HQPlayer version 4 requirements

[Miska]

It massively depends on your exact settings. With some settings, extremely small light weight computers are fine. And with other settings you cannot find a computer on the market today that could run it.

 

So there's no way to give even nearly clear answer without knowing exact settings you would like to use.

 

Laptops tend to be challenging from thermal design point of view. Because they are crammed into small space, cooling is active and fans are small, meaning that high CPU loads require fans running at high speed which tends to get noisy. It is not so great to have computer sounding like a vacuum cleaner near audio system...

 

[Miska]

9 hours ago, brad225 said:

I am looking to be able to handle PCM 384 and upsample PCM to DSD 256.

 

Something like i9-9900K is probably a good starting point...

[Miska]

5 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

not as expensive as I would have feared.And it's not Cyber Monday yet. But is the MB good enough for our ambitions* ? etc... the GPU is lean but that would not matter with Embedded that does not allow CUDA offload

 

And there's still W10, optical drive, HDD etc we don't need ; so there's maybe a way to find cheaper. BTW I'd take a link to the right machine or the right assembler in Europe ; (I'm the typical Mac fascinated buff not at all familiar with this world but starting to wonder about a dedicated HQP machine) 

 

*AFAIC : ext2 (or long filters coming)/ASDM7EC/any rate including DSD128 source/output 256 SDM with full range convolution

 

Embedded does support CUDA offload on Ubuntu...

 

At least here there are number of smaller shops that can assemble a PC from the parts you want, if you don't want to do it yourself. Probably everywhere else too.

 

For doing convolution for DSD sources, I pretty much consider a proper Nvidia GPU must have, to offload the convolution computation.

 

[Miska]

1 minute ago, StreamFidelity said:

Interesting! I assume that does not apply to PCM sources? At least I have no performance slump without CUDA.

I'm using the convolution for stereo and have 384kHz files (generated with Acourate) deposited. Mostly I hear with

 

convolution on / poly-sync-ext2 / ASDM7EC / 44.1 / 16/  2 -> 12.288M (DSD 256 x 48) / 1 / 2.

 

Great sound! Also with higher sources like PCM 192 / 24 there are no problems.

 

PCM is quite easy case, but when rate increases by high factor, the load also increases a lot. You may find it especially heavy for something like DSD256 sources, especially if those are 5.0 channel from NativeDSD or something...

 

[Miska]

1 minute ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

omg ! then I must forget about the beauty of booting Embedded/HQPOs from a stick (so easy !) and install a third partition on my Mac in order to trial Ubuntu...

 

I just wish there would be someone building servers with Nvidia GPU and HQPlayer Embedded preinstalled...

 

[Miska]

It is very hard to say about a particular machine without trying the exact same machine. My old 2011 Mac Mini can only do DSD128 (HyperThreaded dual-core i5). A bit newer quad-core i5 2012 iMac can do DSD256. Both with the non-EC modulators. I'm just finishing upgrade to latest 2019 iMac with i9-9900K (my new development machine to replace the 2012 iMac).

 

Some of the older Mac Mini models are dual-core (although HyperThreaded), which limits the performance quite a lot. Not so different from many Intel NUC models.

 

I would expect those newer 4-core and 6-core models to do DSD512 with non-EC modulators and -2s filters. But obviously I cannot promise.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

How about heat with either the mini or the iMac when running ext2/EC ASDM7EC to DSD 256 ?

 

 

Not surprise, but poly-sinc-ext2 + ASDM7EC working fine to DSD256 on the iMac.

 

I can hear the cooling fan, so not quiet. But some other tasks have been spinning the fan much faster, so not so bad. This is however always a problem with such tightly packed small computers. So it is not nearly as quiet as the PCs I've built.

 

1 hour ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

Is there now a way to boot a HQPOS stick on newer Mac ?

 

I don't think so, for security reasons Apple wants Macs to run only macOS and Windows. But on the other hand I don't see a point to buy Mac hardware to run HQPlayer OS, you can get better hardware for that purpose for cheaper...

 

 

P.S. For those who wonder why I always play ABBA... It is one of the first in alphabetic order, and I have to listen these thousands of times, so I don't want to wear out any better music for such...

 

[Miska]

55 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

Thank you. My MBP 2012 is still holding (but for the battery) but for how long? and when it fails I'll still need a powerful Mac for heavy photo processing

 

Mac Pro is probably fairly quiet under load. Like my HP workstation that doesn't make much sound, under load or not, it's acoustic signature doesn't change with load.

 

[Miska]

7 hours ago, ambre said:

thanks for quick reply. Anotherquestion do I need 16Gb or is 8Gb internal memory enough to run Hqp 4.xx.?  

 

Please  share your results  with I9 IMac i am  curious 😊.

 

HQPlayer doesn't need much memory, so about 1 GB plus largest file you'd listed (for filesystem cache) is good amount of free memory. I ordered my iMac with 8 GB and then purchased 32 GB of Kingston RAM for it (175€), so now the total is 40 GB and easy to swap the original 8 GB to another 32 GB for 175€ if it feels necessary...

 

It is working actually better than I expected, see screenshot earlier in this thread! A bit louder than I expected too, but not an issue for me. But definitely louder than my old iMac. When running the way shown in the screenshot it sounds like a hair dryer, but luckily doesn't go into to a vacuum cleaner mode... So you'd not want it in your listening room doing processing, but if you use a NAA and run it somewhere else - no problem.

 

[Miska]

10 hours ago, ambre said:

Thanks for quick reply. It’s pitty  that the new Mac mini cannot be upgraded afterwards.

 

Yes, Apple changed their strategy on that. And they charge ridiculous amounts for RAM (and SSD).