBrigdge Sig and Digione Signature.  Has anyone ever been able to compare these Allo products with anything in the Sonore Rendu series or SOtM sMS-200 range? 

 

I am intrigued by this, there seems to be a general view that products like the ultraRendu are better, but I have seen very few direct comparisons, so I am not so sure.  Measurements look good with the Allo products, and you can use a decent quality power supply of your choice. (which seems to matter with all "end point" type products)  Are the Sonore and SOtM items really any better?

I had a pimped sms-200 which I'd upgraded the clocks and the regs with various USB enhancements in the signal path (re-clock etc etc - can't remember now) and I swapped this out for the USBridge sig which I run with some of Ian Canada's card to provide an I2S output straight into the Dac via u.fl headers. It's not exactly stock but leaving USB behind was a great decision for me.

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Confused said:

What I am looking for is a decent quality end point with S/PDIF output, a 10MHz reference clock input would be nice too.  Just about the only products with S/PDIF output are the Allo Digione Signature, and maybe some (very expensive) products from Antipodes, nothing quite ticks all the boxes.  I am tempted to give the Allo a try, but then change my mind and think I should simply be happy with what I have already.  (which is the cheapest and simplest solution!) 

 

RaspberryPi + HifiBerry Digi+ Pro is not expensive. I think IQaudio has also similar board, but their site seems to be down at the moment.

 

Problem with 10 MHz clock inputs is that it requires DPLL frequency synthesis to produce the needed master clocks. In this case 22.5792 MHz and 24.576 MHz. So you usually get better performance from a directly connected decent quality crystal oscillator.

 

[seeteeyou]

There's this CelAudio NB100+ with built-in NAA in addition to coax / AES / I2S outputs, though @ 7,500 RMB a pop that might be a bit too steep

 

http://www.celaudio.com/nb100.html

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=624384643092

 

And then Teradak also made their own Pi-based streamers and it's just a matter of putting NAA on the OS

 

https://www.teradak.com/products/113.html

 

Previous ones looked kinda cheesy but the latest model with RPi4 seemed to be much better thanks to an updated faceplate

 

http://hifisy.com/ShowProducts.asp?id=393

 

As always it's gonna be quite a challenge to get technical support from some Chinese companies whenever they're fairly small to begin with, though YMMV.

 

---

 

Personally I've been waiting for CM4 myself, theoretically carrier boards could have a single PCIe x1 slot for installing JCAT USB Card XE etc.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-nvme-support-coming

 

Here's an example of CM3+ so that's quite similar to what USBridge Sig could offer

 

http://www.dimdim.gr/2020/04/stop-the-press-archphile-is-back-codename-corona/

 

Basically it's just a matter of waiting for Allo to release an updated version of USBridge Sig for CM4, or hopefully Ian Canada could also step up to the plate by integrating his FifoPi Q3 Ultimate with a brand new carrier board.

 

---

 

IMHO the whole point of going for CM4 / RPi4 really is all about running one of those mighty interesting distros such as symphonic-mpd

 

https://www.stereo.net.au/forums/topic/317583-journeys-with-a-pi-from-a-standing-start-to-symphonic-mpd/

https://www.facebook.com/565378050602738/posts/965376323936240

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEkcPvplElY

Quote

I also compared the sound quality and Symphonic-Mpd sounds much better, with darker background and huge soundstage.

 

They're no longer updating previous releases for RPi3 after they migrated everything to RPi4 earlier this year, and they also removed support for USB audio so that I2S is the way to go now.

 

---

 

And then here's a souped-up flavor of piCorePlayer that could potentially knock your socks off

 

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sam0402/pcp-8820hz/master/pcp610-88_96Hz-arm64.z01

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sam0402/pcp-8820hz/master/pcp610-88_96Hz-arm64.z02

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sam0402/pcp-8820hz/master/pcp610-88_96Hz-arm64.z03

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sam0402/pcp-8820hz/master/pcp610-88_96Hz-arm64.zip

 

Someone in Japan tried it out after purchasing his 1st RPi4, and then his x86 machine with Daphile was "abandoned" afterwards. Finally he's getting his 2nd / 3rd RPi4 for LMS / file server respectively.

 

---

 

Someone already figured out how to put Roon Bridge on piCorePlayer, most likely adding NAA should be no biggie

 

https://github.com/phrontizo/roonbridge-rpi

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-bridge-on-picoreplayer/88820

[Miska]

The NAA OS I have for RPi4 is different from many other distros, for example

• Minimal custom OS built just for NAA
• 64-bit OS throughout, unlike most RPi OS are still 32-bit
• Uses realtime Linux kernel
• Latest support for DACs

Soon'ish it should begin to support also USB inputs, so you could use it as input device to HQPlayer (makes HQPlayer look like a USB DAC to the upstream computer).

 

Of course there's the HQPlayer OS image too, which includes HQPlayer Embedded with similar minimal custom OS. This is suitable if you want all-in-one package with something like HifiBerry boards or with a USB DAC. However, due to the limited CPU power of the RPi4, it is useful only for PCM-PCM upsampling with some possible limitations.

 

[seeteeyou]

FYI - it's interesting to compare the sizes of different distros

 

 84M  piCore64-12.0-beta1.img
111M  alpine-rpi-3.12.0-aarch64.tar
132M  piCorePlayer6.1.0.img
132M  piCorePlayer6.1.0-88_96Hz-xeno.img
933M  hifiberryos-20200908-pi4.img
1.2G  DietPi_RPi-ARMv8-Buster.img
1.3G  naa-4112-raspberrypi4.img
1.6G  symphonic-mpd-107.img
2.0G  20200906-ropieeexl-ose_rpi234-stable.bin
2.0G  20200906-ropieee-ose_rpi234-stable.bin
2.1G  snakeoil-buster-1.1.0-rpi-20200206.img
2.6G  RuneAudio+R_e5-RPi4.img
2.8G  volumio-2.834-2020-09-24-pi.img
3.7G  moode-r671-iso.img
3.8G  collybia-os-1.5.0-rpi4.img
4.6G  GentoPlayerRpi4-64-3.00.img
4.7G  archphile-1.19-beta-corona-rpi4.img
7.5G  konalinux-pi-64-1.0.img

 

Just wondering if there were any empty spaces inside each image and how to figure out their corresponding sizes?

[Crom]

18 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

http://www.dimdim.gr/2020/04/stop-the-press-archphile-is-back-codename-corona/

 

Thanks for a very informative post @seeteeyou

 

I would like to try this distro on my USBridge sig with CM3 but it doesn't have HQPlayer NAA included. I have looked at the available downloads from @Miska website but I've only ever used his pre-built Pi images ... not sure which one the right one to use with Arch Linux??

 

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

[Miska]

39 minutes ago, Crom said:

not sure which one the right one to use with Arch Linux??

 

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

 

None is, Arch Linux is not supported. Only Ubuntu (bionic), Debian (buster, stretch) and Fedora (fc25, fc31).

 

Some binaries may work on some Arch after package conversion.

 

[seeteeyou]

You're very welcomed @Crom

 

FYI - here's NAA for Arch Linux

 

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/hqplayer-network-audio-daemon/

 

It might require a little bit of work to get Ethernet working for USBridge Sig and here's something uploaded by Allo

 

https://github.com/allocom/USBridgeSig-AX2v0

 

And then Allo also provided something new last month

 

https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/issues/3725#issuecomment-687798614

 

I guess that maybe you could try overwriting /lib/modules/5.4.51-v7+/kernel/drivers/net/usb/ax88179_178a.ko with this one

 

http://3.230.113.73:9011/Allocom/USBridgeSig/stable_rel/rpi-usbs-5.4.51-v7+/ax88179_178a.ko

 

If that were no go at all, most likely they'll help you out after starting a thread here

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/forum/115-transport-support/

[Randomrunner]

Hi @Miska

 

Would you have any recommended BIOS tweaks for the images you create, to be run on thumb drives for

1) HQplayer Embedded (HQPlayer OS) and

2) NAA for the Up Gateway?

 

Thank you!

[Confused]

On 10/1/2020 at 7:48 AM, Confused said:

 

In terms of lobbying the manufacturer, I did send them a follow up response and have seen no reply to date.  For me it is relatively simple, if they implemented NAA, I would likely buy the product, if they never do, I will not. 

 

I received a rather nice response from Wattson Audio re the possibility of implementing HQPlayer NAA on the Emerson.

 

The key technical stuff as follows:

 

 Yes, the Emerson streaming interface runs Linux. We have worked for many years on this software, many parts of the OS are modified and the digital audio path is full custom, Therefore it is not easy to integrate a new software. Adding an audio or control channel has quite a deep impact on the system, because we have to manage properly the coexistence of those standards. Switching between channels (being for instance Roon and UPnP) requires some well-functioning mechanisms to avoid any trouble and provide a good user experience. Anyway, I have added the HQPlayer in our wish list and we will evaluate it further as soon as we have time for this.

 

So not quite as simple as adding the NAA image to a Linux device, although I have absolutely no idea what obstacles may presented by the modified OS.

 

I also have no idea how many people might be interested in a device like this and running HQPlayer, so it is very hard to judge if it would be worth their while implementing.

[Miska]

On 10/2/2020 at 7:10 PM, Randomrunner said:

Would you have any recommended BIOS tweaks for the images you create, to be run on thumb drives for

1) HQplayer Embedded (HQPlayer OS) and

 

Nothing really, on a regular PC, load optimized defaults and in addition you'd likely need to select XMP Profile 1 for RAM to enable full speed on faster RAM modules.

 

On Gigabyte motherboards, in fan control settings you can set all fans to Silent profile.

 

On 10/2/2020 at 7:10 PM, Randomrunner said:

2) NAA for the Up Gateway?

 

For the USB input functionality you would need to switch the OTG port into Device Mode. But other than that, default settings are fine.

 

[jabbr]

On 10/9/2020 at 2:03 AM, Confused said:

I received a rather nice response from Wattson Audio re the possibility of implementing HQPlayer NAA on the Emerson.

 

The key technical stuff as follows:

 

 Yes, the Emerson streaming interface runs Linux. We have worked for many years on this software, many parts of the OS are modified and the digital audio path is full custom, Therefore it is not easy to integrate a new software. Adding an audio or control channel has quite a deep impact on the system, because we have to manage properly the coexistence of those standards. Switching between channels (being for instance Roon and UPnP) requires some well-functioning mechanisms to avoid any trouble and provide a good user experience. Anyway, I have added the HQPlayer in our wish list and we will evaluate it further as soon as we have time for this.

 

So not quite as simple as adding the NAA image to a Linux device, although I have absolutely no idea what obstacles may presented by the modified OS.

 

I also have no idea how many people might be interested in a device like this and running HQPlayer, so it is very hard to judge if it would be worth their while implementing.

 

This response does not seem to be as forthcoming or perhaps accurate as it first might seem.

 

If the "digital audio path is full custom" including the kernel then they would have an obligation under GPL to provide the software as Linux is open source and licensed via GPL.

 

So either

a) they have the source available  --- unlikely or 

b) they haven't really implemented a full custom audio path, rather use what is already available in Linux.

 

The response sounds like typical marketing jargon to me, but if they can produce the actual modifications to the digital audio path that they have put into the kernel, then good for them.

 

Not sure this is worth spending time to track down. NAA is designed to work with the Linux digital audio path.