Gapless playback problems

Audio Gear Talk HQ Player
1

I am having some problems with gapless playback and clicking coming from my DAC between every track.

I have a Mac mini i7 server with Roon and HQ player. I am converting to DSD 128 with HQ Player and serving the music via DoP to an Atom based Ubuntu machine connected to my Vitus DAC.

Live albums all have a gap between tracks where the applause stops. It seems something is causing a breakdown in gapless play. There is also a click between all tracks.

I posted on CA and Miska feels it is a Roon settings problem but what do I change???

Please help.

2

Hi Andrew,

I’m not a HQ Player user myself so can’t help directly.
However, I’ll leave a tag here for @Eric to follow up with you.

In the meantime maybe other Roon / HQ Player user can help.

3

So no-one else using Roon and HQ Player is having this problem?

Roon works perfectly with all DSD and PCM resolutions but as soon as I put HQ Player in the chain converting to DSD I get clicking between the tracks.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

4

Hi @Andrew_Thompson ---- My apologies for the delay and sorry for the inconvenience. I would like to grab two sample files from you that you’re having this issue with and try to reproduce in house. Would you be able to send me examples via dropbox? Thanks!

-Eric

5

Hi Eric,
The only time I have the problem is when I convert PCM to DSD or on the fly with HQ Player or when I play DSD with the SDM conversion turned on. I’m not sure if I can capture that DSD output from HQ Player. The problem affects every PCM and DSD file I have played by converting to DSD or 2XDSD.
The problem does not happen playing from Roon server straight to Roon Bridge, only via HQ Player.

Here is a copy/paste from my last reply from Miska on CA.

Quote Originally Posted by Miska View Post
If Roon is providing continuous stream, then HQPlayer has no way of knowing where the track boundary is, because it sees only one “infinitely long” track that ends only when you stop playback from Roon.

Only case when the stream should get cut is when source sampling rate changes.

Then my answer.
I have changed “buffer time” back to the default setting and the problem seems to have (almost) completely gone. I had the “buffer time” set to 100ms.

Do you think if I set the buffer time to something really short like 5ms the problem will go completely? Will I introduce another problem by reducing buffer time?

So it looks like I have found a fix but it is not perfect. Any more advice would be appreciated.
Thanks for your help Eric.

Andrew

6

Hi @Andrew_Thompson ----- Thank you for your feedback and my apologies for the slow response. I am glad to hear things are starting to stabilize a bit, but we definitely need to get you back to 100% functionality :slight_smile:

We would like to perform some tests in house to try and replicate the issue, and ultimately come up with a solution for you. Would you be able provide us with two sample files that are giving you this issue via dropbox? Thanks!

-Eric

7

Hi Eric

I’m having trouble uploading the DSF files to dropbox.

I’ll keep trying but they may be too big.

But really, every file I play is the same so choosing a particular file is random.

As I said above, all files (PCM and DSD) play fine with Roon but are gappy with HQ Player when converted to DSD 128

I am thinking you would probably have to do the conversion in HQ Player live to replicate the problem. Any file I send you will just be exactly the same as the files you already have on your own server.

Thanks

Andrew

8

@Andrew_Thompson ---- Thank you for your follow up and my apologies for the slow response. We’d still like to test some of your files in house with HQplayer to see if we can replicate the results and ultimately find a fix. I will be contacting you shortly via PM with instructions on how you can directly upload contact to our servers. Thanks!

-Eric

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