“Intel NUCi7” 16Gb RAM, 512GB NVM SSD.
Windows 11 Ent. - Defender/Antivirus removed along with all bloat services and Ad/Spyware.
HQPlayerDesktop - Running on said Intel NUC
Roon Server - Running on the same Intel NUC
1 Gigabit Ethernet connection from Intel NUC straight to my Internet Providers Router using 0.5 meter long CAT6 cable
Download speed 250MB, Upload speed 100MB (Tested on Intel NUC device)
Gustard R30 DAC - Connected via USB (Supra USB cable) to the Intel NUCi7 with ASIO USB Driver.
Also connected to same router using a 0.5 meter long CAT6 cable.
ISSUE:
When using HQplayer as “Zone” in Roon, I get drop-outs on the audio every few seconds.
Changing filters, modulators, resolution, frequency etc. has no effect.
I using the “Poly-sync-ext2” filters and “LNS15” modulator currently.
Log viewer in HQPlayer only displays the following re-occuring issue:
“clStreamReaderHTTP::WaitRead(): timeout!”
The Gustard R30 USB Device is NOT enabled in ROON, so it can not be a “sharing”/“Exclusive” device issue.
Changing Buffer sizes in HQPlayer makes no difference.
Playing the same music tracks via Roon to the built in Roon Endpoint in the “Gustard DAC” as Zone works without issues.
I am playing regular 16bit 44KHz tracks.
CPU usage of the Intel NUC never goes above 13% looking in the performance monitor for any period of time.
Roon server on the NUC is using about 2-3Gig of ram.
I assume HQPlayer is added in Roon through “localhost” address?
In HQPlayer, please check that “Buffer time” is set to “Default”. Then from the ASIO driver’s control panel (can be found from the Windows System Tray), set buffer size to maximum and enable “Safe mode”.
You could also post screenshots of your HQPlayer settings tabs, in case I spot something there.
The error in topic happens when Roon is not providing data at sufficient speed. Please also check Roon signal path that it is not performing any DSP and providing HQPlayer just the bit-perfect data.
Changing to ”Localhost” seems to have helped, great tip!
I am usually skeptical to using localhost values depending on the software in question.
As it now seems to be working, what is the best procedure to try and lower the delay before start of playback?
I would guess lowering some of the buffers one at a time and checking for drop-outs, but which ones?
One of the most important settings with Roon is “Idle time”. I recommend setting this to 10 or 30 seconds. I’m using 30 second myself. This prevents excessive HQPlayer engine starts/stops that otherwise Roon has bad habit of doing.
For output FIFO buffer side, you can use the “Short buffer” option to reduce the output side buffer. But of course especially the lowest setting risks getting dropouts again.
Buffer time setting asks the device driver for certain buffer size. For WASAPI backend on Windows it is pretty straightforward and you can set the value for example to 100 ms which is my recommendation. However, with ASIO backend it is generally better to set the buffer size from the driver control panel. When set to “Default”, HQPlayer uses the size proposed by the ASIO driver. Not all ASIO drivers even allow application to set the buffer size, or the desired value may not be available.
On macOS, CoreAudio decides the buffer size and it is not controllable by the application.
On Linux, you have similar freedom to set the buffer size as you have on WASAPI backend. So you can set it to a desired value.
When backend is NAA, the logic follows the backend used by the platform where the NAA is running. In most cases “Default” is a good choice.
