HQ Player

[Miska]

28 minutes ago, semente said:

What if the email provider ceases to exist (or one chooses to change provider)?

 

The order ID and other order information helps in that case too...

[Confused]

12 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Just, checking... Have you checked the included manual, or is it not descriptive enough?

 

I am a relative newcomer to HQPlayer, so I fully understand what @austinpop is suggesting.  Personally, I found the filter table useful and perhaps benefited from the fact that there was not too much explanation as it prompted me to try them all for myself and listen to the results.  It was a bit of a slog, but it was informative and fascinating.  That said, I can see that a bit more explanation for a 'newbe' could be useful.

 

Another point I would make is regarding the instructions for the volume control, this appears to be clear enough to me in the manual, but it makes no mention of the 'limited' counter.  You mentioned this a few posts back in response to a question I had about the volume control.  Next time I used HQPlayer I searched through the various drop down menus trying to find this limited counter but could not find it.  Then I noticed that it was staring me in the face on the main screen!  Doh!  In my defence, I do use HQPlayer with Roon, so I spend very little time looking at the HQPlayer main screen, so it might be a good idea to add a few words on this next time the manual is due for an update.

 

Please take this as a constructive post, I am loving HQPlayer so far.  It has provided me with a nice boost in HQ, with the ability to 'fine tune' exactly how my system sounds.  Tremendous value for money I would say.

[richard kimber]

14 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I don't recommend non-LTS releases because of their very short life/support span.

 

 

Some of us use them for non-audio reasons and it's worth noting that HQPlayer works fine on them. Though sometimes a few dependency issues need to be sorted out.  I'm now on 17.10 and everything is fine, and have only once had to sort out dependencies after moving from 16.04

[MHzTweaker]

On 11/11/2017 at 5:48 AM, Miska said:

 

I think such is complete waste of money...

 

I rather buy company/enterprise networking gear from HPE. Well made, works reliably and is easy to maintain.

 

 

Indeed. I purchased a used HP ProCurve 2900-48 switch for about $200 on eBay which I've used for the last 4 years.

48GBit copper Ethernet ports, 2  CX-4 10GBit copper ports and 2  X2 10GBit fiber optic ports which I use for a pair of 30 meter runs of LC-SC fiber cable runs to my listening room. This is true enterprise grade gear. It does produce some heat and the fans will be heard.

[austinpop]

7 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I think the default settings are quite good. Then you can start playing with different filters which depend on type of music you listen, and your sonic preferences and sensitivities. You can also try between ASDM7 and ASDM5 modulators.

 

You can then expand it from there, or just stick to the default and only change the output rate limits as necessary.

 

 

 

Thanks. I've been reading the section on Filters and Dither very carefully.

 

Since I am only doing PCM > PCM upsampling, I'm not even getting into the SDM column.

 

For Dither, if I am reading correctly, since I am upsampling to 352/384, it looks like NS5 is recommended, especially for 44/48 recordings, since that is 8x upsampling. But what about 24/96 recordings (which is only 4x)? Should I be switching to NS9 - the manual says that is suitable for 4x. What about 24/192 recordings? That is only 2x.

 

Then for filters: there are currently 23 options:

 

Should I cycle through all 23 to see what my ears like best? Or at this point in time, are most people using a smaller subset? That's really all I'm asking - should I treat these as 23 equally valid options, or can they be partitioned into 2 sets: most frequently used currently, and rare/deprecated.

 

I hope that's not an unreasonable question?

[ted_b]

Since you're staying in PCM, I would test both NS5 (since you are staying at 352/384) and regular TPDF.  In my PCM-to-PCM world I do TPDF (Holo Spring Level 3 via SU-1). 

 

The most popular filters are the Poly-Sinc and Poly-Sinc-XTR filters in both minimum phase (mp) and not. 

 

So that gives you 8 combinations to listen to seriously for awhile.

[austinpop]

3 minutes ago, ted_b said:

Since you're staying in PCM, I would test both NS5 (since you are staying at 352/384) and regular TPDF.  In my PCM-to-PCM world I do TPDF (Holo Spring Level 3 via SU-1). 

 

The most popular filters are the Poly-Sinc and Poly-Sinc-XTR filters in both minimum phase (mp) and not. 

 

So that gives you 8 combinations to listen to seriously for awhile.

 

Thank you Ted.

 

Would you add Poly-sinc-mqa(-mp) if the stream happens to be an MQA track on Tidal? Or have you not gone there? Obviously, this is for a non-MQA DAC.

 

[ted_b]

I've not gone there.  Others might chime in.

[lmitche]

9 minutes ago, ted_b said:

I've not gone there.  Others might chime in.

Not going there here.

[Quadman]

Good guidelines all.  Think Filter in PCM and Oversampling in DSD (SDM) as being the big change, the one that has the biggest effect by far, once you decide which ones are to your taste then look at Dither in PCM or Modulator in DSD/SDM those are the fine tuning knobs that can add or remove a little spice/flavor to your soup.  I pretty much play 100% in the upsampling to DSD512 camp and I upsample everything redbook, 24/48,88,96,176,192, native DSD64 to 512.  I generally use a filter for 2-3 months and almost never change instead varying the modulator a bit.  After a couple of months I guess I get bored and need new sound I then switch the oversampling filter and use that for a couple of months.  My favorites in Oversampling filters are Poly-sinc-xtr-mp-2s, poly-sinc-shrt-mp and then minringFir and closed form make appearances from time to time.  As to modulators I tend to like the non-adaptive (without an A in the name) as I think adaptive softens the sound just a tad.  Lately I have been sticking with DSD5v2 with DSD7 as my second choice.  As you suspected MP is minimum phase meaning there is no-prering just post ring.  The MP Shrt shortens the post ring a bit.  I really like the MP filter family.  Back in the day when I had a PCM only dac my favorite filter setup was minringfir, NS9.  I generally do not change my choices based on the format of the source, instead preferring to listen rather then be overly anal.  I have tried the MQA filters on MQA stuff but found no reason to stick there for that source, the XTR-MP-2s suites me just fine for any source.

[auricgoldfinger]

17 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

 

Pardon my ignorance, but what is an "AO machine"? What is "+ NAA"?

 

Are you still using Roon utilizing HQPlayer or is Roon not being used at all when you use HQPlayer?

 

It's easy enough to download the free trial of HQ Player and decide with your own ears if a paid subscription is worthwhile for your system.

[Miska]

5 hours ago, richard kimber said:

 

Some of us use them for non-audio reasons and it's worth noting that HQPlayer works fine on them. Though sometimes a few dependency issues need to be sorted out.  I'm now on 17.10 and everything is fine, and have only once had to sort out dependencies after moving from 16.04

 

Sure, and good to know! My expectation is that for those cases you anyway know how to deal with some of the potential dependency issues...

 

[Hammer]

Hi, I’m trying to use HQPlayer on a new AMD Threadripper 16 core system and when I play, the initialization progress bar flashes and there is no sound...I have multicore DSP selected.  I was hoping I can use this new system instead of my old Intel 6600k CPU with a 980 GTX.  Thanks.

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, Hammer said:

Hi, I’m trying to use HQPlayer on a new AMD Threadripper 16 core system and when I play, the initialization progress bar flashes and there is no sound...I have multicore DSP selected.  I was hoping I can use this new system instead of my old Intel 6600k CPU with a 980 GTX.  Thanks.

 

Can you send me a log file over email? Likely some setting is not correct...

 

[Hammer]

9 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Can you send me a log file over email? Likely some setting is not correct...

 

Sure, where can I find the log?  Upon further investigation, it might be because I am trying to stream output to NAA.  Can you tell me what ports need to be open to do that?  Note, HQPlayer sees the NAA, but I am unable to stream to it.  Thanks!

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, Hammer said:

Sure, where can I find the log?  Upon further investigation, it might be because I am trying to stream output to NAA.  Can you tell me what ports need to be open to do that?  Note, HQPlayer sees the NAA, but I am unable to stream to it.  Thanks!

 

If you have enabled it in the settings and then restarted HQPlayer, it is in %LOCALAPPDATA%\HQPlayer folder.

 

You can also check the trace from NAA side if there are any errors...

 

NAA port usage is dynamic, so there are no specific ports.

 

[Hammer]

17 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

If you have enabled it in the settings and then restarted HQPlayer, it is in %LOCALAPPDATA%\HQPlayer folder.

 

You can also check the trace from NAA side if there are any errors...

 

NAA port usage is dynamic, so there are no specific ports.

 

Thanks.  I found the problem.  I had convolution set to on, but the REW file’s were not in the right location.  Once I moved the files to where HQPlayer were look, it works.  Unfortunately, upsampling to DSD256 stutters...back to old system!

[Miska]

10 hours ago, Hammer said:

Thanks.  I found the problem.  I had convolution set to on, but the REW file’s were not in the right location.  Once I moved the files to where HQPlayer were look, it works.  Unfortunately, upsampling to DSD256 stutters...back to old system!

 

Quite strange with such CPU. Are you using ASIO backend? Do you have the same buffer settings on both machines in the ASIO driver control panel? Same buffer setting at HQPlayer side?

[tranfa]

A question for you, Miska: do the Raspberry 3 and Linux X86 NAA images contain the drivers for I2S output?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Tranfa

[Miska]

6 minutes ago, tranfa said:

A question for you, Miska: do the Raspberry 3 and Linux X86 NAA images contain the drivers for I2S output?

 

I didn't test it, but yes, it should work. Of course x64 depends on the hardware in question.

 

[tranfa]

9 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I didn't test it, but yes, it should work. Of course x64 depends on the hardware in question.

 

 

Thank you: I hope to be able to do the testing soon, and will let you know the outcome.

Ciao!

[Hammer]

19 hours ago, Hammer said:

Thanks.  I found the problem.  I had convolution set to on, but the REW file’s were not in the right location.  Once I moved the files to where HQPlayer were look, it works.  Unfortunately, upsampling to DSD256 stutters...back to old system!

 

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Quite strange with such CPU. Are you using ASIO backend? Do you have the same buffer settings on both machines in the ASIO driver control panel? Same buffer setting at HQPlayer side?

 

I am using ASIO on the machine with NAA running.  This machine (a 6600k PC running Windows 10) is connected to a Vega DAC.   In the ASIO control panel, USB streaming mode is Reliable and buffer is set to Auto.  

 

On the Threadripper (64 GB RAM) machine running HQPlayer, buffer in HQPlayer is set to 250 ms.  

 

Is is there a set of settings I should try?  The two machines are connected using Cat6 running 1Gbps.  

 

Thanks.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Hammer said:

I am using ASIO on the machine with NAA running.  This machine (a 6600k PC running Windows 10) is connected to a Vega DAC.   In the ASIO control panel, USB streaming mode is Reliable and buffer is set to Auto.  

 

On the Threadripper (64 GB RAM) machine running HQPlayer, buffer in HQPlayer is set to 250 ms.  

 

Is is there a set of settings I should try?  The two machines are connected using Cat6 running 1Gbps.  

 

If you are using ASIO driver that has control panel with buffer adjustments, leave HQPlayer buffer time set to "Default".

 

Note that if you were previously playing straight from the 6600K to the DAC and now with new machine playing over network, network could also be source of the problem...

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

On 12/11/2017 at 10:00 AM, Miska said:

 

Only two settings that apply to DSD -> DSD conversions are Integrator and Modulator. Filter doesn't. Other settings than Integrator in DSDIFF/DSF Settings apply only to DSD -> PCM conversion.

 

HQP default is IIR ; TEAC's is FIR : suggestion ? (by ear it's tricky to me : better space with FIR vs better transients/more gentle with IIr if I was to risk to pretend there's an audible difference

 

suggestion ?

 

[tranfa]

11 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I didn't test it, but yes, it should work. Of course x64 depends on the hardware in question.

 

 

Actually no, the image works fine through USB, but not through I2S (Raspberry Pi 3 + AudioGD I2S HDMI output, otherwise functioning).

Should I somehow (via Putty?) activate  the I2S drivers?