HQplayer 4 and Mac-mini M1

[Schafheide]

NAA connected over wired Cat6A ethernet.

[Schafheide]

4 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Page 6 talks about NAA?

 

But that is talking about DSD-to-PCM conversion. Output rate of the conversion is 1/16th of the source rate. Thus 176.4k for DSD64, etc... It is not limited to those mentioned examples. Which can be further converted to any other rate.

 

Sorry! Typo!   Should have said Page 5     duh!

[Schafheide]

16 minutes ago, Schafheide said:

NAA connected over wired Cat6A ethernet.

Actually not quite correct, the main system is Cat6A but the NAA (Holo Red) is fed from Uptone EtherRegen (100Mbps output) - Uptone say that PCM1536 should be fine - maybe not?

[AudioDoctor]

4 hours ago, Schafheide said:

Actually not quite correct, the main system is Cat6A but the NAA (Holo Red) is fed from Uptone EtherRegen (100Mbps output) - Uptone say that PCM1536 should be fine - maybe not?

 

The Holo Red is based on a Raspberry Pi4 compute module, and it was my understanding that the Pi4 was only capable of 768 pcm  and 512 DSD.

[Miska]

2 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

The Holo Red is based on a Raspberry Pi4 compute module, and it was my understanding that the Pi4 was only capable of 768 pcm  and 512 DSD.

 

With NAA OS, at least mine works up to 1.5M PCM and DSD1024... 🙂

[AudioDoctor]

10 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

With NAA OS, at least mine works up to 1.5M PCM and DSD1024... 🙂

 

Cool, I was not aware of that!

[Schafheide]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

With NAA OS, at least mine works up to 1.5M PCM and DSD1024... 🙂

As I suspected, once I removed the EtherRegen from the circuit, my problem was resolved. A pity, because I really like what the EterRegen does to the sound.  So I now have to wait for the EtherRegen Gen 2.

My Mini M2 Pro can now output PCM1536.

Thank you @Miskafor your patience and input.

[Tihon]

51 minutes ago, Schafheide said:

As I suspected, once I removed the EtherRegen from the circuit, my problem was resolved.

If you want to isolate your Holo Red from the rest of the network, Sonore optical module will do the job. I'm using two of them in front of Holo Red and everything works as intended. Sound in my case is way better than direct connection to non-audiophile Netgear switch.

 

P.S. In theory, you can use cheaper non-audiophile converter on the "dirty" side since it will be isolated by optical connection anyway. Haven't personally tried this, though.

[juniorbudel]

Guys, I'm thinking of buying a Mini M1 or M2 to use as a HQPLAYER server, my current server runs upsampler for DSD 256 with EC7 light only and it still stutters in some moments. Could it be that with the Mini I will have more reserve to run with EC 7 V3, for example? For purchase here the M1 and M2 are practically the same price, has anyone compared? Can the M2 run filters and modulators with more reserve?

[Miska]

1 hour ago, juniorbudel said:

Guys, I'm thinking of buying a Mini M1 or M2 to use as a HQPLAYER server, my current server runs upsampler for DSD 256 with EC7 light only and it still stutters in some moments. Could it be that with the Mini I will have more reserve to run with EC 7 V3, for example? For purchase here the M1 and M2 are practically the same price, has anyone compared? Can the M2 run filters and modulators more freely?

 

I don't have any M2 hardware, but based on reports, in some cases M2 seems to be slower the M1 and in some cases faster. But the difference should be mostly rather small. Biggest advantage of M2 Mini models is with M2Pro which provides more memory bandwidth and performance cores.

 

Either way, I would strongly recommend getting 16 GB model if you go with M1 or M2.

 

[juniorbudel]

Has anyone tried a Thunderbolt (USB C) to SFP fiber converter? Today my server is connected to the Ubiquiti Edgeroter router via lan and from the router the vibration goes to the Opticalrendu in the audition room, I'm thinking how much it could improve with the direct connection between the server and the Optical.
 

PS: I'm getting an MMM2 Pro next Thursday.

[Miska]

6 hours ago, juniorbudel said:

I'm thinking how much it could improve with the direct connection between the server and the Optical.

 

There is no benefit in direct connection. It will just create problems and it is unsupported. Networking systems are not designed for direct point-to-point connections, but instead for networks.

 

[juniorbudel]

First hours with MMM 2 Pro, running easy with EC7 Super on DSD256, even using a NAA as endpoint (fiber between them) the sound improved. Today I took it to the technician to install a filter for use with an external linear source, I'll see how it plays next!

[Kalpesh]

I have just ordered a Mac Studio M1 Max from Apple's refurb store : don't know if it will come with Monterey or Ventura. In any case is it worth to bother change ? What's the ideal OS with HQP5 ?

[denniswaugh]

On 7/8/2023 at 6:20 PM, Miska said:

 

I don't have any M2 hardware, but based on reports, in some cases M2 seems to be slower the M1 and in some cases faster. But the difference should be mostly rather small. Biggest advantage of M2 Mini models is with M2Pro which provides more memory bandwidth and performance cores.

 

Either way, I would strongly recommend getting 16 GB model if you go with M1 or M2.

 

I already own Mac Mini M1 8GB and run HQ player 5. I can do SDM poly-sinc-gauss xla/ASDM5EC light 512+fs, no dropouts. Changing to ASDM7EC light 512+fs causes dropouts.

Would changing to 16Gb enable me to run these modulators/filters. What is the advantage of 16Gb over 8Gb Mac mini M1 

[Miska]

On 7/14/2023 at 10:56 PM, Kalpesh said:

I have just ordered a Mac Studio M1 Max from Apple's refurb store : don't know if it will come with Monterey or Ventura. In any case is it worth to bother change ? What's the ideal OS with HQP5 ?

 

I'm using the latest to test... When a new release comes out, before upgrading wait a bit for possible problem reports. You can for example ask here for my test results. Once I've successfully moved over to latest, it is certainly safest choice.

 

Ventura introduced some CoreAudio bugs on Intel based Mac platforms, but HQPlayer now has workaround for those. No issues with Apple silicon though. Probably they just don't test as much on Intel hardware anymore.

 

[Kalpesh]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I'm using the latest to test... When a new release comes out, before upgrading wait a bit for possible problem reports. You can for example ask here for my test results. Once I've successfully moved over to latest, it is certainly safest choice.

 

Ventura introduced some CoreAudio bugs on Intel based Mac platforms, but HQPlayer now has workaround for those. No issues with Apple silicon though. Probably they just don't test as much on Intel hardware anymore.

 

Thank you Jussi. Is there any hope Sonoma's gaming feature benefitsHQP/brings some kind of CUDA offload ? May I thus come to regret the entry level GPU number of cores ?

 

I pulled the trigger for 1839 € on Apple's refurb store. On second hand market I missed a 1300 clean opportunity, probably one or two @ 1500 but I got really bored with scams and messaging sellers either trying to con me or sticking to Mac2sell pricing... Could have safely had more gpu cores or SSD real estate though for the same money ; hope I did the right choice...

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Kalpesh said:

Thank you Jussi. Is there any hope Sonoma's gaming feature benefitsHQP/brings some kind of CUDA offload ? May I thus come to regret the entry level GPU number of cores ?

 

No, I don't think it would have big impact on HQPlayer. Maybe just reduce likelihood of drop-outs. Apple GPUs are only used for graphics by HQPlayer, not for any CUDA style computation. So for HQPlayer use the number of GPU cores doesn't really matter.

 

[Tihon]

On 7/13/2023 at 11:37 PM, juniorbudel said:

First hours with MMM 2 Pro, running easy with EC7 Super on DSD256

Have you tried DSD512? Is it able to run 512 with EC7 light?
 

 

[Tihon]

11 hours ago, Miska said:

Ventura introduced some CoreAudio bugs on Intel based Mac platforms, but HQPlayer now has workaround for those. No issues with Apple silicon though.

No performance loss? If I recall correctly, someone complained about a drop in performance after switching to Ventura.

 

By the way, did you have the opportunity to find out what the problem with the M2 Ultra is and whether it can be solved at all?

[rjanderjr]

1 hour ago, Tihon said:

By the way, did you have the opportunity to find out what the problem with the M2 Ultra is and whether it can be solved at all?

I experimented with M2 Ultra and could not solve the performance issues.  I talked to two apple advisors and they told me to return it.  So I did.  See my earlier posts for what the problem was.

[Tihon]

1 hour ago, rjanderjr said:

See my earlier posts for what the problem was

I saw that. I wonder if @Miska found out how to make HQPlayer work with M2 Ultra.

[juniorbudel]

3 hours ago, Tihon said:

Você já tentou DSD512? É capaz de executar 512 com luz EC7?
 

 

My dac only allows up to 256 so I won't be able to test with 512.

[rjanderjr]

5 hours ago, Tihon said:

Have you tried DSD512? Is it able to run 512 with EC7 light?

My m1 mini can run DSD512 with 7EC Light and 7EC 512+fs.  That is, source file is DSD 512 stereo.  It will not upsample lower DSD rates to 512, nor will it upsample PCM files to 512.  I would love to know what the M2 Mini Pro could do in addition to this.

[Miska]

7 hours ago, Tihon said:

I saw that. I wonder if @Miska found out how to make HQPlayer work with M2 Ultra.

 

From HQPlayer's perspective it is no different from any other M1/M2. HQPlayer knows the cores and everything else. But Apple doesn't let applications have much overall control over many things. So if something doesn't perform, we just need to blame Apple for not doing a very good job for a particular hardware.

 

M1 series also has some bugs - location services screws up WiFi network latencies big time. SSH is jerky and laggy as hell over WiFi for that reason. And NAA in unusable over WiFi for the same reason on M1. Apple just suggests to disable location services as a workaround. Which means that "Find my Mac" gets disabled.