BubbleUPnP > HQPlayer OS repeats the beginning of tracks

[Miska]

12 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

First, I should say that I'm testing HQPlayer and very impressed with the results so far. Everything works flawlessly with the HQPDcontrol app, but when I switch to BubbleUPnP, I get stuttering at the beginning of tracks--basically the first few seconds of the track are repeated before playing through the rest of the song.

 

Has anyone had this problem before and is there a solution?

 

Sounds like the source is not able to provide content quite quickly enough. You are on gigabit ethernet? But what is the source? If it is doing any transcoding or such, that could potentially be the issue.

 

You could also try with the settings @stefano_mbp has recommended for example here at the beginning of the post:

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I assume it's not an HQPlayer issue since, when I use HQPDcontrol, everything works fine. The issue is exclusive to BubbleUPnP. I do, however, have several other unrelated issues with HQPDcontrol, and I'd strongly prefer to use BubbleUPnP.

 

I suspect it could be more of issue with the UPnP Media server in question... If you are talking about the BubbleUPnP Android app.

 

1 hour ago, ohshitgorillas said:

The source is Plex or Jellyfin DLNA and FLAC (redbook to 24/192).

 

I have no experience with these, so cannot comment much.

 

1 hour ago, ohshitgorillas said:

HQPlayer is oversampling to 176.4/192 with sinc-Lm (for now).

 

Does it happen also with default filters?

 

[Miska]

16 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Yes, the BubbleUPnP Android app. Which UPnP server do you recommend? The media server runs on Ubuntu Server.

 

I've used Rygel server (which is also UPnP stack used by HQPlayer) as well as MiniDLNA that is nowadays called ReadyMedia.

 

I also have used MinimServer some amount, but it's challenge is the unpredictability of Java runtime.

 

16 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Yes, even with the default filters. As far as I can tell, it happens with all the filters I've tried.

 

Do you have convolution in use? Because some filters and sometimes convolution can cause load spikes on content change situations.

 

[Miska]

15 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

It's also probably worth mentioning that I am running HQPlayer OS on a Raspberry Pi4 with a Pi2AES hat.

 

That imposes some performance limitations, since RPi4 is not particularly powerful computing hardware. But OTOH, Pi2AES will limit the output resolution quite a lot as well, so the net result shouldn't be much of an issue in CPU load terms.

 

[Miska]

6 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I recently renewed my TIDAL subscription, and I'm getting the same effect using TIDAL as a source as well as pretty bad drop-outs. Occasionally when a song drops out for long enough, it will just skip to the next track.

 

Clearly this isn't related to the source. It has to be something about HQPlayer or BubbleUPnP.

 

EDIT; I just experienced a drop-out from Rygel as well.

 

I've mostly recently used mConnect Player for UPnP and didn't notice anything unusual. But OTOH, I cannot remember when I last tried UPnP on Pi4 hardware. I've been usually testing UPnP on i5-7600T CPU with upsampling to DSD256 using ASDM7EC-light modulator and default filters. And in these cases mConnect Player with gapless enabled and Tidal as source.

 

Also in BubbleUPnP, gapless support needs to be enabled.

 

But overall it sounds like you are running out of CPU power for HQPlayer with your current settings. I assume you have sufficient cooling for the RPi4 CPU and RAM, so that it doesn't thermal throttle? Likely it cannot keep up doing uninterrupted playback while prefetching the next track and possibly reinitializing the DSP engine at the same time.

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

But it's able to play back smoothly using the HQPDcontrol app... so I suspect the issue is elsewhere. But I could be wrong.

 

That is certainly possible...

 

Of course depends on where the storage is when you play with HQPDcontrol, because it is sort of "local" to HQPlayer. Could be a NAS, but still the content access method is very different from UPnP.

 

2 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I'm trying to setup hqplayerd on my media server to test but it's not finding any NAA devices.

 

Possibly more than one network interface on your media server?

 

2 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Also, how does one stream oversampled TIDAL from hqplayerd to NAA? Or is that only possible with HQPlayer Embedded?

 

hqplayerd and Embedded are the same thing? Or do you mean something else?

 

There are now various different ways to achieve that.

 

But Qobuz is natively supported by HQPlayer. Tidal needs some third party thing.

 

[Miska]

Note that HQPlayer Desktop doesn't have UPnP functionality. Only HQPlayer Embedded has...

 

You can play Tidal through Desktop using for example Roon as a front-end, or through hardware or loopback inputs.

 

[Miska]

15 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Using BubbleUPnP to stream Tidal to hqplyerd on the media server as a renderer, the first second of each track still skips, so the problem is still there.

 

OK, yesterday I was playing Tidal for 3 hours using mConnect Player (on my iPhone) to Embedded running on Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS on i5-7600T machine. Upsampling to DSD256 using poly-sinc-gauss-long/poly-sinc-gauss-hires-lp and ASDM7EC-light. Not a single issue during those 3 hours.

 

15 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

That said, I still get drop-outs from both Plex and Tidal as sources.

 

Any wireless network involved? Any managed switches on the path? One potential issue is if 802.3x Flow Control doesn't become active. For example about half of managed switches default to 802.3x disabled. Without functional 802.3x, low power devices like Pi4 cannot keep up with full gigabit speed, and instead the hardware packet buffer overflows, leading to packet loss, which leads to resends of the data, which leads to more overflows and packet loss. Thus to occasional network stalls.

 

15 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I also realized that the reason the USBridge NAA wasn't showing up for hqplayerd on the media server was that HQPlayer OS on the Pi4 already had control.

 

Oh yes, NAA can be used by only one server at a time, since it is exclusive access.

 

15 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I'm not entirely opposed to switching to Qobuz, since they provide hi-res streaming for the same cost as Tidal's redbook-only plan...

 

And Tidal is still mostly infested with lossy MQA "not-really-hires" content...

 

15 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

but is it possible to stream Qobuz to HQPlayer other than through HQP Client?

 

To HQPlayer Embedded yes, through UPnP, for example using mConnect Player. To Desktop, Client is the only option. But overall you get better feature set and usability if you play the content natively using Client.

 

mConnect Player is portrait display version for phones. And mConnect Player HD is landscape display version for tablets.

 

15 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Again, some of my listening is done when my PC is off and I'd prefer to be able to access these things through a tablet or phone.

 

I'm running Client on an Intel-based Microsoft Surface tablet with Windows 11. That tablet is dedicated for this purpose. Otherwise using Windows 11 on a tablet is pretty horrid experience.

 

15 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Is there a similar feature in HQPDcontrol?

 

AFAIK, no...

 

[Miska]

6 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Can I request a "search" feature for Qobuz in the desktop client?

 

It is already there? In various forms. You can give a generic search string, or search for example for specific artist, album or song.

 

Please see the PDF manual for details...

 

6 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Since the Client is optimized for touch-screen interfaces, is there any chance of seeing it available on tablets?

 

Yes, so far works fine on Intel based Microsoft Surface tablets running Windows 11.

 

6 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

No wireless networks involved here... there is a "smart" switch although I don't see any 802.3x Flow Control features available on the web interface.

 

Except with BubbleUPnP since it seems to have proxying always enabled, so all Tidal content seems to go through the mobile phone / tablet running BubbleUPnP app. Unlike with mConnect Player...

 

I was trying to use BubbleUPnP today on my Android phone to test Tidal, but it ended up in a loop crashing Android system GUI and I had to reboot my phone to get it back to usable state...

 

See the change log entry regarding Tidal proxy:

 

That Android 12 related fix crashing System UI doesn't work on my phone, still in a crash loop. So at the moment I cannot test BubbleUPnP at all.

 

6 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I have a couple of outstanding issues I'd like to address:

• when I load NAA 460 or NAA 460 ramfs onto my Pi4, it doesn't boot up. I have to use RoPieee as an endpoint. How can I get NAA, preferably ramfs, working on the Pi4? What is the minimum RAM required for ramfs?
• oftentimes after refreshing the network devices, the configuration interface of hqpalyerd fails to apply any changes when I click "apply". it merely reloads the page. I have to click away from and back to the configuration page to get new configs to load.
• I'm still getting dropouts using HQPlayer Client to stream Qobuz to the RoPieee device behind the smart switch.

 

There is no ramfs image for Pi4. Only regular one. There is ramfs image only for x64. Are you sure you are using a correct image?

 

Does your smart switch have 802.3x enabled? Essentially you should have 802.1p, 802.3x and 802.3az supported.

 

802.3x is typically called either "flow control" or "pause frames". Some smart switches have it enabled/disabled globally and some have it as per-port configuration. When it is per port configuration, all participating ports need to have it enabled.

 

[Miska]

8 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I am using naa-460-x64.

 

That is for x64 hardware, meaning PC hardware. It won't work on RPi4. You need to download the RPi4 image.

 

8 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

It was previously running in QoS mode: DSCP/802.1P Based. I am now trying 802.1p Based. I don't see any settings related to 802.3x or 802.3az.

 

DSCP/802.1p is best choice, both work though.

 

Did you already try Tidal through mConnect Player? Does it change anything?

 

8 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

So, for example, I run a Gustard R26 R2R DAC in NOS mode over AES. Does that mean I should be setting the bits to 20? And for my Schiit Bifrost 2/64 connected via USB and running in NOS mode, should it be 24 or 16? If I connected the Bifrost via S/PDIF, would I then set the bits to 16?

 

Yes, I would get started with DAC bits set to 20 for the Gustard. Or maybe 18. You can try if you notice any difference between the two.

 

DAC chips in Bifrost 2/64 are 16-bit parts, so you should always set DAC Bits to 16 for that one!

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

The only Pi4 image is labeled Holo Red

 

Yeah, it is for Pi4 and Holo Red (which is based on Pi4 CM).

 

[Miska]

53 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I've experienced some heavy drop-outs/stuttering streaming music from local files via HQP Client, which was resolved by switching to a different album (with the same bit depth/sampling rate).

 

Likely related to source media not delivering the data fast enough.

 

53 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I am still unable to get the NAA image working on my RPi4. I can ping the device but it never shows up on the list of NAA endpoints.

 

Is there some discoverable audio device behind it?

 

53 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Lastly, last night I tried to use sinc-L in combination with ASDM7EC-super 512+fs but hqplayer refused to play any music. Switching to sinc-M fixed this and the music started again.

 

Nvidia GPU in use? On Windows or some other platform?

 

[Miska]

48 minutes ago, Apollo said:

Regarding HQPlayer specifically, can that be operated via the touchscreen (without or with stylus), or do you allways need to use the keyboard?

 

Yes it works purely through touch. The GUI has been designed for touch use, so you can swipe around, etc. That's why I also use things like long taps / long clicks instead of right mouse button, etc.

 

[Miska]

7 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

The source media is stored on a local NVMe drive, on the same machine as HQPlayer, so the data not arriving fast enough seems unlikely.

 

CPU or some other component like NVMe thermal throttling?

 

7 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I am actually getting regular dropouts now trying to stream 24/192 source material from the local drive into HQPlayer. I am using sinc-M and ASDM7EC-super 512+fs to DSD 48x512. This worked flawlessly with redbook material. My GPU is only running at 45% and the CPU is at 16% to do this so there's plenty of power left.

 

Please note that when you run into dropouts the load figures become meaningless. But 48k family is a bit heavier than 44.1k family.

 

For CPU load what matters are the per-core loads, not the total load figure, so please use for example "htop" to see load levels of the highest loaded cores.

 

7 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Ubuntu Server, Intel i5-10600KF, Nvidia GTX1660 Ti. Yes, the GPU is in use.

 

AVX2 build or the generic build? Multicore DSP set to auto or fully enabled?

 

[Miska]

12 hours ago, bubbleguuum said:

System UI issue: start BubbleUPnP, go into 'More > Settings > Control' and disable 'Android 11+ notification'.

 

I cannot go there, as the crash loop begins immediately when I try to start BubbleUPnP app and then I need to reboot the phone to get it back to usable state.

 

12 hours ago, bubbleguuum said:

Although this should be normally disabled by default on Moto devices running Android 12, since v4.3.2.

If you cannot even get there try again after clearing app data in Android Settings > Apps > BubbleUPnP > Storage.

This issue is actually a bug introduced by some

System UI change on these devices (Moto, Android 12) done by the manufacturer that broke the default Android 11+ media notification (at leas in how BubbleUPnP use it). No other devices have this issue.

 

I can try that... Although I don't have a Motorola device. My phone is Nokia 8.3 5G running "androidone" Android 12. So it is pure Android straight from Google without manufacturer modifications.

 

[Miska]

13 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

This only happens with hi res material, not with redbook stuff. I'd assumed that hi res material was actually easier to process, given that there are more original samples so hqplayer has less interpolation to do. Am I wrong?

 

Depends on what you have selected as Nx filter. Any two-stage poly-sinc filter is heavier as source rate increases.

 

13 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

AVX2 build. Not sure about the Multicore DSP setting, as I can't find it in the HQPlayer Embedded web interface.

 

Not all settings in Embedded are in the web interface because Embedded is for hardware manufacturers building streamers. So the manufacturer knows their hardware and how optimally set up HQPlayer for their hardware. And end user purchasing such hardware who uses the web interface doesn't need to know about such details.

 

13 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

On that note, where is the HQPlayer Embedded manual located?

 

As help pages in the web interface. Help link is near top right corner of each corresponding web interface page.

 

13 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

To be honest, I'm less concerned about DSD performance since, while my DAC can technically do DSD, it's the PCM R-2R ladder where it really shines and I have more than enough processing power to run any PCM conversion. If my media server falls short of being able to do DSD512 on the most demanding filters, that's okay with me. That being said, I do wonder if it's worthwhile looking into reinstalling Ubuntu Server with the low latency kernel?

 

And remember that most demanding filters are not necessarily the technically best filters...

 

13 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I am more concerned with getting NAA working on my RPi4/Pi2AES. Again, I can ping the device on the network, but it never shows up on the list of NAA endpoints.

 

It maybe not reachable on discovery. Or alternatively it doesn't have any available audio devices.

 

[Miska]

10 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Well, what about for those of us who are running HQPlayer on a multi-purpose media server?

 

Then those hardware related things are controlled by manually editing the hqplayerd.xml configuration file. This also goes for things like configuring inputs and also some output device options. It also gives more flexibility.

 

10 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I know my hardware but I'm not sure that HQPlayer is set up fully optimally yet. I'd like to be sure that mutli-core DSP is fully enabled. I'm also still considering using the low latency kernel.

 

Whether you get better performance with multicore DSP forced all-in, or in auto mode (default) depends on the particular hardware. So it usually takes some benchmarking to figure out. Auto mode likely performs better especially for cases where there are not so many physical cores.

 

10 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I had to manually add the following to the config file on the NAA drive to get it working:

dtoverlay=hifiberry-digi-pro

NAA works now.

 

OK, great!

 

dtoverlay means "device tree overlay", those are device tree snippets that can be added to the complete device tree. Which is Linux name for the thing that describes all existing hardware and their pin connections. When you add such line you tell the OS that such piece of hardware exists, what it is and how it is connected to the peripheral bus.

 

[Miska]

12 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I have an i5-10600KF with twelve cores. Is that more than "not so many", or enough to justify enabling multi-core DSP forced all-in?

 

It has six physical cores. See here:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199315/intel-core-i5-10600kf-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-80-ghz.html

 

I have one generation newer i5-11600, but it is lower TDP 65W CPU. IIRC, it is cooled with Noctua NH-U9S cooler. And it can do DSD512...

 

Yours is K-series 95W TDP CPU and it should really be able to do DSD512 with EC-light modulators without any trouble. So if it cannot, I would look into why. Enough cooling? Fast enough RAM? BIOS settings OK?

 

You can try to force it to fully enabled, but it doesn't necessarily help. My old i5-7600T (35W TDP) is doing upsampling to DSD256 with generic build and multicore set to auto.

 

Baseline settings:

1x = poly-sinc-gauss-long

Nx = poly-sinc-gauss-hires-lp

Modulator = ASDM7EC-light

 

12 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I'm also wondering if it's worth offloading to CUDA when just oversampling PCM to 4x?

 

No, upsampling PCM to 4x (176.4/192k) can work on pretty much any CPU, even RPi4.

 

[Miska]

1 minute ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Regarding CUDA, is there any downside to leaving CUDA enabled and letting the GPU do part of the processing for PCM at 4x?

 

No, there's no downside. It is just not necessary for this case.

 

1 minute ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Also, could you please add Year to the HQPlayer Client, on the left-hand side of Play view, along with Artist/Album/Song?

 

I can think about it. I have now unused "verbose info" flag that enables/disables the output information. I could overload this flag for the purpose so that for example year and genre are displayed when those output information is not shown. Composer and performer (lists) are already shown dynamically when they exist in the metadata, these could be also conditional on the verbose flag.

 

I would prefer to keep the text panel short enough that one wouldn't need to resort to scrolling it as much. More like single glance view. For next release there are already some new GUI elements on that column that take space of about one or two lines of text there.

 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

When resetting HQP, e.g. to change settings, Client could just wait and reconnect automatically.

 

This is quite unusual thing to happen. But it is essentially same as restarting HQPlayer.

 

5 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

• It would be great to see some kind of library auto-update function, as most media servers these days do this.

 

On purpose, HQPlayer doesn't scan the storage behind your back. This is something you wouldn't want to happen unexpectedly. You know when you add/change content and you can then trigger rescan.

 

5 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

• The fact that HQPDcontrol doesn't automatically sync its library with HQPlayer had me confused for like two weeks as to why some of my music wasn't showing up.

 

This is specific to HQPDcontrol which I cannot comment much about, since it is not my software.

 

But HQPlayer Client fetches the library data every time you connect to the server.

 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

This is the NAA behind a smart managed switch (TP Link TL-SG105E), which has no settings related to 802.3x flow control.

 

According to it's manual yes it has, and according to the same manual it defaults to off. So first thing is to enable it for all ports. And you can also verify from the web interface that it actually becomes active on all involved ports (since it is negotiated at hardware level).

 

 

[Miska]

I've been testing BubbleUPnP beta for couple of days now with Tidal.

 

With these settings (everything didn't fit in a single screenshot properly, but one can figure out all relevant things anyway):

 

Several hours of playback with zero issues. Gapless, no proxy.

 

[Miska]

8 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I'm actually still getting drop outs near the end of songs even with Flow Control enabled on the switch. Usually, the drop-out occurs when HQPlayer Client appears to switch to the next track, which is slightly premature since the HQPlayer Client tracker is slightly ahead of the actual music. When it moves to the next track, there is a chance of the music dropping out.

 

There is always a load spike when HQPlayer starts loading the next track. If the machine is on the edge of keeping up with the processing demands, this is the place where you usually flip it over and then you have a drop-out as result.

 

8 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

There is another device in the path that may be affecting things. It's a GL iNet AX1800 wifi router (OpenWRT), although it's acting as a switch and wifi access point only rather than as a router. It sits about halfway between the router and the smart switch and connects both since I don't have a cable long enough to reach the switch directly from the router. I'll check its settings for anything like Flow Control or IGMP snooping.

 

802.3x is related to Ethernet standard, but not to WiFi which is a separate standard. So the type of flow control over WiFi is different. Of course WiFi can add some extra delay and unpredictability to the picture depending on conditions.

 

[Miska]

25 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I'm having a hard time navigating the OpenWRT settings, do you have any advice for how to set this up properly? That is, enabling IGMP snooping and flow control on OpenWRT?

 

I have not been using OpenWRT, so cannot help much on that. But I believe it has flow control enabled without extra hassle, as most NIC drivers do that by default. If your smart switch is connected to that one, you can see the flow control status from the switch settings page (same place where you enable it).

 

If your NAA discovery and such are working, you don't need to worry about IGMP Snooping.

 

25 minutes ago, ohshitgorillas said:

I am using the sinc-M filter with NS9 dithering upsampling PCM to 4x. The PC should be far, far from the edge of keeping up with processing demands.

 

Have you tried if using for example poly-sinc-ext3 (variant of the same filter as sinc-M) makes any difference? It can be actually heavier, but it has lower delay.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, ohshitgorillas said:

Is there a way to add an album to the queue in HQPlayer while another album is still playing? Or do I have to use HQPDcontrol for that?

 

HQPlayer Client at least allows you to do that. I'm not sure about HQPDcontrol.

 

2 hours ago, ohshitgorillas said:

No, that still skips near the end of the track.

 

You could try editing /etc/default/hqplayerd file and add there:

HQPLAYER_BUFFER_TIME=2500

 

Then do "systemctl restart hqplayerd" and see if it helps. You can also try values like 5000.