BubbleUPnP > HQPlayer OS repeats the beginning of tracks

[ohshitgorillas]

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?

[ohshitgorillas]

On 12/20/2023 at 4:45 AM, bubbleguuum said:

BubbleUPnP developer here.

 

This looks like a HQPlayer issue but where are the tracks coming from and what format are they (codec, samplerate, bitdepth) ?

 

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.

 

The files are FLAC, hosted on an external media server via Plex and Jellyfin, and range from 16/44.1 to 24/192.

 

On 12/20/2023 at 5:03 AM, Miska said:

 

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:

 

 

Yes, gigabit ethernet. The source is Plex or Jellyfin DLNA and FLAC (redbook to 24/192). HQPlayer is oversampling to 176.4/192 with sinc-Lm (for now). I've only had these problems with HQPlayer before, never with moode which is what I used before.

I will give the settings a try tomorrow, thanks.

 

I should also mention that this only happens with subsequent tracks in a playlist, the first track never skips.

[ohshitgorillas]

12 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

Does it happen also with default filters?

 

 

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

 

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

 

7 hours ago, bubbleguuum said:

 

In BubbleUPnP, did you enable More > Settings > Renderer settings > (pick HQPlayer) > Gapless control?

If you did can you check if you have this issue with it disabled ?

 

Gapless playback was not enabled.

[ohshitgorillas]

It's also probably worth mentioning that I am running HQPlayer OS on a Raspberry Pi4 with a Pi2AES hat. I am not running HQPlayer Embedded on the media server, as I'd prefer my HQPlayer to be at least somewhat portable.

[ohshitgorillas]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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.

 

 

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

 

 

Thanks, I'll give those a try.

 

No, I am not using convolution.

 

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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.

 

 

As it is, I'm quite happy running oversampling at 176.4/192 kHz with my DAC in NOS mode. My DAC can accept higher sampling rates over LAN directly, but the Pi2AES sounded better than the LAN streamer without oversampling so I figured this setup would be optimal. The only filters I've found that I can't run are poly-sinc-gauss-xl and poly-sinc-gauss-xla, those stutter, but that's fine because so far I prefer pure sinc to poly-sinc.

[ohshitgorillas]

Ok, I've set up Rygel, but it has the same behavior of repeating the first second of all tracks after the first track. It also refuses to display tracks in any order except alphabetical, so I'll probably stick with Plex/Jellyfin as media servers.

 

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.

[ohshitgorillas]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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.

 

 

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

[ohshitgorillas]

I'm trying to setup hqplayerd on my media server to test but it's not finding any NAA devices. I should have two on the network: the internal renderer from my Gustard R26, and the RPi4/Pi2AES which I've currently installed NAA on. Any advice?

 

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

[ohshitgorillas]

Since the HQPlayer Embedded failing to find NAA devices is a separate problem, I gave it a separate topic

 

[ohshitgorillas]

7 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

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.

 

 

Possibly more than one network interface on your media server?

 

 

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.

 

 

The media server has two network interfaces, but I've manually defined the LAN interface in hqplayerd.xml:

        <upnp interface="enp3s0">

 

 

 

What I mean is that I can theoretically use BubbleUPnP to stream Tidal to HQPlayer Embedded on my Pi4, but when I have hqplayerd installed on the media server, how can I stream Tidal to that? It isn't showing up as a UPnP renderer in BubbleUPnP anymore. Possibly related to the fact that it can't find the NAA devices either?

[ohshitgorillas]

Just to follow up on this, I have explicitly disabled the other interface with systemd-networkd.

 

I can also see the NAA devices from HQPlayer Embedded on my RPi4, just not from my media server.

[ohshitgorillas]

It was a firewall issue. Can you please tell me which ports hqplayerd needs to operate behind a firewall?

 

New issue, hqplayerd on the media server cannot see the USBridge NAA device running RoPieee, but HQPlayer Embedded on the RPi4 can see it. How can I get it to show up on hqplayerd?

[ohshitgorillas]

13 hours ago, Miska said:

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.

 

 

I'm not really interested in HQPlayer Desktop as everything here is done through streamers, and I often listen to music when my PC is off.

 

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. However, when streaming local files from Plex DLNA via BubbleUPnP, this approach (as opposed to using HQPlayer OS on the Pi4) does prevent the skipping of the first second. That said, I still get drop-outs from both Plex and Tidal as sources.

 

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.

 

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... but is it possible to stream Qobuz to HQPlayer other than through HQP Client? 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. Is there a similar feature in HQPDcontrol?
 

[ohshitgorillas]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

AFAIK, no...

 

 

I finally got sick of resetting hqplayerd every 30 minutes and bought my license last night.

 

Re: Tidal and Qobuz, I will give mConnect a try. Can I request a "search" feature for Qobuz in the desktop client? I was giving some friends of mine turns on my headphones last night and to load up a song on Qobuz I had to search on the website, add it to my favorites, then reload the favorites in the client... mConnect probably would have been easier if I'd known, but it would still be a nice feature for the Client.

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

I'll try to replace the smart switch with a dumb one and see if that helps.

[ohshitgorillas]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

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

 

Sorry, I meant Android/iOS tablets.

 

2 hours ago, Miska said:

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?

 

I am using naa-460-x64.

 

2 hours ago, Miska said:

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.

 

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.

 

I also wanted to ask about this that I came across in the manual:

 

Quote

When DAC is connected to a unidirectional interface like S/PDIF, AES/EBU or I2S it is
important to select correct number of bits from the “DAC bits” selection. In addition,
when a DAC is connected to USB and has something else than 32-bit input resolution,
it is recommend to set the actual value here.
For Holo Audio and Denafrips R2R DACs, setting Bits to 20 is recommended.

 

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?

[ohshitgorillas]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

The only Pi4 image is labeled Holo Red, which I don't have. Is that still the correct image? I'm not seeing any others on the download page.

 

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

I'm trying it now, I'll report back.

 

5 hours ago, Miska said:

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!

 

 

Thank you, I understand now.

 

According to Head-fi, the correct setting for the Gustard R26 is actually 15.

[ohshitgorillas]

7 minutes ago, stefano_mbp said:

Yes, it is

 

Thanks, do I need to do anything to make sure that the Pi2AES 2.0 is set as the correct output device?

[ohshitgorillas]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

Thanks, got it. It boots up, and I can ping the device, but it never shows up on the list of NAA devices...

[ohshitgorillas]

I've tried mConnectHD and it worked really well last night, but recently it's started repeating the first track regardless of the repeat mode setting. This happens with both Qobuz and Plex. I've tried restarting the app and restarting my tablet. Google hasn't turned up anything useful.

 

I'll report back if I get any drop-outs.

[ohshitgorillas]

mConnect is no longer repeating tracks, which is good. That was weird, though it seems to work well now.

 

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). I don't think it was a processing power related issue, since right now I'm running DSD512 with poly-sinc-gauss-xla and ASDM7EC-super 512+fs and everything is smooth. It's giving my GPU a workout, but there's still power to spare. This was a weird one that seems more like an outlier than something reproducible, but I'll document exactly what happens next time.

 

From time to time, I get a drop-out near the end of a track, seconds before switching to the next track.

 

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.

 

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.

[ohshitgorillas]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Is there some discoverable audio device behind it?

 

 

Yes, Pi2AES.

 

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

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

[ohshitgorillas]

The specs are directly above your post. The PC has plenty of power.

 

Yes, auto rate family and 48kHz DSD are checked. The Gustard R26 supports 48kHz DSD rates.

 

I'm just confused because the PC is far from maxing out, I can run poly-sinc-gauss-xla to DSD512 using the ASDM7super 512+fs shaper perfectly smoothly. Some material stutters with lower power filters. And sinc-L refuses to play with that modulator, period.

[ohshitgorillas]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

CPU or some other component like NVMe thermal throttling?

 

 

Unlikely, the NVMe drives aren't heavily accessed, the drive storing the OS and the drive storing the music are different. The CPU has a large Noctua heatsink with dual fans.

 

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?

 

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

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

 

On that note, where is the HQPlayer Embedded manual located? The website says it's included with the install but I haven't been able to find it. I've been using the HQPlayer Desktop manual so far.

 

9 hours ago, bogi said:

 

Having low CPU utilization does not indicate that CPU+GPU will finish processing a sample within 1/fs seconds. Processor clock frequency is more important for real time apps than utilization. CPU utilization says that your CPU would be able handle other tasks too but it does not tell how fast their processing would be. For real time apps you need speed and that is given by CPU clock.

 

Although your computer may be enough powerful to run a wide set of filters at DSD512, it most probably cannot handle sinc-L, sinc-long, poly-sinc-hb-l and long non-2s filters which are the most demanding filters of all. Try lighter ones.

 

I didn't realize that sinc-L was one of the most demanding filters. Upon further inspection, sinc-L appears to not play at all with any modulator that I select at DSD512.

 

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?

 

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.

[ohshitgorillas]

11 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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.
 

 

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

 

11 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

Can't believe I never saw this, lol

 

11 hours ago, Miska said:

 

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

 

 

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.

[ohshitgorillas]

5 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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?

 

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