HQplayer 4 and Mac-mini M1

[MikePid]

On 2/28/2022 at 11:14 AM, rah50 said:

Hi All:

 

First post to this thread. I bought an MMM1 off eBay this weekend and it's on its way. I was going to wait for the new versions this spring but not being able to run past HQP v4.14 on my old server and with Roon killing my system with it's upgrade I thought I should go ahead.

 

I've read the entire thread and have to thank everyone for the learning experience, especially MikePid. I've never used a Mac but I'm sure it will be a fun and I'll have a few questions for sure.

 

I'm also lucky to have a spare HDPlex 100 laying around, so the Teradak ps upgrade is going to happen!

 

Bob

Hi Bob, welcome to the MMM1 club!

 

Back on page 6 I posted my setup steps, in case you find that helpful:  https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/61312-hqplayer-4-and-mac-mini-m1/?do=findComment&comment=1169187

 

I am successfully running Roon on the MMM1 alongside Jussi's most awesome settings, and probably getting better sound because Roon is benefiting from the LPS (and Orange fuse) plus direct access to HQPlayer rather than through an Ethernet cable.

 

I run headless, but have Screen Sharing set up to my Mac laptop.  But mostly I use the iPad to control playing. I set up the MMM1 with its own password with auto-boot and auto logon and isolated it from the cloud so that if someone steals it, they don't have access to anything other than my Roon account and HQPlayer.  Basically, I treat it as a music server appliance rather than a computer.

 

If you already have the HDPlex, then you just need the power module from TeraDak.  I bought the kit with their LPS from Kam Audio.

 

Good luck with your cataract procedure.  I wish there was something like that to fix our aging ears!

 

[rah50]

Got the MMM1 going with Roon and HQPlayer. Pretty easy actually, I was only getting lost looking for things, but the web helped out.

 

VNC, autorunning apps, everything working except auto-login, I must have made a mistake somewhere on that one.

 

With both Roon and HQP running 44.1 to DSD 256, 7ec2 and Closed Form 16, it was at about 52% cpu, although I couldn't figure out how to see what each core was doing! 

 

Only real issue is that I'm getting loud hissing between tracks or when music ends. That's new for me, so maybe Miska can tell me what's wrong there?

 

Thanks for everyone's help.

 

 

[MikePid]

If you go to Activity Monitor, there are options under the Window menu for CPU usage to see the load on each of the cores.

 

For the hissing, I have an ESS9038Pro too, and it doesn't like 48K base rate, so try 44x256 for bit rate limit rather than 48x256.

 

Mike

[musicjunkie917]

@Miska

 

Would a Mac mini with an M1 Pro, which has double the performance cores of the existing M1 Mac mini, run Roon+HQPlayer any better than the current M1 Mac mini?
 

The performance cores all perform about the same between the M1 and M1 Pro.
 

In other words, does the M1 have enough performance cores to do the job or would  there be a benefit to having more performance cores?

 

Thanks!

[Miska]

6 hours ago, musicjunkie917 said:

Would a Mac mini with an M1 Pro, which has double the performance cores of the existing M1 Mac mini, run Roon+HQPlayer any better than the current M1 Mac mini?
 

The performance cores all perform about the same between the M1 and M1 Pro.
 

In other words, does the M1 have enough performance cores to do the job or would  there be a benefit to having more performance cores?

 

It would help with filters, convolution and such. So likely you could run wider variety of filters. M1 Pro also has double the memory bandwidth of M1. And M1 Max has 4x the memory bandwidth of M1. This also has some amount of impact on the performance.

 

[rah50]

On 3/2/2022 at 9:23 PM, MikePid said:

If you go to Activity Monitor, there are options under the Window menu for CPU usage to see the load on each of the cores.

 

For the hissing, I have an ESS9038Pro too, and it doesn't like 48K base rate, so try 44x256 for bit rate limit rather than 48x256.

 

Mike

 

Problem solved, I had to reboot HQP after checking the 48k box. My dac does do 48k no problem.

 

Current problem is MMM1 goes into screen saver mode and I can't regain control without a reboot. I've turned Screen Saver off, so I don't know what's going on? Thoughts?

 

Also, I want to try connecting the MMM1 directly to my dac, bypassing my NAA, but I'm not sure what to select in HQP as nothing seems to work?? 

[rah50]

Got the MMM1 working directly into the dac. I forgot to go DoP!

[MikePid]

4 hours ago, rah50 said:

Current problem is MMM1 goes into screen saver mode and I can't regain control without a reboot. I've turned Screen Saver off, so I don't know what's going on? Thoughts?

Here are my settings:

[Account Closed]

39 minutes ago, MikePid said:

Here are my settings:

It could be the hard disk sleep setting. That is the only difference from my settings.

[MikePid]

I doubt the hard disk sleep setting is the culprit. I was actually surprised to see it that setting turned on in my system.  It's an SSD, so not sure why it is there at all.  How do you put an SSD to sleep?  I'll bet that setting does absolutely nothing if you only have SSDs.

[rah50]

I made those changes, we'll see what happens. It seems to be a common problem from a Google search, but no clear fix.

 

After trying the MMM1 directly into my dac, I didn't like it. It was a bit fatiguing. I'll try again after the Teradak ps upgrade.

 

So far the MMM1 is a pretty good purchase.

[jamesg11]

2 hours ago, rah50 said:

 

After trying the MMM1 directly into my dac, I didn't like it. It was a bit fatiguing. I'll try again after the Teradak ps upgrade.

 

What were the hoped for benefits with bypassing the naa & going direct to dac?

[rah50]

On 3/5/2022 at 2:56 PM, MikePid said:

Here are my settings:

 

No more screen saver problem. I used the above settings and also changed Fast User Switching which was recommended on the web. Also made a change to VNC, but that probably wasn't it.

[rah50]

21 hours ago, jamesg11 said:

What were the hoped for benefits with bypassing the naa & going direct to dac?

 

Nothing really. The MMM1 is new to me so I just wanted to see how it sounded by itself. It would have been nice to simplify my setup if it had sounded really good, but alas no.

[camott]

No Mac Mini M1 update today. Boooo. $1999 for the larger Mac Studio M1 Max. $3999 for M1 Ultra (2x M1 Max). They don't really pencil out as well for an HQP box. Will have to wait for the Mac Mini M2 apparently. 

[Peter C]

@Miska, would you please comment on the suitability of the Mac Studio with M1 Max and M1 Ultra for HQP upsampling to DSD512?

[musicjunkie917]

I don't know what Jussi will say but without an improvement in single "Performance Core" speed, I don't see how the M1 Max or even M1 Ultra get us to DSD512...

[creativepart]

As an FYI, my 2021 iMac M1 MacOS Monterey with just 8 gigs of RAM will easily handle DSD 256 and PCM 768. But I've not had good luck with DSD512. At DSD512 I get digital hash and choppy audio. Perhaps 16gb of RAM would be a help. I'm not sure. Though I'm fine with PCM 768 or DSD256, so it's not a concern of mine.

[Miska]

I would say M1Pro still helps compared to M1 even on simple stereo tasks for HQPlayer. Then Max and Ultra will provide 4x and 8x memory bandwidths and more CPUs. These will help with convolution and heavier filters. And the memory bandwidth may even help with running modulators.

 

But I would say the M1Ultra is probably very nice primarily if you want to run 8 channels of DSD256 to exaSound s88, Merging NADAC/Hapi or similar. Because then you need to have 8 modulators and 8 filter sets, instead of just two. And there the number of cores and memory bandwidth will certainly help. Especially if they didn't cut on CPU clock frequencies.

 

Story doesn't say a word about the clock frequencies these SoC's have...

 

But seems like their architecture scales nicely to heavier use cases, since memory bandwidth keeps growing along without becoming a bottleneck.

 

Prices for the Ultra machines are just such, that you can get i9-12900K plus a big Nvidia GPU for cheaper.

 

[scintilla]

I'm not inclined to go back to intel at this point.  As much overkill as the M1 ultra is for my desktop use, when I replace my only computer used for business, pleasure and HQP, I am going to go with the (almost, 48 core) best Apple offers. My current late-2012 i9 iMac is still very useable 10 years on.  It handles 7ECv2, 128x, poly-sinc-short-mp-2s  w/convolution all day long.  So, if I decide to do multichannel high-rate DSD in the future, I chose to spend well and won't need another machine; hopefully for another decade.  And I can write it off.  

[musicjunkie917]

Can you guys with M1 Mac minis run this setup without skipping?:

 

Upsample 24/192 to DSD256 using:

 

Integrator: IIR2
Conversion: XFi
1x Filter: poly-sinc-gaus-xla
Nx Filter: poly-sinc-gaus-xl
Modulator: ASDM7ECv2

 

Thanks!
 

[MikePid]

Try one of the gauss-hires options for Nx. Works fine for me with 24/192 using 5ECv2 (but 7ECv2 should be almost the same).  Piece of cake, even with Roon Core on the MMM1.

 

I think integrator and XFi are only used for DSD>DSD, and those are my settings too.  Works effortlessly for DSD64>DSD256 for me.

[musicjunkie917]

2 hours ago, MikePid said:

Try one of the gauss-hires options for Nx. Works fine for me with 24/192 using 5ECv2 (but 7ECv2 should be almost the same).  Piece of cake, even with Roon Core on the MMM1.

 

I think integrator and XFi are only used for DSD>DSD, and those are my settings too.  Works effortlessly for DSD64>DSD256 for me.

 

That's what I use on my current hardware. I was just curious if the M1 supported poly-sinc-gaus-xl when upsampling 24/192 to DSD256 using the ASDM7ECv2 modulator. Does it?

[Account Closed]

7 hours ago, musicjunkie917 said:

 

That's what I use on my current hardware. I was just curious if the M1 supported poly-sinc-gaus-xl when upsampling 24/192 to DSD256 using the ASDM7ECv2 modulator. Does it?

That works for me but class doesn’t.

[Account Closed]

Just now, bobflood said:

That works for me but class doesn’t.

Sorry meant to say that PS Gauss xla doesn’t work.