Commanding HQ Player... The fun way

[dabassgoesboomboom]

@Muness

Here’s the current development of the web ui (assumes Roon + HQPlayer embedded configured as an Audio device).

Looks great. When will it roll out

[Michael_Harris]

Thanks for this information.
Not great for users like me then, but good luck with the project, I’m sure it will be great for people

[jussi_laako (Jussi Laako (Signalyst))]

@Muness

so I went down the rabbit hole of reverse engineering the control protocol

Even though there’s official source code package of the reference implementation available for download?

[Muness]

I stand corrected. It’s been a few months, and i forgot!

[Muness]

Release v1.0.2 · cloud-atlas-ai/unified-hifi-control · GitHub if you want to give it a whirl.

[Muness]

Ah found my email back in May about this when I tried:

I tried adding Configuration selection to HQPWV. I got displaying available config and showing the current. But changing it leads to no response from HQPlayer Desktop, I assume because I need to register the client key or maybe you have a preconfigured list of authorized clients like HQPDControl and HQPlayer. Is that true? Would you consider adding a way for user to register our own keys? Or a different solution to allow third party apps to switch configurations?

[jussi_laako (Jussi Laako (Signalyst))]

Yes, switching config profiles requires authentication for security reasons.

[Muness]

The HQPlayer control I showed earlier is now available: unified-hifi-control

• Web UI — Control HQPlayer pipeline from a browser (filter, shaper, sample rate, mode, volume).
• Home Assistant — MQTT sensors and controls for filter, shaper, sample rate, mode, and volume. Set MQTT_BROKER environment variable to enable.
• Configuration (aka Profile) switching if using Embedded with web credentials. I recommend matching profile names to profile title to get the current configuration to show up correctly.
• AI assistants — MCP server for text-based control via Model Context Protocol clients.

Works with HQPlayer Desktop or Embedded:

• Pipeline control: Both Desktop and Embedded
• Configuration switching: Embedded only (requires web credentials)

Setup via Docker. Configure HQP_HOST, HQP_PORT (default 8088), and optionally HQP_USER/HQP_PASS for profile loading if you use Embedded Docker Compose in the repo README.

I hope to add profile selection to the Knob firmware in the next week.

[erekola]

You can also do quite a lot just with the Roon integration. Happy New Year!

edit. Some song from Tidal’s Relax playlist..

[Muness]

Using this bridge to enable a simple transport and dsp pipeline interface for Roon (or LMS or Openhome) from my phone. Any interest or folks want to give it a try?