Advice about HQPlayer - is it too complicated for me?

Audio Gear Talk HQ Player
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Hi All,

I’ve been very happy with my system for a while now, i’m running Roon on an Intel NUC, and using a Stack Audio Link II streamer into a Denafrips Pontus II. I run the Pontus in OS mode, with the slow filter and i haven’t upgraded the firmware (mainly because it meant a lot of faffing with stuff i wasn’t confident of faffing with and i was happy anyway).

But it has always been at the back of my mind that perhaps the Pontus would sound better in NOS with something ‘better’ doing the oversampling, hence me starting to look into HQPlayer (btw i don’t need room correction or anything other than upsampling)

However, i am very much the sort of person who finds a lot of this sort of thing a bit baffling, so i just wondered if anyone could give some quick advice about HQPlayer - Basically i just need to know if it is quite complicated to install and use correctly for someone like me?

If It’s something i can download, tick a few boxes in a menu and then leave it to run, i’d be interested, but if it requires a bit of computer knowledge to set up and a lot of work to configure i won’t even bother trying as i know my limitations !

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Yes, it may seem a bit difficult at first, but I promise that the work is worth doing. Especially when you have a DAC with which you can get the most out of it and many different modulators and filters. For me and certainly for everyone who uses HQP, it has been the best investment of all and at the same time certainly one of the cheapest! Do you have a more powerful computer than that NUC?

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Thanks for the reply.

I do have both a PC and a laptop, although if memory serves my NUC has an i5 Core and 8GB RAM, compared to the i3 Core and 8GB in the laptop (of similar age). The PC is 5 years old, located in a different room, and has an older generation i5 Core and 8GB of RAM. I’m assuming you are asking because it might be beneficial to run HQPlayer on a different device to the one running Roon due to the processing power needed ? or is it just easier to install and run on a PC rather than on a NUC (i obviously managed to get Roon onto a NUC from scratch by myself so i’m not completely useless, but it was by following instructions very closely and i didn’t particualrly understand half of what i was doing).

I’m going to search Youtube for any videos on HQPlayer and see if they can give me an idea as to whether it’ll all be a bit to technically challenging for me - Do you happen to know of any ‘step by step’ guides that are aimed towards less technical minds like mine ??

Thanks again.

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I’m sorry, but I don’t have enough interest to give hands-on advice. In the beginning, I think it’s best to read every page on every forum. And I learned something new almost every day. But if you ask me, the first thing you need is a new PC.

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It is not as difficult as you might think, but you first have to define/understand what your availbable hardware is capable of in terms of HQPlayer, which is very CPU intensive.

To start with, you have built yourself a Rock-Roon server on your NUC, so you do not want to screw this one up. So you do not want to user it.

You indicate you have a both a desktop (i5) and a laptop (i3). We need the most powerfull one, and preferable also with the highest CPU frequency. I do not know the details of your desktop, but I assume this will be the best of the 2.

However, you should not expect any miracles as this is really on the low end to have HQPlayer perform its magic.

In the ideal world (form most HQPlayer’s users) you should use HQPlayer to upsample PCM to DSD.
As your desktop is 5 years old, and probaly not the most powerfull machine, you should limit yourself to use HQPlayer to upsample PCM only.

Next question is: what are your dac PCM capabilities . The latest version of the Denafrips Pontus II supports up to 1536kHz in PCM, which is far above what your HQPlayer server will be able to handle.
In your case I would aim for upsampling to 768 kHz.

To start simple, in order to test HQPlayer, you will need to connect your desktop to your LAN (wired ethernet), and you will need to connect your DAC to your desktop with USB cable.
Unfortunately, this means that the ventilation noise of your desktop will disturb your listening experience. There are solutions for that, but not in this 1st phase of exploration, i.e. you will have to live with it in your first testing phase.

That is it for the hardware part. Now the software.

On the Signalyst website (official website for HQPlayer, you will be able to download HQPlayer Desktop for Windows. Make sure you chooose version HQPlayer 5 Desktop: 5.3.0.
You can find it here: Signalyst
The software you download is fully functional and enables you to test hqplayer in intervals of 30minutes.
After 30minutes, you will have to stop and restart the application. You can do this as many times (within 1 month period) as you want, so you can really test HQPlayer as much as you want.

Installation of the software runs all by itself, that is the easy part. Next comes the configuration, which can look complicated but does not have to be.
After (or even before) installation of the HQPlayer Desktop application it is important to know the ip-address of your desktop HQPlayer server.
The simpliest way to do it is on your desktop to type cmd in the search field and click OK. In Command Prompt, type ipconfig and hit Enter . Scroll to IPv4 Address to see your local IP address.
This will look like 192,168,x.xxx (in my case my HQPlyer Server has address 192,168,0,240)

Now you yhave to go back to your NUC, running Roon, and in Roon - Settings - Setup, you need to add HQPlayer:

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In your case, you need to enter the ip-address of your HQPLayer desktop server.

If you then go to Roon - Settings - Audio, you will see an new entry HQPlayer:

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Clicking on the configuation wheel, you can then configure HQPlayer in Roon ( NOT the same as the HQPlayer Server configuration).
Not much to configure actually, mine looks like this:
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Back to your HQPlayer Desktop server.
Search and open the application HQPlayer Desktop (not Client). You will get this screen:

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Click on OK to remove the ‘trial’ message.
Then click on File - Settings - Output (you do not need to configure Input !)

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In Backend, select WASAPI (for your first trials):
for Device, select your Denafrips dac, which should be listed if connected by USB
so not visible in the nex picture, as I do not have one.

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In the field ‘Default Mode’ select PCM, as this will be your initial choice (as explained above)
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Then , move to the tab PCM
start with the default settings, the only thing you could change is the sample rate/limit to 768k (although it could be wise to start with 384k )

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That’s it, this should get you ready running HQPlayer from Roon.

If that is all working OK, then, and only then , you can start playing with filters and modulation configuration in HQPlayer.

Good luck with your trial.

Dirk

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Is it a “Roon Rock” or Roon running on Windows or Linux?

Nice! Link II - assumes to have build-in NAA, which is HQPlayer end-point.

HQPlayer software has rather friendly trial mode, which allows you to make a full testing before you decide if it worth it for you or not. Desktop version is probably the best one to start.

IMHO, the “complexity” would depend rather on attitude. The best “guideline” is its own manual file.

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Thank you Dirk, seeing a set of instructions laid out like that makes it seem far less daunting and i’d be pretty confident i could follow and execute those instructions - However, connecting the Desktop PC to my DAC is a non starter via USB and even using the more portable laptop it would still prove very difficult, given the positioning of my audio system.

I can put some more thought into that now though and potentially sort something temporary for testing purposes , then upgrade from the laptop to a dedicated NUC running HQPlayer if the testing went well.

Really helpful stuff, thanks again.

EDIT: After doing a little more research and remembering what Igor posted about my Link II being NAA, as i now understand it i would potentially run HQPlayer on a PC that’s capable of handing the workload, and that needs to be attached to my network via ethernet cable. The Link II streamer will then act as an HQPlayer endpoint and that is attached to my DAC via USB, The music will pass from Roon on my NUC to HQPlayer on the PC, from there to the Link II streamer and into the DAC. No need for a computer running in the ‘listening room’ because of the Link II being NAA. ??

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Thanks for the info Igor,

I did see my Link II listed on the HQplayer website as NAA…but then couldn’t see what NAA meant so assumed it was beneficial but didn’t know why !

Btw the NUC is running Roon Rock, or at least i’m 90% sure it is - i followed the Darko Audio youtube videos of him installing Roon (i remember ‘burning’ an image onto an SD card that went in the NUC) so if that was Roon Rock, then thats what i’m running !

Again a big thanks to anyone who’s replied with advice, and sorry for coming across as a bit dim and/or unwilling to search for the info for myself… there is a good reason, i’ve got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and my brains ability to take in information, particularly stuff i find hard to understand, is not what it once was !!! the replies here have been a big help, much appreciated.

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Sorry to hear about your condition, can only wish you strength and hope music lets you manage through.

Looks correct for the “final” option of your set up. But for your “test drive” can be done simplier, i think.

First is to set up Link II as NAA - i’ve been “googling” and what I can find is that Link II is mentioned as NAA million times all over, but I could not find an explanation how to actually put it in NAA mode. Looking at the PDF manual, it seems via Link II web config page? But I’m confused, as many times its mentioned “NAA available in a future”, at the same time it is listed on HQplayer site - so clearly it can perform as NAA.

@jussi_laako if you know could you kindly hint about Link II as NAA, any special tweak to enable NAA functionality, like special OS version or smth ? apologies to drag you in like that…

Second, once you have NAA, is to have HQPlayer Desktop installed on one of your computers and set its output to NAA in config menu. For the test purpose you can simply drag and drop files into HQP app directly. This will give you all necessary base to have your personal feel about SQ benefits and help decide if you want to go even further by connecting ROON and even further may be to make investment in newer PC as a very last step.

@Dirk_De_Taey have put very nice “base line” to play around with settings - well done.

But whats important, i guess, is to make sure you are comfortable on how to switch Link II back to roon ready mode. :slight_smile:

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I don’t have the device myself. But in the past I discussed with the manufacturer and understood that the feature is working.

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You should get best performance from Pontus by upsampling to 705.6/768k or if you have suitable USB firmware version installed, 1.4/1.5M PCM. Set “DAC Bits” in HQPlayer to 20 and use LNS15 noise shaper.

It shouldn’t be horribly heavy to process, so even with lighter hardware most filters should run just fine.

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