BenEnglish

Thank you for giving me yet another something to consider upgrading. Something else to note: Schiit now considers Linux a supported operating system when used with HQPlayer. For *nix guys like me, that's nice to see. Their website has been updated here: Schiit Audio, Headphone amps and DACs made in USA.

Yes, I'm running Linux Mint, as I noted when I first asked my questions in post #157. HQPlayer was a quick and completely drama-free installation for me. It has never crashed on me. If you can't get it to work on linux, what distro are you using? No matter how much you might like a piece of software, I wouldn't want anyone to descend into dependency hell to try to figure out why it's crashing. Perhaps Miska can tell you where to find a log file with clues about crashes? <hint> I'm running Nemo and it's fine for drag and drop. I provide this information in case it might help with the bug fix you referenced. Also in that vein, the installation of HQPlayer radically altered the Nemo interface on my machine. The changes don't stick; sometimes they're present, sometimes not. I'll do some experimenting to try to show you the difference. If I can capture some screenshots, I'll come back and append them to this post.

I don't know which part of my post you're asking about. I got the playlists created by HQPlayer to work by typing in the entire file name, including suffix, when I saved a playlist. After doing that, I could open them, drag them to HQPlayer, and drag them to HQPlayer while another playlist is already running. In each of those cases, the playlists now work as expected. I got the importing of file choices from another program to work by just trying different programs. It works with gmusicbrowser and Quod Libet. (BTW, I've decided I like Quod Libet for this purpose since I find it easier to set up complex searches in that program.) When Quod Libet (or gmusicbrowser) is showing a file I'd like to play in the bottom pane, I just click-and-drag that line over to HQPlayer and drop it in the bottom pane of HQPlayer. It's easy to click and shift-click to select of contiguous list of song files. It's also easy to click and CTRL-click to select non-contiguous files. Then, just like dealing with a single file, I can click-and-drag the selected files to HQPlayer and drop them to add them to the list of files being played. I sorta knew I would be forced to come up with these sorts of workarounds because of the descriptions that Miska has repeatedly provided about the way he organizes music and, by extension, the assumptions that underly the HQPlayer interface design. They are completely different than the way my brain works; I'm much messier. Despite my disorganized approach to file storage, I'm glad I've found ways to use his high-quality player since it is specifically well-suited to my hardware.

No. By manually entering the suffix when saving the file, the playlists work as expected. I can open them and append them to already-active playlists. I find it odd that a program that creates files for later use fails to append a required suffix...but I can work around it. Thanks so much for providing this solution. BTW - For those who find the interface insufficiently versatile or just not to their taste, I found that I can open another player/browser such as gmusicbrowser, use that program to play with file searches, then just drag the files I want to play over to HQPlayer. I'll be using that workaround quite a bit, too.

I bought the player. I find the interface usable (if not "do everything"). It installed without a hitch on my machine running Linux Mint. It works with my equipment, converting PCM to DSD on the fly, then sending the output to my Schiit Loki DAC. However, I have problems with this: I can drag files to the player window and play them, no problem. I can then click the "Save Playlist" icon at the top of the main window, supply a file name, and hit "Save". Unfortunately, the process breaks down for me after that. When I hit the "Open Playlist" icon and navigate to the directory where playlists are saved, none of them show up in the window. If, otoh, I go to that directory using whatever file browsing software I have installed (e.g., Nemo in my case), I can see that the playlist file was, indeed, created and saved by HQPlayer. If I open it with a text editor, it shows the names of all the music files and the complete path to them on each line. When I check properties for these files, my user account has read and write access. Right-clicking the playlist file does not give me an option to open it with HQPlayer, even if I ask Mint to search for other applications. If I right-click the playlist file and choose to open it with VLC or Movie Player, it works fine. If I right-click it and attempt to open it with Guyadeque, the application opens but nothing plays. If I right-click and open it with Rhythmbox, it shows up in the interface but does not play; when I highlight it and click "Play", Rhythmbox crashes by closing without error messages. (All this inconsistency puzzles me.) Dragging the playlist file onto the playlist section of the HQPlayer interface does nothing. Yes, I've read the manual and the section on playlists doesn't delve into troubleshooting. Still, I feel sure I'm missing something simple. Can you give me any pointers? How can I get HQPlayer to actually use the playlist files that it creates? Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks for your thoughts. I've done a great deal of reading on this and decided to pull the trigger. I ordered a Loki (and a Vali) and now I suppose I'll have to dive down a rabbit hole of cables and headphones. Still, I'd like better sound and I have to believe that even with the crap cables and phones I currently have, this is going to give me better sound than just plugging into the analog out on my mobo. Would anybody be interested in the comments of a rank amateur on how this combo sounds? Or should I just stay quiet until I have a few hundred additional posts?

Thanks for that. I note in the blog post you say: As a Linux user, I appreciate that. The Schiit web site does not go into setup with the Loki on Linux. Their DSD setup page at Schiit Audio, Headphone amps and DACs made in USA. covers only Windows and OSX. However, their Loki FAQ page includes this: I'm considering the purchase of my first DAC to be connected to my PC running Mint. If I chose the Loki, however, the process of converting all "music to DSD on the fly" is a mystery to me. I wonder if the sound would be negatively impacted. Any ideas about that? If the sound doesn't suffer I could see using the Loki as my only DAC if I could figure out how to set up my player to do the conversion. To that end, I've done a bit of research. I found a guide to computer audio in a recent copy of one of the big magazines. It said that for Linux the available players are HQPlayer, Minimserver, and MPD. Unfortunately, neither JRiver nor Foobar (referenced above by Schiit as suitable for doing conversions) run natively on Linux. I've seen some notes by folks saying that MPD or HQPlayer could do the conversions but I haven't been able to find setup instructions specifically addressing the need to do PCM-to-DSD for all non-DSD files. Since you have some experience with the Loki on Linux, what's your opinion? Is the Loki a workable choice for a competent Linux user who is new to serious audio via computer and looking for their first DAC for all their music files?