2nd Iteration on Streaming via ROON/HQPlayer

[firedog]

21 hours ago, digitaldufferme said:

Only "civilian level" pc knowledge skills, by no means a computer whizz.

 

I use ROON for Streaming Qobuz and my small collection of flac files on a usb drive. My current setup is an Intel i5-7500 pc  @3.4GHz with 16GB ram & NVidia GTX 1060 (my general purpose living room pc which I use for browsing, Netflix etc) running Win10 pro. This currently runs my ROON Core and usb connected to my SMSL M8A usb dac & a trial version of HQPlayer.

 

I have now just got a NUC8i7BEH on which my son installed ROCK (not yet put in hifi rig). Also now have just got a RPi4b for RopieeeXL. I think I understand how to install Ropieee XL on the pi and will try tomorrow. Using XL cos of my Spotify playlist and great music suggestions & it has the HQP NAA.

 

1) Should I first get the pi up and running first with my pc and only then transfer the CORE to the NUC? i.e. change one part of the chain at a time.

2) When the pi and NUC are up and running, I would like to use HQPlayer on the PC. What will be the limiting factor on the pcm and DSD rates I can stream to my DAC (pcm 768, native DSD 512 capable)? Is the pi the limitation or can it stream via usb to my DAC whatever I can upsample via HQPlayer on my pc?

 

I have a Holo Audio May L2 DAC on order and am trying to get my system up and running before it arrives and "learn" HQPlayer to get the best out of the DAC.

 

Thanks for any help and my apologies in advance for any equally dumb follow up questions and time delays in responding as there's up to a 8 - 12h time difference.

Cheers

 

I have 2 pi devices and have had expensive renderers in my system. One Pi is running dietpi (Roon Bridge, NAA, Squeezelite); the other is running Ropieee as a Roon Bridge. I think the Pi devices are very competitive. 

 

IME, the most significant factor is the quality of the USB input on your DAC, and not the streaming device.

 

If you get access to a Sonore or Lumin, try to see if you can blind test and compare at equal volume to the Pi.  You may hear a significant difference, but you may not. The other possibility is to upgrade the PS of the Pi and see if you hear a difference. 

 

If you don't hear a consistently identifiable improvement, no need to upgrade for SQ.

The Software-UI of the Sonore or Lumin may appeal to you more than what is available with a Pi. Those devices also come with support. Those could also be reasons to spend the money on an upgrade. Each of us has to decide on the worth of those things. 

 

The Pi devices can theoretically playback anything within the limits of your DAC. The limits will be more related to the capabilities of the NUC. You need an extremely powerful server to exploit all the capabilities of Roon and HQP. But just straight playback and certainly moderate levels of upsampling shouldn't be an issue on either end.