Build 99 HQP stopping and shrieking

A shambles whatever setting or solution I note from the Forum. Since Christmas. Getting no more than 5 minutes before it drops or more annoyingly, starts shrieking. Can’t believe I pitched in and bought a licence for this.

Hi Jonny,

Can you provide some detail about your setup ?
Is playback through HQP without Roon ok ?
Do the problems continue using Roon Build 99 and HQP v.3.13 beta ?

Shrieking occurs when a DAC tries to play DSD as PCM. That can sometimes occur using DoP. My Vega occasionally does this on the exact clock setting.

Hi Andy

Core: Macbook Pro 2015 16GB i7
DAC: OPPO HA-2
Control: Remote Macbook 2015, ipad Pro
Settings: poly-sinc-2 DSD7 5644800 PCM or DSD
Connection: 50MB Ethernet
Source: TIDAL
System: Marantz 7010, 2x Audiolab MB8200, Tannoy DCT6SE

I can screen grab these but got them from Erik using the same OPPO DAC. And I have toyed with settings - PCM, sampling etc to no avail.

I have Build 99 and since getting your mail, have v3.13.

Was initially getting the same problems when running ROON through HQ - it bugs after 10-20 seconds, shrieks or stutters, and then cuts out. Sometimes runs longer.

One thing I have just noticed now is that when it cuts out and stops - if you switch screens to the HQ Player - the music starts again. And it seems to run without hitch, well for now. For clarity, this is not touching any controls - just opening the HQ screen rather than having ROON interface in front of you. (It’s still running from ROON - it’s just happier having HQ on as the top screen!)

That’s as much as I can see Andy - be grateful if there’s anything glaringly obvious you can see here.

Thanks

Jonny

HI Jonny,

Thanks for that info which will help the devs track this down for you.

I’ve move this into a new thread in Support so it can receive individual attention.

Let’s drop a flag for @brian and @mike to help out.

Have you tried HQP playback without Roon ? That could assist in identifying where the issue is. I couldn’t see anything you were doing wrong :confused:

I had a similar issue with HQplayer om 2014 MacBookPro, Yosemite. The problem went away after I turned off App Nap. You will have to turn off App Nap through the terminal for HQplayer. While HQplayer and Roon are up, open the Activity monitor and look at the Energy tab when Hqplayer stops, if you see App Nap on, that is your problem. Hope this helps.

I am currently using Roon Build 99 and tried both 3.12 and now beta version of HQP.

My setup is a high end desktop with more than enough computing power with a GTX 980 running RoonServer + HQPlayer streaming to NAA which resides on a Windows Server 2012 R2 CAPS Zuma.

I am upsampling everything to DSD 128 to my MSB Diamond Plus.

It seems that PCM is much more reliable. When streaming DSD it always stops after 18-20 minutes and even after pressing the volume button often requires restarting HQPlayer. This version of Roon I have experienced the most issues with.

I also tried RoonServer on my Desktop streaming direct to HQPlayer on my CAPS eliminating NAA and despite entering the IP address of my CAPS it could never connect to HQPlayer directly. No problem connecting when both are on the same machine.

Taking the same DSD album, eliminating Roon and playing on HQPlayer direct has no issues and plays right through with no stops.

The fact that you need to restart HQPlayer to recover is suggestive that this is a problem with HQPlayer, not Roon.

It seems that PCM is much more reliable. When streaming DSD it always stops after 18-20 minutes

The fact that it is content dependent is suggestive of an HQPlayer issue, too–Roon has no content-dependent differences in its interaction with HQPlayer. We are just passing along a data stream as quickly as HQPlayer wants to pull it from us.

I also tried RoonServer on my Desktop streaming direct to HQPlayer on my CAPS eliminating NAA and despite entering the IP address of my CAPS it could never connect to HQPlayer directly. No problem connecting when both are on the same machine.

HQPlayer has a switch on their toolbar for enabling connections from external machines. See screenshots here. Check for any firewalls/etc that might be interfering, too.

Taking the same DSD album, eliminating Roon and playing on HQPlayer direct has no issues and plays right through with no stops.

I’ve mentioned this a few times to others: this is not as good an experiment as it sounds like at first. HQPlayer has a bunch of brand new code for receiving data from Roon. It uses completely different stuff for loading audio from files directly.

You really need to do three tests to learn what you’re trying to learn: Roon alone, HQPlayer alone, and HQPlayer+Roon. Roon alone proves that Roon can get bits out of the file quickly enough. HQPlayer alone proves that HQPlayer can process and output them quickly enough. The additional component introduced between HQPlayer+Roon is the streaming mechanism by which they communicate.

We’ve designed our side so that HQPlayer can buffer as much or as little as it sees fit to smooth out localized performance issues. Anecdotally, it seems to not buffer very much–this may be related to these performance issues, but I can’t say for sure.

If it’s stopping during playback, and not at a track boundary between tracks of different formats, then it wasn’t Roon’s decision to stop playback.

This is interesting. OS X has some power-management features that impact apps that are in the background or minimized. I don’t remember all of the details, but remember that we had to do some specific things to avoid being impacted by that stuff.

EDIT: @KMan remembered the name: “App Nap”. If that’s happening to HQPlayer, chaos will ensue.

EDIT: another thing to add: Roon only sends data from your audio files to HQPlayer–if anything else is coming out of the speakers (e.g. “shrieking”), it’s an indication that something has gone wrong with HQPlayer or in the driver.

Hi Brian

I think @Kman has indeed nailed it with that App Nap advice. Successfully disabled in Mac OSX, I don’t want to speak too soon but it’s running without dropping.

Thanks one and all

Jonny

Brian

Appreciate the detail.

When I get home I will try the Roon to HQP without NAA

it will be nice when it is all good.

Thanks

Holy Smoke’s! It breaths! The patient is alive…after disabling App Nap. For the first time in a long time Roon and HQP are working. No stops at all now even when changing sources.

Thanks Kman!

Strangely the app nap check box doesn’t show up for me for HQplayer (already had it checked for Roon). I just turned off app nap system wide using the terminal:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES

Just cued up a DSD album…time will tell.

I am having a similar issue playing DSD with the Analog DAC. The only difference is that I am able to restart with the volume link. I am running a single computer with 2 Thunderbolt drives using Win 10 Pro.

No dice on app nap…made it to track 5 and then froze at 55 seconds. Disconnect on roon did work to release hqplayer and get me to the next track…but DSD files still freeze.

Thought the problem might be the HQplayer beta so went back to 3.12…made sure nap app was off. DSD64 freeze on track 3 this time.

A post was split to a new topic: Common HQP/Roon issues and fixes

@andybob was kind to move my post on Roon/HQP fixes as a separate troubleshooting guide. Here are the unresolved issues I have

  1. Playback stalls while playing DSD with Roon build 99: Symptom: While playing DSD tracks, playback halts after a few tracks, generally midway in a track. Playback on most cases continues if you click on the track, but you may have to disconnect the link in the volume button and start again. There is some light at the end of this tunnel. @jussi_laako reported on CA forum that he was able to reproduce this issue and thinks for some reason Roon stops streaming. He reports It is a hard problem to debug as it takes time (10-30 minutes) before the stall happens.
  2. DSD to PCM is broken: *Symptom:*If you try to play DSD as PCM (either because your DAC does not support PCM or because PCM sounds better on your DAC), there is either no sound and the track moves fast or you get noise. Good news here, on CA forum, @jussi_laako reports it is a bug and will be fixed in the next release of HQplayer. In the mean time he has suggested setting ‘traditional’ in DSDIFF/DSF settings dialog as a workaround.

@jussi_laako reported on CA forum that he was able to reproduce this issue and thinks for some reason Roon stops streaming. He reports It is a hard problem to debug as it takes time (10-30 minutes) before the stall happens

I am keeping an eye on this.

I have seen this sort of thing happen twice with 3.13b2. The first time, I investigated and found HQPlayer had beach-balled. The second time, I was streaming over WiFi, and discovered that the WiFi interface had bounced down then up, interrupting all TCP connections on the machine.

We ran several overnight playback tests with 3.12 during the week before last (prior to the availability of the beta release). We know that Roon+HQP can sustain playback for 12+ hours at a stretch, at least under some conditions.

I’m know that if Jussi finds something conclusive, he will get in touch with me.

Meanwhile, I’ve queued up some DSD for the next hour or two. Doesn’t hurt to have an extra pair of eyes on this.

2 Likes

[quote=“KMan, post:17, topic:7260”]
DSD to PCM is broken: Symptom:If you try to play DSD as PCM (either because your DAC does not support PCM or because PCM sounds better on your DAC), there is either no sound and the track moves fast or you get noise. [/quote]
So far, I have not experienced this in my setup.

My biggest problem to start was choosing the right filter in HQP. So I tried DSD-PCM in HQP first, found filters that worked with my setup, then played through Roon. And this was without “traditional” selected in DSDIFF settings. (I was running Single-Short) As noted Jussi suggested using Traditional until a fix is in place.

I am more of a song player, than an album player, I will have to try to queue up a bunch of songs and let it play to see if I get any stoppage.

DSD->PCM is broken when playing directly on HQplayer only in the latest beta (3.13.0b2). 3.12.0 works fine. DSD->PCM through HQplayer + Roon has never worked for me but I will try single-short and check. I have always tried to use poly-* form DSDIFF/DSF[quote=“dshore, post:19, topic:7260”]
So far, I have not experienced this in my setup.

My biggest problem to start was choosing the right filter in HQP. So I tried DSD-PCM in HQP first, found filters that worked with my setup, then played through Roon. And this was without “traditional” selected in DSDIFF settings. (I was running Single-Short) As noted Jussi suggested using Traditional until a fix is in place.
[/quote]