A toast to PGGB, a heady brew of math and magic

[muski]

Hi —

 

Really enjoying this, but lots of questions!

 

First, I'm getting static in the right channel when I play back 768kHz content from Roon via HQP. Doesn't happen with 705.6kHz content. Any ideas?  (HQP settings screenshot attached)_

 

Second, is the only way to launch it on the Mac is from the Terminal? Like this:

/Applications/remastero/PGGB/application/run_PGGB.sh /Applications/MATLAB/MATLAB_Runtime/v99/

 

 

[muski]

3 hours ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

 

Check - 'Auto rate family',

Set 'Sample rate ' under PCM Settings to 'auto'

Leave Rate limit as is.

 

Are you having this issue with 768kHz all the time?  Are you able to play the 768kHz file directly using HQP without Roon? (you can click on the library link on HQPe web interface, browse to your library location), then play it from HQPe to test.

 

Are you not seeing remastero (other) in your application launcher? Or it should appear if you just type the name PGGB

 

Alternately you can also launch by double clicking PGGB in the application folder, in both cases the first launch can take a bit of time.

 

 

Hi ZB—

 

Many thanks for your help. I found and added the PGGB app to my dock. Good stuff.

 

On the static in the right channel at 768, it wasn't HQP, as it also happened straight from Roon. Swapped some USB cable around—still there. Finally I tried USB out of my iMac as a Roon endpoint and no static. So it seem like an issue with my OpticalRendu. I pinged Jesus R at Sonore. Hope it's fixable as it's a wonderful streamer that gives the blackest of backgrounds.

 

Is anyone else using an opticalRendu or ultraRendu streamer?

 

Cheers,

muski

[muski]

PS As I was tracking down the static bug, I also tested with my Innuos Phoenix USB reclocker in/out of my chain. I had forgotten what an impactful bit of gear it is—it brings out the low-end with such authority and control, and the soundstage is much wider and tighter. A very nice pairing with 16FS gargle-blasted files.

 

muski

[muski]

I’m looking to play back PGGB files on a Mojo+Poly. I’m not liking Roon sound quality for critical listening so looking for other options. But when I use mConnect, I notice it only supports 24-bit (which I think is a DLNA limit?) Is MPD 32-bit or 24-bit? I guess the other option is to create a PGGB playlist and use GoFigure. I assume that would play back 32-bit. Any other ideas?

 

cheers,

muski

[muski]

2 hours ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

DX will truncate 32bits to 24bits which negates the noise shaping, yet surprisingly does not degrade SQ as much as I had expected. However, noise shaping to 24bits will reward you even more on the SQ front. I am not turning back after I installed DX, I am in the process of converting all of my library to 24 bits and as a bonus shaved 25% in space.

Great idea with many benefits. First, 768/24 files are MojoPoly-friendly as mconnect is 24 bits max. 

But I also like that I can connect my SRC-DX to the 3/4 BNCs on my DAVE for PGGB local files, and connect my M Scaler + OPTO-DX  to 1/2 BNCs for upscaling Qobuz.  I think I’ll use the Innuos Phoenix on the PGGB chain. 

[muski]

20 hours ago, HeeBroG said:

Hi Muski.

 

Does that mean your server has to run both the Amanero USB driver and CommTrue?

 

How do you switch between the 2 or is it automatic?

 

Geoff

I’m using two streamers—one OpticalRendu and one Ultrarendu. Then I switch inputs on the DAVE.

[muski]

5 hours ago, austinpop said:

Before anyone asks — the rationale is the same on MacOS, but I'm not intimately familiar with how MacOS manages virtual memory. 

 

I do know that MacOS doesn't rely on preallocated paging files, but dynamically generates one (or more) swapfile's in dynamic response to virtual memory demand. How well this works is to be determined, although I have heard some reports from PGGB beta users that suggested that this dynamic allocation strategy, while more robust and elegant, does seem to be slower. 

 

This is perhaps not surprising, as the advantage of the preallocated pagefile strategy on Windows, while inelegant, does greedily allocate paging space ahead of time, which may be a run time advantage.

 

In any case, minor differences in run time are irrelevant if you're using PGGB the way you should — as a batch processor, that you set up and let run to completion in the background.

I'm having issues on my iMac blasting >600MB DSD files—I get a warning saying "Your system has run out of application memory" and then I can see PGGB is not responding, and fails. It's happened on two tracks now. I'm using the Throttle DSD toggle, but that doesn't help.

 

I have a 2020 iMac with an 8-core i7 with 64GB RAM and a very fast SSD (so swapfiles should work really well). Feels like something else isn't quite right. Any MacOS gurus have ideas? Anyone else seeing this?

 

Cheers,

muski

[muski]

5 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

How much free space is on the SSD? For swapfiles to be created, there must be adequate free space on the SSD. If there's no free space left, then the OS can't grow the swap space, and hence will throw an Out of Memory error.

I have 2.64 Terabytes of space available.

[muski]

6 hours ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

Throttle DSD only helps with system cooling as it make sure not all cores are loaded. On Mac with no way to control swap, it is totally up to the OS. What is the max taps you have set? you can also email me the log so i can see what is going on. One way to help with swap is try and close all applications other than PGGB.  Is it a DSD64?

It's DSD64, The two tracks I'm having trouble with are both just over 16 minutes, so >600Mb as input files.

 

I've closed all other apps and have max taps on Auto. I'll email my log files.

 

cheers,

muski

[muski]

On 1/11/2022 at 2:47 PM, mcewan71 said:

Which software do you use to play local micro SD card files on your Mojo? 

I’ve also been playing PGGB’ed files on my Mojopoly when traveling. Sounds is superb (sometimes staggeringly so) for such a tiny device. It’s an ideal use case for PGGB. (I’m still mScaler/DAVE at home). Shame Hugo 2/2Go is such a train wreck as I bet that would be an ever more compelling solution with PGGB files from the SD card.

 

I’ve tried a bunch of iOS apps including Glider, but my two favorites are mConnect and MPDluxe. mConnect has a decent UI and support for Qobuz and TIDAL, while the MPDluxe UI is a very clunky. However, from my experiments it seems that mConnect is playing over the network, while MPDluxe is doing local playback. If I kill the mConnect iOS app while music is playing, it stops. Not so with MPDluxe. (To be fair, it’s been a few years since I tried Glider).

 

One cool thing about mConnect is that I can use my Mojopoly as a UPnP media server for my Sonos speakers :)

 

cheers,

muski

[muski]

11 hours ago, edwardsean said:

Hugo22Go is not nearly as bad as some make it out to be.  

Seems like some units are better than others. I had one for a while. The wifi drops were annoying enough (and inexcusably bad engineering), but worse, I’d get loud clicks every two or three minutes that were unbearable. I tried a few firmware updates but no luck and I returned it. Shame, as I really wanted it to work and the sound was really enjoyable for ninety seconds at a time :) 

 

Anyway, as you point out, PGGB is a great pairing with Chord portable rigs!