Best CPU for hqplayer

[sbenyo]

16 minutes ago, MirinStereo said:

If anyone is interested, my Xeon E3 1231v3 does DSD to DSD Oversampling of DSD64 and above to DSD512 with poly-sinc-xtr (non -2s) no problem.

Sounds very interesting. Did you try up-sampling from regular PCM (CD quality) to DSD512?

It will be good to see what parameters are used. Are you using CUDA offload? family rate?

 

If everything works it's definitely a winner in terms of cost but it may not be everyone's choice or liking in case the build is also used for other purpose.

[MirinStereo]

@sbenyo

 

Sure, you are right about that. Though with the little IPC improvement (maybe 20%) from Ivy Bridge to Broadwell I realy do not see a reason, why older Xeons should not work-I might try it. Since the 6950X can do DSD512 poly sinc xtr and the e5 2690v2 has 10 cores at 3GHz as well, it should in theory be only about 20% slower. That might still be sufficient. And 350€ vs 1500€ is quite a big difference.

 

Anyway: Can confirm, that the 1920X does DSD512 with poly-sinc-xtr without CUDA offload? Did you overclock? Is there a big difference in poly-sinc-xtr vs xtr-2s or poly-sinc-ext according to you at DSD512? Thank you!

 

Also, since you asked, My 1231v3 can do 44.1kHz to DSD512 using poly-sinc or poly-sinc-ext or similar settings. It does fall short on poly-sinc-xtr, it can however do poly-sinc-xtr-2s.

[sbenyo]

1920x does DSD512 without CUDA and without overclocking. See the parameters I am using.
Currently CUDA is grayed but it can also be off with exact same results.

 

 

[MirinStereo]

I do not use CUDA, but I do use auto rate family:

 

 

[sbenyo]

I see poly-sinc-ext filter. Did you try poly-sinc-xtr or poly-sinc-xtr-mp?

 

[MirinStereo]

I do not want to repeat myself, however, if was not clear before I will try to clarify now:

 

Yes, I did try 44.1kHz poly-sinc-xtr to DSD512 and the same with poly-sinc-xtr-mp, but it DOES NOT WORK.

DSD64 and above to DSD512 DOES WORK with poly-sinc-xtr-mp and poly-sinc-xtr:

 

 

Since I do buy most of my records at nativedsd.com or rip from SACDs, the limitation is not a big issue.

 

I do wonder, however, how much of a difference is there between poly-sinc-ext and poly-sinc-xtr when oversampling redbook to DSD512, could you elaborate on that?

[sbenyo]

Sorry, I am not expert on that.

I only know that ext is recommended for PCM and xtr more for DSD (or both).

 

Maybe someone can better clarify. For me the xtr work best converting both to DSD512 or 384 PCM.

I'll try ext today as I know it is good with PCM.

 

[rickca]

10 hours ago, sbenyo said:

This was my first build so it does take a bit more time to understand everything and have the confidence doing it.

Very nice write up.  I think your recommendations are sound.  Congratulations on taking the plunge.

[Sevenfeet]

22 hours ago, MirinStereo said:

I honestly don't know why people are writing about severe hardware requirements. My Xeon E3 1231v3 can do DSD512 poly-sinc-ext (non -2s) perfectly fine (at max. 47% cpu utilization, no CUDA offload). It can, however, not do DSD 512 xtr, but it can do xtr-2s at mentioned frequency.

 

It's a mid to low tier Xeon from 2014 (Haswell). It has four Cores (with HT) and runs at 3,6GHz continuously on all cores if sufficent heat can be dissipated, the L3 Cache Size is 8MB. You can buy them used for around 180€ and since you will not be overclocking that CPU, a H97 Motherboard is fine, which can be found used for around 80€. I only run my RAM at 1600MHz CL10 and HQ-Player doesn't use more than 250MB of it. So 8GB is plenty (buy used for around 50€, dual sticks for dual channel). There might be even cheaper ways of achieving mentioned presets, I am almost sure of that.

 

However, I am thinking about upgrading to do DSD512 with poly-sinc-xtr and therefore, I am looking at used Xeons since they present a much better value than new CPUs. The E5-2690V2 seems to be a good option since it has a very large Cache of 25MB and 10 cores (and HT for 20 Threads) at 3GHz (Ivy-Bridge though, so lower IPC). They go for around 350€ + MoBo. A 2667v2 (8 cores at 3,3GHz, Turbo to 4GHz, 25MB Cache) costs about the same and might be even better. Some of the used Xeons even have warranty for a year or so. They do however not have an integrated GPU (iGPU) so you would need a dGPU (dedicated GPU) to get a Display output.

 

@Mr Wensleydale: 1) Building a PC is VERY easy. You only need a screw driver:

 

2) 8GB is plenty. You can cheap out on other components, such as the case or the motherboard, however, a case is what you build in and what you touch and does insulate from sounds. I would go with the fractal design define series (buy a used r4 or something like that if you want to save money or a new defince c) or a be quiet silent base or pure base, ... A Motherboard is what connects your components and they do fail more often than cpus. I would pick something from a well known brand such as ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock or MSI. Some of them, though usually the higher end boards, have special DAC features such as USB DAC-UP from Gigabyte, which you might want to take a look at. The Power Supply is important for audio applications, so do not cheap out here, but don't overestimate how much power your system needs.
Look here to calculate the potential power requierement for a pc: http://enermax.outervision.com/

Look here to see, what PSU to buy (go for tier 1 if you can): https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/631048-psu-tier-list-updated/

and if you want to make an educated buying decision, look for the reviews on http://www.jonnyguru.com

I have had no trouble running my files from a HDD, but you might prefer a SSD for it's reduced noise. Go for a 2,5" SATA based SSD, there is no need for a M.2 based.

 

I hope this helps. Sorry for the long post.

 

I wouldn't say building a PC is VERY EASY.  I'd say it's easy for those who have built a PC recently or is comfortable around the insides of them.  I've been inside PCs for nearly four decades and I can say that building a custom rig for a friend of mine a year ago was nerve racking since I hadn't built a machine in nearly a decade.

 

My friend needed a new custom flight simulator rig so i specced a X99 Asus motherboard with a 6950 Xeon chip, 32 GB of RAM, two 1 TB flash drives (M.2 and SATA), Corsair water cooling and two Nvidia GTX 1080 cards from Gigabyte, one driving three 4K 65" curved televisions, the other doing CUDA and physics.  My first mistake was breaking the flimsy CPU mounting carrier used to attach it to the motherboard.  And guess what...you can't just get another plastic carrier from Asus...you have to return the entire motherboard!

 

Then I had loads of issues with documentation.  Asus and others pretty much assume you've been doing this awhile and didn't do much of any explaining of what the options for connections were on the motherboard and why you would use one versus another.  This was especially problematic with cooling.  The motherboard had multiple fan connections including for water cooling.  But there were virtually no guides on setting it up properly in BIOS which means I spent days just trying to make sure it was done right.  The only thing keeping me from just abandoning the project was my years of experience and some Google searches to glean some information in odd places.  Had my friend tried, he would have easily given up and he's not a technical neophyte.

 

Then there is a myriad of little utilities that come with the motherboard to install in Windows, some important, others useless.  And then there were the Nvidia drivers and getting them setup just so.  Overclocking?  Tried it briefly but went back to default just to ensure stability.  In the end, the project took nearly three months and a few house calls to get the monitor setup reliable and solve a nagging issue where Windows 10 would hang on boot often (a later BIOS firmware update finally seemed to fix it).

 

So yes, you can build your own rig.  But if you're not used to doing this, don't think it's just a walk in the park.

[sbenyo]

It seems you had a bad experience. I am sure that for most people that build a new system it is not as hard as you describe.
 

First of all I guess that someone that decides to build his own system should be familiar with what he is doing and going into. if not, you should definitely learn it first and not go into it without the right knowledge.

So it is definitely not for everyone.

 

I do think that for people that understand what this takes even for a first build it's not complex. It is actually easier that it used to be as things become more clean and standard. There is always the feeling of fear when doing it first time because you are afraid to break something. Understanding ahead of time that this works and chances to fail are low if you prepare yourself and follow the rules is important.

 

It may not be described as walk in the park but it is also not too complex.

 

 

 

 

 

[rickca]

You certainly have to read component reviews and watch some youtube videos.  I've never tried water cooling ... I'd definitely get a custom build from a company like Origin or Alienware for that.  But you certainly aren't going to need water cooling for an audio PC.  Air cooling using a Noctua cooler is really easy and their documentation is fantastic.  The same goes for overclocking ... you really need to know what you're doing to get stable results, but you're not going to need that either on an audio PC.  I agree that motherboard vendors offer tons of mostly useless utilities. 

 

The biggest problem tends to be DOA parts which are sometimes hard to diagnose and bad drivers.  With a reasonable amount of research and planning it's really more fun than frustration.

[Sevenfeet]

Well, installing the water cooling rig really wasn't that difficult.  The hard part was making sure I hooked it up to the proper fan control pins on the motherboard, installing the drivers that came with it and then configuring the motherboard BIOS to recognize that it had a water cooling unit.  And again, the Asus documentation for their own board is horrid and then BIOS pretty much doesn't have documentation.  This is pretty unacceptable; it was clear that the assumption was that this wasn't your first rodeo, so to speak.  Well, I hadn't assembled a custom rig in a very long time and I had to scour Google just to make sure I was doing this correctly.  In the end, it worked and my friend is very happy with his rig but with properly documentation, I could have halved the build time.

[2a3set]

Using e5-2670 while no much luck with xtr from pcm->dsd512, from dsd64->dsd512 is fine using xtr.
Wondering if it worth to upgrade to e5-2680v2.

 

1920x(12c 24ht), per thread 1992, avg cpu mark 17982

e5-2670 (8c 16ht), per thread 1583, avg cpu mark 12233

e5-2680v2 (10c, 20ht), per thread 1806, avg cpu mark 15906

 

 

 

[sbenyo]

I wonder what is the CPU utilization and temperature people see when using XTR filters and DSD512.

Mine is avg. of 30% total CPU utilization (all cores) and temp can be 60c-70c (Using Core Temp utility).

 

[Allan F]

On 12/2/2017 at 9:50 PM, jamesg11 said:

Anyone know what they use in the current sonic transporters designed for hqp & roon 512 upsampling?

 

It's an i7 7700, apparently chosen for fanless and lower electical noise. It will easily upsample to DSD512, but is limited to poly-sinc -2s filters.

[jamesg11]

9 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

It's an i7 7700, apparently chosen for fanless and lower electical noise. It will easily upsample to DSD512, but is limited to poly-sinc -2s filters.

Very good info - appreciated.

 

What then do we need to cover all HQP choices? Is there a commercial product out there?

[Allan F]

2 hours ago, jamesg11 said:

Very good info - appreciated.

 

What then do we need to cover all HQP choices? Is there a commercial product out there?

 

There are a number of threads that discuss server requirements for HQPlayer and upsampling to DSD512. Here is one: Roon + HQPlayer server You can do a search for others.

 

The most demanding non -2s filters, e.g. poly-sinc xtr, are extremely compute intensive and require a very powerful (and expensive) processor. Very few currently available CPU's are capable of doing so. @Miska is the developer of HQPlayer, so his posts on the subject are particularly informative. The only commercially available product designed for the purpose that I am aware of is the Sound Galleries SGM 2015 that costs over $16,000. I don't know if the most powerful Antipodes Audio servers can do it. That is why most people either build their own or have one built for them.

[PieterP]

The Pink Faun streamer 2.16 has a Ryzen 8 core processor and roon/HQplayer included and costs almost 7,000 euro. I suppose it can do the same upsampling as the SGM 2015 which has an I7 6700K. 

[Miska]

23 hours ago, sbenyo said:

I wonder what is the CPU utilization and temperature people see when using XTR filters and DSD512.

Mine is avg. of 30% total CPU utilization (all cores) and temp can be 60c-70c (Using Core Temp utility).

 

Here's my figures... I've noticed that AMD Ryzen's produce more heat compared to Intel CPU's of same TDP specification...

 

This is with Noctua NH-D15 cooler, with one fan installed (second one doesn't fit because of tall memory modules).

 

[Quadman]

On 3/2/2018 at 5:45 AM, sbenyo said:

I wonder what is the CPU utilization and temperature people see when using XTR filters and DSD512.

Your cooler is not adequate enough to cool the 1920x at 30+% utilization and the rated 180TDP.  I, like Jussi, feel that AMD does generate more heat per TDP than intel processors do.  Just look at Jussi's numbers above he has more CPU utilization and much cooler temps.  There is no reason your CPU max should be much above 50C with the proper cooler.  Try a 240mm water cooler, your case easily handles it, the fans are pretty quiet and can be swapped for even more quiet models if needed.  Just make sure that it is sTR4 socket compatible.

 

I have built over 8 audio only based PC's, I learn something every time and each build is better than the last.  Started with 4790 and worked my way up intel  to 7th generation (7700K) and then jumped to AMD with 1700x and now 1800x for my personal machine.  None of these machines can do non-2s XTR filters in HQP at 44.1 to 22M6 or 48K to 24M6 (autorate family checked).  Even 1700x and 7700K have issues with closed form and minringFir, with no cuda offload.  With Cuda the above can do all HQP filters except the non-2S xtr's.  My 1800x clocked at a modest 3.8GHz used to be able to do all HQP filters with no cuda except the non-2s XTR's, then I added Audiophile optimizer and now I need cuda offload to do closed form, minringFir and even 48K based material up to 512x48.  For some reason it appears that AO lowered my CPU's performance a bit.  With cuda I am fine, except non-2s XTR.

 

Comforting to know that the 1920x can handle DSD512 all filters with no cuda offload.  My next build will probably be that or the 1950x.  I think the L3 cache is very important and AMD wins that battle hands down, dollar for dollar.

[Miska]

After about hour of playing, the temps settled just below 40C because fan kicked in and the speed settled to match the heat production. But still the machine was really quiet without any clear fan noise.

 

This with room temperature of 21C. At summer when inside temps are higher, the CPU will of course run hotter too.

 

One critical thing to observe is type and amount of thermal paste between CPU and the cooler. The layer should be as thin as possible while covering exactly all the available area possible.

[sbenyo]

14 hours ago, Miska said:

After about hour of playing, the temps settled just below 40C because fan kicked in and the speed settled to match the heat production. But still the machine was really quiet without any clear fan noise.

 

This with room temperature of 21C. At summer when inside temps are higher, the CPU will of course run hotter too.

 

One critical thing to observe is type and amount of thermal paste between CPU and the cooler. The layer should be as thin as possible while covering exactly all the available area possible.

Miska, that is quite low for the load. What is your temp at idle time? 

 

[n2it]

On 3/3/2018 at 12:22 PM, Quadman said:

Your cooler is not adequate enough to cool the 1920x at 30+% utilization and the rated 180TDP.  I, like Jussi, feel that AMD does generate more heat per TDP than intel processors do.  Just look at Jussi's numbers above he has more CPU utilization and much cooler temps.  There is no reason your CPU max should be much above 50C with the proper cooler.  Try a 240mm water cooler, your case easily handles it, the fans are pretty quiet and can be swapped for even more quiet models if needed.  Just make sure that it is sTR4 socket compatible.

 

 

I thought that @sbenyo had the Noctua U14S TR4-SP3 (sbenyo is that right?) - if so, it should provide enough cooling (I have one for my 1950x - you can also add on another fan for the other side of it) - wondering if maybe the fan control isn't turning on until 60 deg - so might be something to tweak a little (at least understand the trade-off with the noise).  Also reading reviews of the Fractal Design R5 say it doesn't have the best airflow - might be worth some extra case fans (and replace the stock ones with quieter ones) and tweaking of the fan controls there.  (As Quadman suggested - a water cooler never hurts and has the best bang for the buck in terms of cooling per noise level)

 

[sbenyo]

3 hours ago, n2it said:

 

I thought that @sbenyo had the Noctua U14S TR4-SP3 (sbenyo is that right?) - if so, it should provide enough cooling (I have one for my 1950x - you can also add on another fan for the other side of it) - wondering if maybe the fan control isn't turning on until 60 deg - so might be something to tweak a little (at least understand the trade-off with the noise).  Also reading reviews of the Fractal Design R5 say it doesn't have the best airflow - might be worth some extra case fans (and replace the stock ones with quieter ones) and tweaking of the fan controls there.  (As Quadman suggested - a water cooler never hurts and has the best bang for the buck in terms of cooling per noise level)

 

 

I do have Noctua U14S. I got it after reading many good reviews. I agree it should be fine.

I also added 3 additioanl Noctua NF-A14 case fans in addition to the two on the R5 case (top, bottom and front).

 

All fans are PWM and work in smart mode. This means they are not running full power (1500RPM) but usually between 300-800. At this rate they cannot be heard. This did not affect the CPU temp (maybe very slightly).

 

I also used the default smart configuration for the CPU fan. This was probably not optimal. I changed it for testing to always run at full speed (1500). It did improve the CPU temp I think by 3-5 degrees which I think is significant. The idle temp is ~30.

 

It should be noted that at 1500RPM the fan is not completely silent but it is not heard if music is playing so it should still be good.

 

With full fan speed and additional case fans (all smart mode) I get temps between ~52-62 avg about 55. It can also peak to above 62 but not too much. I also want to add that I see these temperatures only with HQP. If I run benchmark using CPU-Z which stresses the CPU I don't get close. It stay ~40-50.

 

I think it's still a bit high. It would be great to see comparisions with other Threadripper users (either 1950x or 1920x) using HQP with same Noctua cooler or anything else.

 

[Quadman]

7 hours ago, sbenyo said:

With full fan speed and additional case fans (all smart mode) I get temps between ~52-62 avg about 55.

Yes I now see the U14s can go up to 180TDP,  my thoughts are at high TDP like the threadripper series air cooling generally does not cut it.  The 7700K build I did was in a very similar case to yours a corsair Quiet 400Q, I also had to pull the stack of drive bays to fit a water cooler in the front of the PC.  I used a 240mm corsair unit.  I did not use any top mount fans but had 1 rear exhaust fan.  Initial firing up showed this PC to be very loud.  Going into bios and tweaking the fan settings (easier to do on intel than AMD) greatly reduced the noise of this unit to a whisper.  After, Idle temps of the 7700k were 20-21C and at full DSD512 with HQP running the max temp was low 40C with the ave being high 30's.  Prime 95, a brutal CPU torture test, revealed that the max temps for 1 hour run where low 50's.  Sitting next to the PC you could hear it, at the listening position about 12 feet away, it was silent.  For your rig and the temps your seeing CPU fan has to be at full speed (which you seem to have discovered), the others you can play with or else go to water if you can live without the drivebay stack.  I like my CPU temps to be below 50 if at all possible with HQP at 512.