HQPlayer4 EC modulator tips and techniques

[k6davis]

19 minutes ago, Miska said:

I will certainly try the new AMD chip when it becomes available here. Large cache should notably help with filters.

 

14 minutes ago, Miska said:

You'll need to scale clock speed instead of cores. That's what makes it tricky...

 

So AMD is once again providing more cores, but less speed. The large cache will help with filters, but not (necessarily) with modulators. Just guessing, but It seems that even though the Ryzen 9 3950X will be a beast of a chip, it will not yield any better HQP EC performance than what we have now. 

 

Of course we won't know until we know, but I'm lowering my expectations for the new AMD CPU. The good news is that EC DSD256 is easy to attain and sounds great!

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, k6davis said:

So AMD is once again providing more cores, but less speed. The large cache will help with filters, but not (necessarily) with modulators. Just guessing, but It seems that even though the Ryzen 9 3950X will be a beast of a chip, it will not yield any better HQP EC performance than what we have now. 

 

Of course we won't know until we know, but I'm lowering my expectations for the new AMD CPU. The good news is that EC DSD256 is easy to attain and sounds great!

 

Yes and no. Previously question has been what is needed to run some single stage filters. Now it is more what is needed to run the new modulators. These two have pretty much opposing needs. Since it is hard to have let's say both AMD and Intel CPU in the same machine. It is easier to match modulator needs with CPU and filter needs with GPU.... This has been the case already before the EC modulators with DSD1024. Now with new modulators it is emphasized with lower DSD rates as well.

 

[k6davis]

17 minutes ago, Miska said:

Yes and no. Previously question has been what is needed to run some single stage filters. Now it is more what is needed to run the new modulators. These two have pretty much opposing needs. Since it is hard to have let's say both AMD and Intel CPU in the same machine. It is easier to match modulator needs with CPU and filter needs with GPU.... This has been the case already before the EC modulators with DSD1024. Now with new modulators it is emphasized with lower DSD rates as well.

 

 

Certainly. I'm using a CPU and a GPU now and they work very well together as you said. 

 

I'm saying that there are several chips capable of EC DSD256 now and that the forthcoming AMD super chip will likely also (only) be capable of EC DSD256. The new AMD chip will offer a lot more of what we don't need (cores) and less of what we do (clock speed).

 

40 minutes ago, Miska said:

You'll need to scale clock speed instead of cores. That's what makes it tricky...

[asdf1000]

2 hours ago, k6davis said:

The new AMD chip will offer a lot more of what we don't need (cores) and less of what we do (clock speed).

 

As mentioned earlier, AMD Ryzen 7 3800X has base speed 3.9 GHz.

 

Highest of all the 3000 series so far.

 

I would imagine with an RTX 2080 helping offload up-sampling work, it should be good. 

 

Only a guess until someone that already has it tries and reports back.

[k6davis]

15 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

As mentioned earlier, AMD Ryzen 7 3800X has base speed 3.9 GHz.

 

Highest of all the 3000 series so far.

 

I would imagine with an RTX 2080 helping offload filtering work, it should be good. 

 

Only a guess until someone that already has it tries and reports back.

 

Agreed that this is all guesswork. But they are educated guesses.

• Ryzen 7 3800X -> 3.9 GHz (4.5 GHz Max Boost)
• Ryzen 9 3950X -> 3.5 GHz (4.7 GHz Max Boost)
• Intel i7-9700K -> 3.6 GHz (4.9 GHz Max Boost)

The Intel does EC DSD256 comfortably, but it can't go beyond that. I expect that will be true of the AMD's too, even though the 3950X has 16 cores & 32 threads. None of these chips has the clock speed to go beyond EC DSD256.

[asdf1000]

22 minutes ago, k6davis said:

I expect that will be true of the AMD's too, even though the 3950X has 16 cores & 32 threads.

 

If the i7-9700K can do it, I wouldn't go for a base speed that is lower (lower than 3.6 GHz).. unless someone already has something and can confirm what works of course.

 

Going with what Jussi has said raw core speed (base speed) is needed for EC modulators.

 

AMD 3800X at least has higher base speed than i7-9700K.

 

Same number of physical cores but with higher base speed should mean success but who knows for sure

[k6davis]

7 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

 

If the i7-9700K can do it, I wouldn't go for a base speed that is lower (lower than 3.6 GHz).. unless someone already has something and can confirm for course.

 

Going with what Jussi has said raw core speed (base speed) is needed for EC modulators.

 

AMD 3800X at least has higher base speed than i7-9700K.

 

Respectfully, I disagree. When I'm playing music at EC DSD256, my i7-9700K averages about 4.7 Ghz continuously. It never runs at anywhere near the base frequency. 

 

But all of this is fairly academic anyway. Any of the higher end Intel chips and (I suspect) any of the new higher end AMD chips will give you full EC DSD256 and no EC DSD512. Not a lot of mystery or much to figure out.

[asdf1000]

Just now, k6davis said:

Respectfully, I disagree. When I'm playing music at EC DSD256, my i7-9700K operates averages about 4.7 Ghz continuously. It never runs at anywhere near the base frequency. 

 

Interesting. So your observation is different to @Miska's in that "max boost" (or turbo) frequency is more important than base frequency?

 

[asdf1000]

4 minutes ago, k6davis said:

Not a lot of mystery or much to figure out.

 

Can your i7-9700K do DXD (PCM353k) to DSD256, ext2, ASDM7EC?

 

Free samples here:

 

http://www.2l.no/hires/

[k6davis]

2 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

Interesting. So your observation is different to @Miska's in that "max boost" (or turbo) frequency is more important than base frequency?

 

I don't know what @Miska has said about base vs "boost" frequency. I've read him say that you need high frequency (4 Ghz or more) for EC modulators.

 

I'm saying is that what is important is the frequency the chip actually runs at. My i7-9700K has a base of 3.6 GHz, but it runs at 4.7 Ghz - plus or minus a few hundred Mhz. Not for just peaks, but continuously, when the music is playing.

[k6davis]

5 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

Can your i7-9700K do DXD (PCM353k) to DSD256, ext2, ASDM7EC?

 

I don't know. But I'll upsample a PCM track to that rate and see if it can or not.

[asdf1000]

7 minutes ago, k6davis said:

 

I don't know. But I'll upsample a PCM track to that rate and see if it can or not.

 

Free DXD samples here:

 

http://www.2l.no/hires/

[asdf1000]

17 minutes ago, k6davis said:

I don't know what @Miska has said about base vs "boost" frequency. I've read him say that you need high frequency (4 Ghz or more) for EC modulators.

 

Just a couple days ago:

 

As he hints and you also said, the actual speed it runs at is most important, so I assumed both base and max speed are important.

 

 

[k6davis]

31 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

Just a couple days ago:

 

As he hints and you also said, the actual speed it runs at is most important, so I assumed both base and max speed are important.

 

 

 

I missed that post. Thanks for sharing it with me. 

 

The base and turbo frequency numbers are helpful on paper. What I didn't know until it learned it from experience, is that Intel's Turbo Boost is very effective. Given standard cooling, the CPU can run near its maximum boost frequency all the time. At least mine can. Understanding that, the base number is not as important, in my view. 

 

What's more interesting is that EC DSD512 would require a CPU massively more powerful than anything on the horizon. That means the "investment" in a chip than can do EC DSD256 should be a good one.

[asdf1000]

1 minute ago, k6davis said:

Given proper cooling, the CPU can run near its maximum boost frequency all the time. At least mine can.

 

Nice. Apologies if I missed it but what are you using to cool your i7-9700K?

 

 

 

[k6davis]

22 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

Nice. Apologies if I missed it but what are you using to cool your i7-9700K?

 

Nothing fancy. A CoolerMaster Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition.

 

I get the feeling that most any decent cooler would do. This one is very (acoustically) quiet. And of course, I turned off that ugly light. 😂

[k6davis]

1 hour ago, asdf1000 said:

Can your i7-9700K do DXD (PCM353k) to DSD256, ext2, ASDM7EC?

 

Turns out, the answer is yes. With ease.

 

I turned off the Cuda to make sure the CPU could do it alone. The CPU utilization runs a few percentage points higher for PCM DXD => EC DSD256, but the chip is still cool and comfortable. No need to overclock, running at stock settings. The music sounds great.

 

Notice the speed is at 4.63 GHz. That's just about the lowest it goes while I'm playing EC.

 

This just reinforces my view that the i7-9700K is the chip to beat for HQP EC.

 

[shadowlight]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, quite early on you have this kind of report:

  2019/07/24 23:48:23 Number of processor cores: 4
  2019/07/24 23:48:23 DSP thread pools disabled
  2019/07/24 23:48:23 DSP pipelines disabled
  2019/07/24 23:48:23 Pipelined DSP engine enabled

 

Found the problem.  I thought my server had four processors but it turned out to only have 2 so it’s only 12 cores 😩

 

Time to start looking for faster system.

[asdf1000]

18 minutes ago, k6davis said:

Turns out, the answer is yes. With ease.

 

That seals the deal. What does CPU running speed drop to (average) with CUDA offloading enabled?

 

You have RTX 2080?

[k6davis]

11 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

That seals the deal. What does CPU running speed drop to (average) with CUDA offloading enabled?

 

With poly-sinc-ext2, the difference is almost negligible. Really. I can't tell a difference at all. I don't know what kind of magic @Miska has done with poly-sinc-ext2, but it sounds great and is very easy on the server. 

 

Cuda gets you heavier filters, convolution, multi-channel, etc, but if you're running 2 channel EC without any of that, a GPU isn't necessary. I have a modest one (a GTX1650) so I can experiment with other filters. It's enough for me. I listen to poly-sinc-ext2 most of the time.

[asdf1000]

9 minutes ago, k6davis said:

 

With poly-sinc-ext2, the difference is almost negligible. Really. I can't tell a difference at all. I don't know what kind of magic @Miska has done with poly-sinc-ext2, but it sounds great and is very easy on the server. 

 

Cuda gets you heavier filters, convolution, multi-channel, etc, but if you're running 2 channel EC without any of that, a GPU isn't necessary. I have a modest one (a GTX1650) so I can experiment with other filters. It's enough for me. I listen to poly-sinc-ext2 most of the time.

 

I think I’ll build an i7-9700K and suitable m/b and case, just in case I want to add an RTX 2080 later.

 

Sounds like the GPU won’t be necessary to start with.

[asdf1000]

20 minutes ago, k6davis said:

With poly-sinc-ext2, the difference is almost negligible. Really. I can't tell a difference at all. I don't know what kind of magic @Miska has done with poly-sinc-ext2, but it sounds great and is very easy on the server. 

 

ext2 is a 2 stage (2s) filter for PCM192k to DSD256

 

I suspect if people want PCM192k to DSD256 with xtr non-2s (example only) an RTX 2080 may help? With EC modulators 

[sledwards]

Maybe Jussi could do a little GUI update to just prohibit DSD512 with the ASDM7EC modulator:

 

 

[k6davis]

18 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

I think I’ll build an i7-9700K and suitable m/b and case, just in case I want to add an RTX 2080 later.

 

Sounds like the GPU won’t be necessary to start with.

 

7 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

 

ext2 is a 2 stage (2s) filter for PCM192k to DSD256

 

I suspect if people want PCM192k to DSD256 with xtr non-2s (example only) an RTX 2080 may help?

 

Definitely. Based on what I've tried: 

• i7-9700K => EC DSD256 + 2s filters, including poly-sinc-ext2
• i7-9700K + GTX 1650 => EC DSD256 + all filters except xtr
• i7-9700K + RTX 2080 => EC DSD256 + all filters including xtr

xtr cost more than I was willing to pay. 😏 Of course, that's a personal decision.

[asdf1000]

3 minutes ago, k6davis said:

 

 

Definitely. Based on what I've tried: 

• i7-9700K => EC DSD256 + 2s filters
• i7-9700K + GTX 1650 => EC DSD256 + all filters except xtr
• i7-9700K + RTX 2080 => EC DSD256 + all filters including xtr

xtr cost more than I was willing to pay. 😏 Of course, that's a personal decision.

 

I'm quite happy too, with 2s filters. Especially ext2 is my fav, like many people.

 

But there is a special ops group that want to do xtr non-2s... we've seen that chase with DSD512 before 😁