HQPlayer4 EC modulator tips and techniques

[k6davis]

 

24 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

While waiting for the guru @Miskato see your question:

 

Could the extra threads and extra cache of the 9900K help, for example for someone running Roon on the same machine?

 

While extra cache may not help with just EC modulators, I’ve seen Miska mention more cache can help HQP performance.

 

I wouldn't run Roon on the HQP machine. I didn't do that before EC and I definitely wouldn't now. I expect it would work on either of the two CPUs, but prefer several machines, with each one doing as few things as possible, preferably with an optimized, no GUI OS (Windows Server, Linux Server or HQP OS). A powerful HQP server, a modestly powered Roon server, and a super lightweight NAA. It doesn't have to cost a lot - lower powered computers are really cheap now and they can be really small. It's worth it to me to have an optimized system.

 

18 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

Even the 110W TDP fanless Streacom DB4  case may not be suitable for 9700K.

 

So DIY fanless may be off the table for both, for cases available right now.

 

I'm pulling a number out of thin air here but I'd need to see a 140W fanless cass to feel comfortable with running 9700K at turbo speeds in a fanless case. Just to allow for some safety margin.

 

Safest best (for a new build) for turbo speed performance seems to be active cooling. 

 

I've never tried passive cooling, but I'd certainly want the cooler chip (that still runs all of the modulators) if I was running fanless.

 

1 hour ago, ted_b said:

What if I'm running multichannel into an NAA (to an exaSound)?  Will the 9900k be better or will I simply need a GPU to offload/

 

Waiting to hear from @Miska but I would expect that you'd need a GPU with either chip.

[ted_b]

Has anyone tried the 9700KF ("F" nomenclature states that the chip has the GPU disabled/removed).  You'll need a video card, of course, but some are reporting (outside the HQP world) that the removal of the chip's GPU is a sonic benefit.  I ask cuz it seems to be my target right now, what with @K6davis's logic, combined with the removal of the gpu.....and something like the Asus Prime Z390 A mobo.....seems to make sense.

[Rune]

I see the KF variant with GPU disabled as a marketing stunt. I have seen no reviews where it performed differently compared to K.

Also with  KF CPU You pay more for less.

I find it very unlikely that they should sound different would. The point is using a OS without a GUI then the GPU.

[Miska]

Modern power management can quite successfully power down unused parts of the hardware, so I'm not expecting big power consumption differences between K and KF when the GPU in K is not being used.

 

[Miska]

12 hours ago, ted_b said:

What if I'm running multichannel into an NAA (to an exaSound)?  Will the 9900k be better or will I simply need a GPU to offload/

 

You need at least as many CPU cores as you have channels. So 9900K is just enough. If you run filters on the CPU it is better to have double the number of cores. So best option is probably 9900K + powerful enough Nvidia GPU.

 

[rando]

With EC bringing processors to a grinding halt.  I think we should champion arrival of genre defining filters that slice GPU into ribbons.  Maybe he'll even be be so pleased with himself he'll ask for outside suggestions naming them.  

 

Anyone's "shed" a billion dollars worth of clean room and equipment we can splice together a few silicon wafers in on weekends?  Oh, and a lounge to keep the wives entertained. 

[rando]

I agree F coded chips are currently more checking off a feature than improving real world capabilities of "i-X" consumer chips. 

 

Interesting link showing suffixes used from each generation of processor.

[jcbenten]

Came across this: https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-all-core-5ghz-flagship-core-i9-9900ks-processor-spotted-in-3dmark.html

 

Note I am not an HQP user but I find the PC discussion interesting...

[dminches]

What’s the minimum video card I should get for CUDA offload?  My processor is an i7-9700k. 

 

[k6davis]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

You need at least as many CPU cores as you have channels. So 9900K is just enough. If you run filters on the CPU it is better to have double the number of cores. So best option is probably 9900K + powerful enough Nvidia GPU.

 

The 9900K and 9700K both have 8 cores.

[Miska]

3 hours ago, k6davis said:

The 9900K and 9700K both have 8 cores.

 

One has HyperThreading and a bit more boost clock. I don't know how much it makes difference in practice, my guesstimate is around 10 - 15%. Typically total number of threads with HQPlayer and the OS is some hundreds at least. If you run Roon on the same machine, it matters much more than if you run HQPlayer OS. Not very straightforward to give a simple rule/figure.

 

Roughly speaking, for HQPlayer most optimal would be number of channels + 2 when using GPU and at least number of channels x2 + 2 without GPU. That's how I picked i7-8086K (for Holo Spring 2). But there are other aspects as well, if you run filters on CPU, amount and speed of cache matters a lot.

 

[Miska]

6 hours ago, dminches said:

What’s the minimum video card I should get for CUDA offload?  My processor is an i7-9700k. 

 

Rough rule of thumb is not get anything cheaper than the CPU alone. With that CPU, I would get started with RTX 2080 (Ti/Super).

 

Point is that GPU should be fast enough that CPU doesn't have to wait for GPU to complete it's part of the job...

 

[rando]

All future Intel i3-i9 processors are slated to have hyperthreading.  

[k6davis]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

One has HyperThreading and a bit more boost clock. I don't know how much it makes difference in practice, my guesstimate is around 10 - 15%. Typically total number of threads with HQPlayer and the OS is some hundreds at least. If you run Roon on the same machine, it matters much more than if you run HQPlayer OS. Not very straightforward to give a simple rule/figure.

 

Roughly speaking, for HQPlayer most optimal would be number of channels + 2 when using GPU and at least number of channels x2 + 2 without GPU. That's how I picked i7-8086K (for Holo Spring 2). But there are other aspects as well, if you run filters on CPU, amount and speed of cache matters a lot.

 

I installed Roon Core temporarily on my 9700K HQP server to see how it impacted the performance. The CPU utilization is about 3% higher, but other than that, there's no difference. I don't think it sounds as good. I had to turn off my Audiophile Optimizer optimizations to get Roon to run and now the system is doing more multitasking, but it's running perfectly - upsampling PCM 24-192 => ASDM7EC x DSD256 x 48 with poly-sinc-ext2 - with the GPU turned off so the filters are running on the CPU.

 

For stereo rigs, the 9700K has power to spare to run Roon + HQP EC DSD256.

 

 

[asdf1000]

1 hour ago, k6davis said:

I don't think it sounds as good

 

Even playing to networked endpoint, NAA?

 

[asdf1000]

On 8/17/2019 at 6:15 AM, Miska said:

Temps don't seem to be a problem here, being far from limits. Likely one reason is that I don't use the integrated GPU for anything

 

Hi @Miska

 

Is that because you run server mode of Ubuntu (no GUI)?

 

Or because you’re using a separate GPU for CUDA offloading?

[k6davis]

46 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

Even playing to networked endpoint, NAA?

 

Right, even with the NAA. I haven't quantified whether it was running through the Audiophile Optimizer again or not having Roon running on the same server, but when I went back to my normal configuration, there was an obvious improvement in the sound.

[dminches]

7 minutes ago, k6davis said:

 

Right, even with the NAA. I haven't quantified whether it was running through the Audiophile Optimizer again or not having Roon running on the same server, but when I went back to my normal configuration, there was an obvious improvement in the sound.

 

Is Roon doing much when you are just playing music?  I know it scans for new music periodically but that can be turned off.

 

[bodiebill]

My setup is now with 3 PC's:

(1) Windows Server 2019 which connects to my NAS music library (still unoptimized)

=>

(2) Audiolinux with HQPlayer 4 embedded (still trial)

=>

(3) Audiolinux or Euphony with NAA (also still trial)

 

I also have Audirvana on (1) which sees the HQPe, so wondered: would it be possible to decrease the load on (2) by using Audirvana to upsample to, say, DSD128 or DSD256, to hopefully reduce stuttering playback of DSD256 with ASDM7EC?

Of course I tried, and I have the impression that the stuttering is somewhat less, but it is still there.

Did anyone here try something along those lines? Does it make any sense at all?

[k6davis]

 

17 hours ago, dminches said:

Is Roon doing much when you are just playing music?  I know it scans for new music periodically but that can be turned off.

 

You would think that it's not doing much, but sometimes there are significant spikes in the disk & CPU usage on my Roon server. 

 

Normally, my servers are optimized (with Windows Server + Audiophile Optimizer or HQP OS) and dedicated (only running 1 app). To perform my test (running both Roon & HQP on the same server), I temporarily lost both benefits. The music definitely sounded better when I went back to my normal configuration.

 

It may be that it was the optimization that made most of the difference, but after making the effort to minimize any unnecessary processes running in the background, I don't want to run a whole additional application to the foreground. My HQP Server is like an appliance. It has no keyboard or monitor attached. It only does one thing and I usually don't have to interact with it.

 

Like the man himself said:

 

23 hours ago, Miska said:

Typically total number of threads with HQPlayer and the OS is some hundreds at least. If you run Roon on the same machine, it matters much more than if you run HQPlayer OS.

[k6davis]

5 hours ago, bodiebill said:

My setup is now with 3 PC's:

(1) Windows Server 2019 which connects to my NAS music library (still unoptimized)

=>

(2) Audiolinux with HQPlayer 4 embedded (still trial)

=>

(3) Audiolinux or Euphony with NAA (also still trial)

 

I also have Audirvana on (1) which sees the HQPe, so wondered: would it be possible to decrease the load on (2) by using Audirvana to upsample to, say, DSD128 or DSD256, to hopefully reduce stuttering playback of DSD256 with ASDM7EC?

Of course I tried, and I have the impression that the stuttering is somewhat less, but it is still there.

Did anyone here try something along those lines? Does it make any sense at all?

 

Distributed Upsampling. 😀 That's clever.

 

It is a significantly lighter load for HQP to upsample from DSD to DSD, so there is some logic to your idea. I suspect it would be easier for the computer if the sample rate given to HQP was lower, like DSD64.

 

If your hardware is capable of EC DSD5EC at DSD128 (a lighter load), that could give you a sense of what the EC "magic" is about. EC still sounds like EC at DSD128 and I actually prefer the sound of DSD5EC (although that is not a majority opinion LOL).

[dminches]

1 hour ago, k6davis said:

 

 

You would think that it's not doing much, but sometimes there are significant spikes in the disk & CPU usage on my Roon server. 

 

Normally, my servers are optimized (with Windows Server + Audiophile Optimizer or HQP OS) and dedicated (only running 1 app). To perform my test (running both Roon & HQP on the same server), I temporarily lost both benefits. The music definitely sounded better when I went back to my normal configuration.

 

It may be that it was the optimization that made most of the difference, but after making the effort to minimize any unnecessary processes running in the background, I don't want to run a whole additional application to the foreground. My HQP Server is like an appliance. It has no keyboard or monitor attached. It only does one thing and I usually don't have to interact with it.

 

Like the man himself said:

 

 

Makes sense.

 

I am running Audiophile optimizer on both the room PC and the HQP PC.  I haven’t tried the HQP OS yet. Frankly, I am not sure what that is!

 

[Ales Prochazka]

HQPlayer Desktop 4.1.0.1

• Win 10 Pro x64 1903 (18362.295)
• Power scheme - balance
• MB ASUS PRIME Z390-A (BIOS 1105)
• CPU i9-9900K
• BIOS:
  • All set to AUTO
  • HT set to ON
  • ASUS MultiCore Enhancement ---> DISABLE - Enforce All Limits
  • Internal CPU Powe Management ---> PL1 set to 120W and PL2 set to 160W
• 32GB RAM
• without CUDA

1. poly-sinc-xtr-mp[lp] + ASDM7EC + convolution ON: PCM 352,8kHz ---> SDM256 OK

[asdf1000]

7 hours ago, Ales Prochazka said:

HQPlayer Desktop 4.1.0.1

• Win 10 Pro x64 1903 (18362.295)
• Power scheme - balance
• MB ASUS PRIME Z390-A (BIOS 1105)
• CPU i9-9900K
• BIOS:
  • All set to AUTO
  • HT set to ON
  • ASUS MultiCore Enhancement ---> DISABLE - Enforce All Limits
  • Internal CPU Powe Management ---> PL1 set to 120W and PL2 set to 160W
• 32GB RAM
• without CUDA

1. poly-sinc-xtr-mp[lp] + ASDM7EC + convolution ON: PCM 352,8kHz ---> SDM256 OK

 

Same machine running HQP OS (USB bootable image) works fine with DXD to SDM256, ext2, ASDM7EC?

 

[Ales Prochazka]

I haven't tried it yet. I can check it in the evening.