Building NAA for HQplayer

[proulxarts]

7 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Possibly... But you can try disabling Secure Boot from BIOS settings. Whether Secure Boot works depends on the default enrolled keys.

 

Doesn’t seem to be a setting for this in the bios.

[Miska]

50 minutes ago, proulxarts said:

Doesn’t seem to be a setting for this in the bios.

 

Are you sure the system is trying to boot through UEFI? If you have CSM enabled, you usually have two boot options from BIOS. One for legacy BIOS boot and another for UEFI boot. You need to select UEFI boot method, HQPlayer OS / NAA OS doesn't support legacy BIOS boot or 32-bit UEFI firmwares.

 

So you don't even get the two boot options in the middle of the screen presented by the bootloader? This is before the actual kernel is loaded and boot begins. This bootloader is just a small EFI binary.

 

[proulxarts]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Are you sure the system is trying to boot through UEFI? If you have CSM enabled, you usually have two boot options from BIOS. One for legacy BIOS boot and another for UEFI boot. You need to select UEFI boot method, HQPlayer OS / NAA OS doesn't support legacy BIOS boot or 32-bit UEFI firmwares.

 

So you don't even get the two boot options in the middle of the screen presented by the bootloader? This is before the actual kernel is loaded and boot begins. This bootloader is just a small EFI binary.

 

There is an option in the bios to enable UEFI boot. Nothing about CSM or any other options. The motherboard is from 2012, early in the transition to UEFI. I have had the UEFI option enabled for some time and have both Win10 and Linux Mint installed. As I mentioned the GentooPlayer USB boots up fine. I have been using your NAA installed on Linux Mint. Thought there might be an advantage using your minimal NAA image. Do you agree?

[Miska]

6 hours ago, proulxarts said:

Thought there might be an advantage using your minimal NAA image. Do you agree?

 

Yes, but if it doesn't work...

 

I can see two alternatives. If you need my custom kernel, you can use Ubuntu Server 22.04 minimal installation as a baseline and install the jammy package on it.

 

Alternatively you can install minimal Debian 11/12 and their realtime kernel plus my bullseye package on it.

 

These are the closest with regular distributions.

 

[proulxarts]

Ok, thanks for your suggestions. I will look into those options.

[LewinskiH01]

Hello.

I´m struggling to implement NAA in a PC. Currently I have Roon running on a gaming-type PC that streams thru ethernet to a passively cooled Windows Server PC running Roon Bridge, connected to a DAC thru USB. My plan is to run Roon and HQPlayer in the first PC and use the passively-cooled PC as NAA. Reading in this thread, my understanding is that if the passively cooled PC was booted with the NAA image then it would just start up as NAA and be discoverable by HQPlayer running on the gaming PC.

 

I downloaded the naa-440-x64.7z from  https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/images/ and used balena etcher to flash a USB drive with naa-440-x64.img inside the .7z file. Then I turned off the PC, inserted this USB drive, turned the PC on...and Windows starts normally. I checked in BIOS and removable drive is set to have booting priority over hard drive. Balena etcher doesn´t seem to have options to be set for making the flash drive bootable or not, so I´m thinking that it must be making a bootable copy by default. Why might my PC not start up as NAA?

 

Thank you!

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, LewinskiH01 said:

I downloaded the naa-440-x64.7z from  https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/images/ and used balena etcher to flash a USB drive with naa-440-x64.img inside the .7z file. Then I turned off the PC, inserted this USB drive, turned the PC on...and Windows starts normally. I checked in BIOS and removable drive is set to have booting priority over hard drive. Balena etcher doesn´t seem to have options to be set for making the flash drive bootable or not, so I´m thinking that it must be making a bootable copy by default. Why might my PC not start up as NAA?

 

Please check that your BIOS is set to use UEFI to boot from the USB dongle. You may also need to disable secure boot in BIOS settings to enable the image to boot.

 

[LewinskiH01]

6 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Please check that your BIOS is set to use UEFI to boot from the USB dongle. You may also need to disable secure boot in BIOS settings to enable the image to boot.

 

Thank you!

UEFI is enabled. I couldn´t find secure boot in BIOS settings.

[Miska]

13 minutes ago, LewinskiH01 said:

UEFI is enabled. I couldn´t find secure boot in BIOS settings.

 

It is usually somewhere under security settings, or under boot settings. Or if there is OS type selection, select "Other OS" instead of "Windows 8/10/11 WHQL" or similar.

 

What kind of PC/BIOS is it?

 

[LewinskiH01]

18 hours ago, Miska said:

 

It is usually somewhere under security settings, or under boot settings. Or if there is OS type selection, select "Other OS" instead of "Windows 8/10/11 WHQL" or similar.

 

What kind of PC/BIOS is it?

 

Sorry I was away from home.

 

Within BIOS/Security I see:

Chassis intrusion

Execute Disable Bit

Inter Virtualization Technology

None ressemble secure boot, I think.

 

Under boot settings:

Boot drive order: SSD is the last option

Boot to Optcal devices: disabled

Boot to removable devices: enabled

Boot to network: enabled

Usb boot: enabled

Boot usb device first: enabled

UEFI boot: enabled

Fast boot: disabled

 

BTW this is an old mobo with Intel Xeon E3-1265. Maybe it is too old for NAA image to work?

 

[Miska]

On my ancient NUC I have this kind of configuration:

 

And a bit newer Gigabyte mobo with i9-9900KS shows this:

 

[LewinskiH01]

Maybe it's my prehistoric Intel SP1200 mobo? Your ancient NUC BIOS looks modern compared to my mobo BIOS:

[proulxarts]

Ya, that looks identical to my bios. It’s an intel DH67 motherboard from 2012 or so. The NAA image will not boot on mine either.

[LewinskiH01]

Indeed it's from 2012, although an Intel S1200KPR mobo. I found this link online, don't know if it would do the trick: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000033003/server-products.html

I'm not sure what the note at the end implies: "If the system already has an operating system (OS) installed, you will need to re-install the OS after changing boot mode."

I would need to re-install Win Server 2019 after changing this setting?

 

But it seems my PC is too old to use the NAA image. What's the next best alternative, short of buying a NUC or Ultrarendu to try if I hear an improvement in sound? If I install HQPlayer on the S1200KPR PC, can I set it up to act as a NAA while I do the convolution/filtering on the gaming PC running HQPlayer and Roon and stream to the S1200KPR connected to the DAC?

[bogi]

17 minutes ago, LewinskiH01 said:

If I install HQPlayer on the S1200KPR PC, can I set it up to act as a NAA

 

HQPlayer (Desktop or Embedded) and NAA are separate installations. HQPlayer installation does not contain NAA. You don't need to install HQPlayer if you want to use NAA.

 

To use NAA you either a) boot a computer from NAA image or HQPlayer OS image, or b) you install NAA (networkaudiod) separately on a computer where you have root (admin) access.

[Miska]

3 hours ago, LewinskiH01 said:

Indeed it's from 2012, although an Intel S1200KPR mobo. I found this link online, don't know if it would do the trick: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000033003/server-products.html

I'm not sure what the note at the end implies: "If the system already has an operating system (OS) installed, you will need to re-install the OS after changing boot mode."

 

You are already in UEFI mode, so no need to do anything on that front. HQPlayer OS and NAA OS require 64-bit EFI boot and won't start in legacy (BIOS) boot mode, or with 32-bit EFI.

 

[proulxarts]

4 hours ago, LewinskiH01 said:

 

But it seems my PC is too old to use the NAA image. What's the next best alternative, short of buying a NUC or Ultrarendu to try if I hear an improvement in sound? If I install HQPlayer on the S1200KPR PC, can I set it up to act as a NAA while I do the convolution/filtering on the gaming PC running HQPlayer and Roon and stream to the S1200KPR connected to the DAC?

I have installed DietPi on mine. It was very easy to set up and seems to be working well. 

[LewinskiH01]

4 hours ago, proulxarts said:

I have installed DietPi on mine. It was very easy to set up and seems to be working well. 

Is this done with a flash USB drive too? So I could start the machine as a Win server PC or with DietPi, or would I need to convert the PC to DietPi? I can't convert the machine yet.

 

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

You are already in UEFI mode, so no need to do anything on that front. HQPlayer OS and NAA OS require 64-bit EFI boot and won't start in legacy (BIOS) boot mode, or with 32-bit EFI.

 

Maybe I could use an old 64-bit laptop and use the NAA image in the USB drive and test how this works connected to the DAC?

[proulxarts]

58 minutes ago, LewinskiH01 said:

Is this done with a flash USB drive too? 

I installed DietPi on a spare ssd but I think you could install it to a usb drive.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, LewinskiH01 said:

Maybe I could use an old 64-bit laptop and use the NAA image in the USB drive and test how this works connected to the DAC?

 

You can try that as well.

 

Something like RPi4 is also easy way to run NAA OS.

 

[Argon]

I am using a headless SuperMicro X12STN-L that has M, A+E and B key M.2 ports giving me access to utilize Jcat USB cards and a SFP optical network card.  As I have multiple network connectivity options (wifi, onboard dual 2.5GbE RJ45's and a SFP+ card) on this machine I am running HQPlayer OS off a USB thumb drive and have disabled the HQPlayer itself leaving just the NAA endpoint active.  The capability of the CPU (I use the i3 variant but these are available up to an i7) is way overkill for an NAA endpoint running at <5% CPU utilization (see htop capture below).  These are industrial single board machines, take low cost DDR4 memory, require no fan, take a wide range of input voltages (12-24V) and have an infinitely configurable BIOS..  

 

The Latte Panda SBC's are also a great choice & have WIN10/11 preloaded for simplicity, just be aware the Delta has M and B key M.2's which make the use of two PCI-e cards difficult; the older Latte Panda Alpha is a better choice with M and A+E slots as evidenced in the CAPS build.

[LewinskiH01]

I went ahead with the usb image into an old laptop and got it working...sort of.

The laptop booted as NAA, but didn’t find the DAC connected thru USB, nor can I see it on the HQPlayer desktop machine.

The laptop is connected thru ethernet to the same network as the desktop machine, with a network switch and etherRegen in between. And connected to the DAC thru USB. I have not loaded the DAC drivers on the laptop, FWIW.

 

On the HQPlayer Desktop, I look into settings > outputs, set the backend to NAA, and nothing shows up on the device drop down.

 

Seems like I need to solve one isuues on the laptop end, and another on the desktop end. What should I solve first?

 

Thank you!

[Miska]

21 hours ago, LewinskiH01 said:

I went ahead with the usb image into an old laptop and got it working...sort of.

The laptop booted as NAA, but didn’t find the DAC connected thru USB, nor can I see it on the HQPlayer desktop machine.

The laptop is connected thru ethernet to the same network as the desktop machine, with a network switch and etherRegen in between. And connected to the DAC thru USB. I have not loaded the DAC drivers on the laptop, FWIW.

 

On the HQPlayer Desktop, I look into settings > outputs, set the backend to NAA, and nothing shows up on the device drop down.

 

Seems like I need to solve one isuues on the laptop end, and another on the desktop end. What should I solve first?

 

Likely there is only single problem. Either no DACs are found, or the NAA is not found.

 

You can login as "root" on the NAA console. Then run "aplay -l" and see if your DAC appears on the list. If it doesn't it is the former problem. If it does, it is the latter one.

 

You can also check whether HQPlayer finds the NAA from HQPlayer log file.

 

[LewinskiH01]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Likely there is only single problem. Either no DACs are found, or the NAA is not found.

 

You can login as "root" on the NAA console. Then run "aplay -l" and see if your DAC appears on the list. If it doesn't it is the former problem. If it does, it is the latter one.

 

You can also check whether HQPlayer finds the NAA from HQPlayer log file.

 

Thank you!

It does find the Lynx Hilo:

 

so it's the NAA that is not found.

Where can I find the HQPlayer log file? Couldn't find it inside the application, nor as a file inside the HQPlayer directory as a file.

 

On the bottom left corner of the HQP Desktop main screen it shows "? NAA output adapter " not found". 

 

Thank you!

[bogi]

2 hours ago, LewinskiH01 said:

Where can I find the HQPlayer log file?

Chap. 10.1 of manual, which is installed together with application.