HQ Player

[jhwalker]

Couple of quick questions:

 

 

1. When one purchases the software, is it licensed for use on more than one machine? In my case, I have both a MacBook Pro and a Mac Mini I'd like to license.
   
2. In the setup described above, could one of the Macs be used as a Network Audio Adapter ("NAA")? Or is that functionality strictly reserved for small Linux devices? Ideally, any machine running the HQPlayer software could be an NAA "target", as well.
   

 

Again, thanks for making this available for Mac - am really enjoying the music I'm getting out of this player. I have all of them, and right now, HQPlayer is my fave

[AnotherSpin]

Thank you, Miska, for sharing beta Mac desktop version - I am very much impressed with the sound.

[nodolby]

never heard anything like me impressed every day.Thanx Miska.-

[fabiodeluca]

Hi everybody!

 

I'm still experiencing problems with the audio in one of the channels.....high frequencies are disturbed....also with the latest release of the Mac beta

 

I have a Playback Designs MPS-5 player

 

I've tried all the possible changes in the HQPlayer settings but nothing worked

 

Sound is very nice but this little noise is really unbearable....

 

Is anyone experiencing the same problem?

Could Miska help with that?

 

Tks

Fabio

[Vitor]

Hi everybody!

 

I'm still experiencing problems with the audio in one of the channels.....high frequencies are disturbed....also with the latest release of the Mac beta

 

I have a Playback Designs MPS-5 player

 

I've tried all the possible changes in the HQPlayer settings but nothing worked

 

Sound is very nice but this little noise is really unbearable....

 

Is anyone experiencing the same problem?

Could Miska help with that?

 

Tks

Fabio

 

 

Hello Fabio,

 

Im experiencing the same problem with beta 3 and 4 for mac, hearing some noise in the speakers's tweeters. (with default settings)

Certainly Miska will help.

[Patatorz]

Dear all, I try to follow this thread since I bought a SOtM SMS-100 to stream my music from a Synology NAS.

I understood that the SMS100 is working as a "HQ Player NAA" so it could be very interesting for me (the SmS100 is linked by USB to a Oppo HA-1). So I have 2 questions :

1/ I need a kind of server somewhere : is this server available for NAS with embedded Linux as Synology ? Can I use a cubox as server pointing to the files on the NAS ? To summarize is there any chance to make this server working on something else than a PC and a MAC ?

 

2/ how to control with a iPad ? Every dlna application is ok or some are more recommended than others ?

 

thanks for your support.

 

Patatorz

[Miska]

1/ I need a kind of server somewhere : is this server available for NAS with embedded Linux as Synology ? Can I use a cubox as server pointing to the files on the NAS ? To summarize is there any chance to make this server working on something else than a PC and a MAC ?

 

"Server" is your normal playback computer running normal desktop version of the player. Only difference to local playback is that output goes to a remote networked device such as SMS-100, instead of locally connected DAC.

 

2/ how to control with a iPad ? Every dlna application is ok or some are more recommended than others ?

 

Depending on OS of your player computer, any normal remote desktop control application should work.

[Miska]

Im experiencing the same problem with beta 3 and 4 for mac, hearing some noise in the speakers's tweeters. (with default settings)

 

Log file of the playback attempt (with beta 4) could be useful for trying to solve this issue. Could you please send me a log file over email?

[Patatorz]

"Server" is your normal playback computer running normal desktop version of the player. Only difference to local playback is that output goes to a remote networked device such as SMS-100, instead of locally connected DAC.

 

 

 

Depending on OS of your player computer, any normal remote desktop control application should work.

Ok thanks but no hqplayer version available for NAS like Synology ?

[Miska]

Ok thanks but no hqplayer version available for NAS like Synology ?

 

Those devices don't have enough CPU power for running DSP algorithms. CuBox-i4Pro has just barely enough CPU power for running upsampling to DSD64, but PCM to PCM 352.8/384k works fine.

 

Linux version has the advantage that you can run it remotely in a server and GUI can appear elsewhere (native feature of X11), without need to resort to remote desktop solutions.

[Vitor]

Log file of the playback attempt (with beta 4) could be useful for trying to solve this issue. Could you please send me a log file over email?

 

What's the command to retrieve the log file?

(It's clicked in the preferences tab)

[Marino Marco]

too expensive for me. works good though.

[bogi]

Is there any possibility to run stereo to binaural plugin for headphone listening in HQPlayer?

 

With Foobar2000 or JRiver I can use for example free Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural DSP . It is available in these forms:

 

• Microsoft Windows Media Player (WMP) plugin - bs2bwmpsetup-1.0.0.msi.
  
• Foobar2000 plugin - foobar2000-bs2b-3.1.0-bin.zip.
  
• Winamp plugin - winamp-bs2bsetup-3.1.0.exe.
  
• VST plugin - vst-bs2b-2.1.0-win32bin.zip (win32 binaries).
  
• LADSPA plugin - 0.9.1.
  
• Audacious plugin - 0.9.2.
  
• XMMS plugin - 0.5.0.
  

[Miska]

Is there any possibility to run stereo to binaural plugin for headphone listening in HQPlayer?

 

No, not at the moment. But adding my own one there has been on TODO-list for a long time, since I use headphones most of the time myself.

[Miska]

What's the command to retrieve the log file?

(It's clicked in the preferences tab)

 

On Mac OS X and Linux you can find log file at ~/.hqplayer/HQPlayer.log

[bogi]

Miska, creating a stereo to binaural plugin doesn't seem to be an easy task and others have solved it already.

Do you consider adding support for VST plugins to HQPlayer?

[LewinskiH01]

Hello.

 

It seems most who posted on this thread about the sonic benefits of HQPlayer over other players did so in the context of upsampling PCM to DSD, and most also commented in the context of Mac.

 

How is the sound quality in PCM vs JRiver, in Windows?

 

Thanks!

[EuroDriver]

Hello.

 

It seems most who posted on this thread about the sonic benefits of HQPlayer over other players did so in the context of upsampling PCM to DSD, and most also commented in the context of Mac.

 

How is the sound quality in PCM vs JRiver, in Windows?

 

Thanks!

 

Geoff Armstrong and I have extensively tested JRMC19, Foobar + SACD plugin, and HQ Player in both Win 8 and MacOS Core Audio and to NAA doing PCM to DSD and DSD 64 to DSD128 and DSD 256

 

As far as online / on the fly, HQ Player sounds by far the best. With its most computational intensive oversampling filter Polysinc, the CPU load is hefty, you will need a speed i5 or i7. Polysinc-2s has a much lighter load and will run on speedy duo core. [24/192 > DSD 256 on 3.2 GHz Win 8 quadcore, 50pct CPU]

 

Foobar with SACD plugin, both of which are free, earns second place, the results are pretty good, very good if you have not been spoiled by HQ Player. Note you can run the SACD Plugin with JRMC 19 in place of JRMC's own PCM to DSD converter. The installation has quite a few steps, but it is free and sounds pretty good

 

In third place is JRMC 19's own conversion, still sounding good, but clearly not as good as the other 2. Geoff at the HiFi Deluxe show in Munich in May, won as best sound in show award using JRMC 19 conversion of PCM to DSD 128 which was then upsampled by a Antelope Zodiac Platinum to DSD 256

 

HQ Player Windows ASIO sounds a bit better than Mac Core Audio, it's a small difference, but audible. HQ Player playing to SOTM SMS-100 driving an OPPO 105 D sounded clearly greatly improved to going straight, which is a good demonstration of how well the NAA small quiet CPU concept works, at least for the OPPO DAC

 

We hear a difference between native DSD and DOP, the reason for the difference could be due to the extra procssing

 

Theses results are with the Exasound E20 Mk III with 0.82 clock > Hypex NCore NC400 > KEF Blades

 

PC's used were

 

Win 8 PC i5 3470 quad core chip,

Mac Pro 2014 with Xeon quad core, Maverick and Win 8.1

[EuroDriver]

Hello.

 

It seems most who posted on this thread about the sonic benefits of HQPlayer over other players did so in the context of upsampling PCM to DSD, and most also commented in the context of Mac.

 

How is the sound quality in PCM vs JRiver, in Windows?

 

Thanks!

 

Apologies for not answering the question !

 

HQ Player does a very impressive job of converting PCM 16/44 to PCM 24/352. I would say its about 2/3 rds of the sound quality improvement of going from 16/44 to DSD256. I have not done a head to head comparison with JRMC 19 doing the same conversion

[Vitor]

On Mac OS X and Linux you can find log file at ~/.hqplayer/HQPlayer.log

 

Log file sent to your signalyst email.

Thanks.

[EuroDriver]

Hello.

 

It seems most who posted on this thread about the sonic benefits of HQPlayer over other players did so in the context of upsampling PCM to DSD, and most also commented in the context of Mac.

 

How is the sound quality in PCM vs JRiver, in Windows?

 

Thanks!

 

Now I have done a head to head comparison of 24/192 converted to 24/384

 

JRMC19 does a nice job, but HQ Player is very noticeably better

 

The cymbals or the remastered Kind of Blue sound very real on HQ Player, whereas JRMC sounds like just a nice recording

 

This on a very mid fi system, Cambridge Audi 651 amp driving Canton Karat 720.2 DC bookshelf speakers with zip cord speaker cables (cut up PC AC cords ;-)

[Miska]

Miska, creating a stereo to binaural plugin doesn't seem to be an easy task and others have solved it already.

 

Easy tasks are boring...

 

However, I have two DSP engines, one for PCM and one for DSD and I want to keep both equally capable. So I want all processing algorithms to support both PCM and DSD processing. I want to have one that works for DSD too.

 

Do you consider adding support for VST plugins to HQPlayer?

 

Yes, but it had some annoying technical limitation, but I don't remember anymore what it was. In any case it doesn't support DSD which is a major problem. Another issue is that I want all three OS platforms to be as much as possible equally capable, so I would need to have support for three different plugin interfaces too...

 

I once considered making my own plugin API that would work on Linux, Windows and OS X and support both PCM and DSD. But probably nobody would use it, so it would be largely wasted effort.

[Superdad]

However, I have two DSP engines, one for PCM and one for DSD and I want to keep both equally capable.

 

Thank you for that!

 

 

Another issue is that I want all three OS platforms to be as much as possible equally capable...

 

And for that even bigger THANKS!

[LewinskiH01]

This on a very mid fi system, Cambridge Audi 651 amp driving Canton Karat 720.2 DC bookshelf speakers with zip cord speaker cables (cut up PC AC cords ;-)

 

Hey EuroDriver.

Thanks fir the answer. I was cruising all along until this sentence above. I thought you were talking about your 805D setup.

 

Good to see some of your comments were in the context of an e20. I'm considering an e28.

 

So how do you control HQPlayer from a wireless device? I use JRemote with JRiver and have grown accostumed to the convenience...

 

It seems HQPlayer uses a setup along the lines of JPlay, with the "audioPC" here being the NAA, but a simpler/lower power Linux machine. right? Are people using audiophile USB cards on the NAA?

 

Trying HQP with the 30-day period is easy enough. But I don't have a NAA and while I could use an old laptop to try it out, I worry it wouldn't be a fair comparison for HQP since my system is rather optimized for the JRiver setup.

[EuroDriver]

Hey EuroDriver.

 

So how do you control HQPlayer from a wireless device? I use JRemote with JRiver and have grown accostumed to the convenience...

 

 

When HQ Player is running in "Full Screen Mode" it is nicely controlable from tablet running a remote control app (I have yet to try this). HQ Player will also run nicely on a powerful Surface Pro 3, but you lap might get warm

 

It seems HQPlayer uses a setup along the lines of JPlay, with the "audioPC" here being the NAA, but a simpler/lower power Linux machine. right? Are people using audiophile USB cards on the NAA?

 

I believe a small minority of HQP users are playing via the NAA, due to the necessity of installing a Linux driver for the DAC. The majority of users are MAC OS playing via Core Audio direct to the DAC. The next group is windows users who have installed drivers such as ASIO and are playing directly to their DAC.

 

The NAA's working out there are the SOTM SMS-100 and various ARM boxes. I believe there have also been some Linux installs on Mac minis. So I would guess there are no NAA installations with audiophile PCIe USB cards out there