HQPlayer4 EC modulator tips and techniques

[bodiebill]

46 minutes ago, lmitche said:

You would be well served to take a serious look at the Hdplex 400 watt ATX linear power supply. That's what I would use for both safety and SQ reasons.

 

Thanks.

 

I already have:

(1) HDPlex 100W LPSU

(2) HDPlex 200W LPSU

(3) HDPlex 250W DC-ATX converter

and hope to avoid having to buy a 4th HDPlex PSU...

 

My current diskless i7-3770S 3.10GHz PC with AL and HQP embedded was for a long time powered with (1)'s 12V rail and that always seemed OK.

Perhaps, for the new PC, I will try (2)'s 12V rail for the CPU and its 19V rail feeding into (3) for the rest, and see how it goes without CUDA.

Or I could even try (2) for the CPU and (1) for the rest, so that both PSU's would share the load, effectively creating a 300W LPSU.

[lmitche]

44 minutes ago, bodiebill said:

Or I could even try (2) for the CPU and (1) for the rest, so that both PSU's would share the load, effectively creating a 300W LPSU.

This is likely to sound best assuming the 100 watt supply has a 19 volt rail. Safest too.

[asdf1000]

7 hours ago, craighartley said:

I'll stick with my current hardware until the next generation of processors, which I'm hoping might do DSD512(!) with ADSM7EC, as judging by files produced by HQPLayer Pro, 512 is distinctly (even) better than 256 with the T&A DAC 8 DSD playing EC modulators.

 

@Miska has said CPU will need to be running at over 8 GHz (2 x 4 GHz) ... so you might be waiting a very long while...

 

Or get the Pro license now to start enjoying DSD512 now. 

[richard kimber]

I've been away for a while, and in the meantime HQPlayer 4 has been released. I'd be grateful if someone could point me to a link that outlines the differences between ver 3 and ver 4.

 

Thanks.

[blue2]

17 hours ago, richard kimber said:

I've been away for a while, and in the meantime HQPlayer 4 has been released. I'd be grateful if someone could point me to a link that outlines the differences between ver 3 and ver 4.

 

Thanks.

Hi Richard, v.4 is more expensive but now has a 30 minute trial version (like Mac OS on v.3 IIRC) so you can hear/see for yourself. The new EC modulators are getting good reviews but are very computationally intensive so no current CPU can do DSD512. V.3 DSD512 capable CPU's will do DSD128 (which people say is better than DSD512 on v.3) and the latest CPU's do DSD256. There is a remote app to control the desktop version, although it can still be used as before.

I see you've moved on from the KEF Blade2's ...

[richard kimber]

Hi: thanks for your response. I've seen an implication somewhere that the new licence covers both Windows and Linux, is this correct?

[Miska]

6 hours ago, richard kimber said:

Hi: thanks for your response. I've seen an implication somewhere that the new licence covers both Windows and Linux, is this correct?

 

v3 license is split into two, one that covers Windows versions and another that covers macOS and LInux. v4 license is not related to the OS you use, same license applies to all three platforms.

 

[jbparrish]

Hi there quick question, is HDPlex out of  business? I can’t get there 400W power supply or their fanless case that I want. What’s up?

[rickca]

24 minutes ago, jbparrish said:

Hi there quick question, is HDPlex out of  business? I can’t get there 400W power supply or their fanless case that I want. What’s up?

Send a note to larry <at> hdplex <dot> com and ask him when the next batch will be available for your region.  HDPLEX is definitely doing business.

[bodiebill]

I received an email from HDPlex's Larry over a week ago in which he told me to expect a new batch of the 400W ATX converter mid September, at least for Europe. You could drop him a line?

[jbparrish]

Thanks to all. Larry said:

 

The 400W ATX LPSU has been redesigned and will be replaced by 500W ATX LPSU this Nov. 

[bodiebill]

4 hours ago, jbparrish said:

Thanks to all. Larry said:

 

The 400W ATX LPSU has been redesigned and will be replaced by 500W ATX LPSU this Nov. 

 

As i aan waiting to buy the 400W version, can you elaborate on the differences/improvements?

[dminches]

For several weeks I have been able to convert everything to DSD256 using the "new" ASDM7EC.  Now I am getting stuttering.  I have gone down to DSD128 for now.  I added an RTX 2080 Super but that doesn't change things.

 

I have been running 4.1.0.1.  Maybe I should try 4.1.1.

 

 

[Miska]

8 hours ago, dminches said:

For several weeks I have been able to convert everything to DSD256 using the "new" ASDM7EC.  Now I am getting stuttering.  I have gone down to DSD128 for now.  I added an RTX 2080 Super but that doesn't change things.

 

I have been running 4.1.0.1.  Maybe I should try 4.1.1.

 

Would be good to try latest version...

 

Do you have CUDA becoming active? IOW, when you start playback, look at HQPlayer status bar and see if it says "Offload: resampler=enabled".

 

[asdf1000]

9 hours ago, dminches said:

For several weeks I have been able to convert everything to DSD256 using the "new" ASDM7EC.  Now I am getting stuttering.

 

What CPU?

[dminches]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Would be good to try latest version...

 

Do you have CUDA becoming active? IOW, when you start playback, look at HQPlayer status bar and see if it says "Offload: resampler=enabled".

 

 

I will try the newest version.  I know a couple people had some issues with it so I was holding off.  I will start there and and check the resampler.

 

 

[dminches]

1 hour ago, asdf1000 said:

 

What CPU?

 

 i7-9700k

 

[dminches]

I upgraded to 4.1.1.  Resample = disabled.  The CUDA off-load box is filled.

 

[Miska]

30 minutes ago, dminches said:

I upgraded to 4.1.1.  Resample = disabled.  The CUDA off-load box is filled.

 

It needs to be checked to offload both filters and convolution. If it's grayed, only convolution is offload.

 

If it doesn't become enabled, please check that you have latest Nvidia drivers installed:

https://www.geforce.com/drivers

 

[dminches]

16 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

It needs to be checked to offload both filters and convolution. If it's grayed, only convolution is offload.

 

If it doesn't become enabled, please check that you have latest Nvidia drivers installed:

https://www.geforce.com/drivers

 

 

Now it is working.  The GPU CPU utilization is about 65-70%.

 

 

[Xoverman]

Greetings from Germany,

as posted earlier, I listen successfully to “Poly-sync-xtr-lp “ with  ASDM5EC / ASDM7EC 256KHz  on a AMD Ryzen 5 2400GE. Filters offload to a RTX 2800 @1800MHz.  System Load was 95%. No dropouts. J

After upgrading the CPU to a Ryzen 7 3800x everything still works fine. Interestingly HQPlayer still only uses 4 Cores, but core load went down ( 4 Cores ) to 60%.

So hear is my question: how come HQPlayer doesn’t scale up and use all 8 Cores to then be able to play ASDM7EC 512KHz  ?

If I try to use ASDM7EC 512KHz  playback stutters. But !!! CPU (4 Cores, rest dos nothing ) usage is only at 80% . So my conclusion is, there is some kind of Buffer/ Latency Problem inside the HQPlayer tasks? Maybe somebody has an idea to solve this problem.

[StreamFidelity]

2 hours ago, Xoverman said:

Greetings from Germany

 

Greetings from Berlin 😉

 

It seems like HQPlayer often only uses half of the cores. My i9-9900k using arround 8 out of 16 (virtual) cores. It also makes a difference whether multicore was grayed or blackened.

 

 

Do you use hyperthreading?

 

The EC modulators would require an 8GHz core for DSD 512. So it is not possible for nobody.

[Xoverman]

Thanks, I turned Hyper threading off. So why do we need 8GHz and can’t use 2x 4GHz ?

Is it because the Modulators can’t be split in 2 tasks ?

[Miska]

6 hours ago, Xoverman said:

Thanks, I turned Hyper threading off. So why do we need 8GHz and can’t use 2x 4GHz ?

 

Is it because the Modulators can’t be split in 2 tasks ?

 

With Multicore enabled (checked) EC modulators are already split into some separate tasks, but it is not feasible to split it much more. There are diminishing returns because overhead increases...

 

[Quadman]

12 hours ago, Xoverman said:

After upgrading the CPU to a Ryzen 7 3800x everything still works fine.

Can you play DSD512 with the non-2s XTR filters (No EC modulators used for dither) with this processor?