Build 99 HQP stopping and shrieking

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.

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[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]

I just did a test using 3.13B2 and playing a DSD (1x) to PCM directly in HQP. I am using the Traditional Filter in the DSDIFF settings from suggestions by Jussi.

The DSD song did play down sampled to PCM

Slider bar acted strange while song played, jumped ahead a bit at beginning (like fast playing) then song started, it then stopped, then moved, etc.

Have to eat lunch and do some more snow shoveling here, then I will try using Roon and see if the same slider bar behavior occurs. I will also try to queue up a few songs and let it play.

I am afraid you are right and that it may be an MSB ASIO issue.

I am going to try my HUGO and see if I get the same issues. I am glad you told me about Windows 10 as that was going to be my next thing to try. I guess I will skip that

Regarding DSD playback stopping, I am seeing a very repeatable pattern .

  • While playing DSD64 (selecting the album and using Play Album -> Play Now), the time/waveform slider stops on Roon exactly after 12 minutes and 38 seconds.
  • But music continues to play, it finishes playing the current track and plays the next track too. Then stops.
  • If you ask Roon to skip forward, It skips two tracks.

Previously, I thought the music stops where the time slider stopped, but looking closer, I realized it is always after a fixed amount of time. Would be interesting to see if this time is specific to my setup or anyone else is seeing similar behavior. 12 minutes 38 seconds of stereo DSD64 is approximately half a gigabyte of uncompressed PCM, if that rings any bells to the devs re buffer size.

I was able to repeat the above every time. Both Roon and HQPlayer on Mac- >playing to NAA -> Hugo TT. Hqplayer (3.13.0b2, DSD->PCM 384KHz or direct DSD)

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ooo…fun KMan. Mine just stopped once again (I’m back to running 3.12 incidentally). I’m going to run it with a long track so its easy to keep an eye on the timing. I’ll also run it with a DSD128 file…that should fail twice as fast if it is a buffer issue as you suggest.

As anticipated Roon froze at 6:20 on a DSD128 Opus3 DSF file…Kman QED! I had only loaded a track that was about 7 minutes…it played out in HQplayer…but roon’s progress bar was frozen right at 6:20. Then I loaded a longer DSD128 track (Reference Recordings DSF file) and once again Roon froze at exactly 6:20. As KMan reported playback continued all the way through the 13:54 track and went onto the next track. Note…Roon was still showing that it was frozen on the prior track at 6:20. The next DSD128 track was 8:31 and it played to its conclusion (which was a total of 22:26 in HQplayer). Playback then stopped in spite of another track in the Roon queue. Now onto DSD256 for more fun and faster tests.

HQPlayer on Mac Mini > playing to NAA > Auralic Vega. HQplayer (3.12) Roon build 99. Output in HQ player was DSD128 (5644800)

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Great debugging detective skills guys… I guess @brian will be around shortly to pick up the pieces.

KMan are you dropping this all to Jussi over at CA? I’m busy running DSD256.

Copied these posts over to CA/HQplayer thread for Jussi

Zorntel, thanks for confirming and investigating it further. Just saw you posted on CA. We may be getting somewhere here…

As anticipated…again…the Roon timeline froze at 3:10s on a DSD256 file…incidentally output to DSD128 in HQplayer. Roon and HQplayer had a lot of trouble negotiating the start of playback…starts and stops…but then by 10s or so playback was smooth. This was regardless of whether I was hardwired on gibabit ethernet (through a gibabit switch) or over a fast wifi connection. Once again the track finished playing and went onto the next one which played to its conclusion and then playback stopped. Roon’s timeline was frozen on 3:10s.