HQ Player discussion thread

That disconnect is a hidden little bugger there :wink: Thanks Andrew!

I am, however, getting a lot of dropouts going up to DSD7 with non DSD files and I get no sound from DSF64 files at this setting at all.

You can change the ā€œOversamplingā€ setting to one that has ā€œ-2sā€ at the end to lighten up the CPU load.

Not sure what is going wrong with DSFā€¦

Well Iā€™ll beā€¦poly-sinc-mp-2s works on both DSF and all FLAC files. Thanks Jussi. I imagine itā€™s hard with guys like me who arenā€™t always comfortable or able to really sit down and try each combination of settings. Thank you for your help. I hope I wonā€™t have to bother you again.

Isnā€™t it though ? Itā€™s proven to be an extremely useful feature, avoiding many restarts of either Roon or HQP for me.

Volume isnā€™t an intuitive spot for it but it is more accessible there than in the audio settings page.

First of allā€¦THANK YOU Roon and Jussi! This is tremendous. Listened to Tidal all afternoon driving the Auralic Vega with DSD128! During dinner my 12 year old noticed the soundā€¦the 10 year old then started singing along! They are even tougher than the wife test!

Just two clarifications/requests.

  1. I was hoping that this might be roon speakers enough to allow me to use the roon remote to play on my remote systemā€¦but no dice. I can set it up with the appropriate IP address, but it wonā€™t play. I guess I just need to be patient?

  2. Has anyone gotten this to work with a NAA driven by HQplayer? I only have one on my remote systemā€¦wanted to know whether it might work before I go to the trouble of installing one on my main system.

Best,

Robert

Hi Robert,
The 12 and 10 yo test response is wonderful ! And people say SQ is subjective ā€¦

Not clear to me what you were trying out with the Remote. Under the current integration HQP handles all distribution of the audio chain after it leaves Roon.

You should have no problems using an HQP NAA. This thread sets out various adventures people have had making an NAA from a Pi. Then Jussi went and spoiled all the fun (:wink:) by creating images for Pi, Pi2, Cubox and Beaglebone ! Checkout the end of the thread for reference.

Iā€™ve been listening to HQP through a Pi NAA for about 36 hours in total. Had one HQP crash (canā€™t explain), some popping (turned out to be cable routing) and orherwise no disconnects, Radio working and sounding great.

Thanks. Iā€™m using a cubox-i NAA with Jussiā€™s imageā€¦works well. Iā€™ll give it a try with my main system.

As far as my other question goesā€¦ My second system is driven by a mac pro. I have roon remote on this computer. I can use it to connect to the main library on my primary system (mac mini) and play music on the primary systemā€¦but I canā€™t use it to actually play music on the second system connected to the mac pro. I asked about this a while ago and was told I would need roon speakers for this. What I tried to do was to set up a HQplayer network device on the main system and put in the IP address for the second system computer (on the same wireless network). Both computers have HQplayer on them. This wonā€™t play.

Robet

Hi Robert,

You should be able to send an audio stream to the Remote Mac Pro in multiple ways:

Firstly, RoonSpeakers is not necessary to send audio to a Private Zone on the Remote. You wonā€™t be able to control that zone from your Core (that will require RoonSpeakers), but you should be able to control it from the Remote. Do you see any private zones (marked with an eye) on the Mac Pro ?

Secondly, you should be able to stream to multiple installations of HQ Player (not sure if you can do this at the same time, donā€™t think so). The installation on the Core as ā€œlocalhostā€ and the installation on a Remote with the IP address of that Remote. You also need to press the end button on the toolbar in HQ Player on the Remote to tell it to stop listening solely on ā€œlocalhostā€ and listen on any network address.

Hopefully the next release will include roon DSD playback via HQPlayer to a PCM only dac.

If the dsf file is played in HQPlayer directly the dsd to pcm conversation happens correctly.

When the same dsf file is played in roon with hqplayer audio path , nastly clicks and staticā€¦

For PCM playback i can recommend the following filter combo.

FIR + GAUSS1

Updated to Alpha build 90 and while overall performance is better, I still canā€™t find a good combination between filters and ASDM7 and any of the -2 variants without constant dropouts. ASDM5v2 works fine. Checking CPU load from HQP shows anywhere from 31%-65%. Closing open programs doesnā€™t reduce the load and freeing memory doesnā€™t really help either. Donā€™t really know what to at the moment except hope for continued refinement in the way both programs interact with each other. HQP works fine on itā€™s own at every setting Iā€™ve tried.

My main DAC is a PCM only DAC but I wanted to try DSD with Roon/HQPlayer, so I connected my Oppo HA2 Headphone AMP/DAC and go it work for DSD64. It actually sounded really good. But I was having issues with DSD128. I looked at the NAA screen and noticed that the Oppo Driver, while it supports DSD is defaulting to PCM. Last night I was able to get the sample rate of 2822400 but it was really late and I didnā€™t write down the settings. Today I can not recreate that. All the different filters and setting I tried always default to PCM 176400, 192000 or 352800. Is there a way to have HQPlayer force a DSD format instead of PCM? Iā€™ve attached a screen shot of the NAA window. As you will see DSD at various rates is supported and also that the ASIO default is PCM. Iā€™m not even sure if itā€™s an issue, but even with DSF files, the DAC defaults to PCM.

1 Like

A couple of things you can check:

  • in DIFF/DSF setting menu do you have DirectSDM enabled? When enabled, it will pass DSD signal without DSP. For example, you will not be able to output to DSD128 a DSD64 track;
  • try using another filter like poly-sinc instead of closed form. You should be able to playback your DSD64 track in the picture;
  • make sure that in Settings you have SDM pack set to ā€œnoneā€.
1 Like

Hi Gianluca, yes, the SDM pack set to ā€œnoneā€ resolved the issue, thank you!

1 Like

This looks like it has been asked but I thought I would try again.

I have a Macbook, HQplayer and Micca Origen DAC the specs say it is:

DSD64 (2.8MHz), Native or DoP

It works fine at 192000 for PCM but I canā€™t get the DSD to work,. I have tried both from Roon and without Roon. I just get noise and very faint music in the background and I cannot get the DSD light on my Dac to light up - I have tried everything I could think of and nothing works. Any Suggestions.

These are my settings

Tom,

In your Device Settings menu you find/set PCM and SDM (DSD) Deafults. What you set is basically right. A couple of suggestions: you enable Pipeline SDM if you have a real quad core cpu system; Vol Max set it at -3dB to avoid digital clipping.

However, your final output is determined by the 4 drop-down menus you find in the center of HQPlayer Desktop. From what I can see it is set at PCM. It means, probably without realizing, that youā€™ve been trying to convert DSD>PCM. This feature is not working at the moment. Itā€™s going to be addressed in v3.13.
So, if you want to playback DSD64, you have to select SDM as your output. Alternatively, you can enable Direct SDM in Diff/DSF setting and all your DSD tracks will play without receiving processing (no DSP) and without modifying output menu (you can leave it on PCM). :smile:

1 Like

In device settings you need to select your dac.SDM Pack Setting set to Dop.

In device settings select your dac.In SDM Pack settings set to Dop.

You are right - Tom has a Mac. :blush:
I got confused because he said that his DAC supports DSD native or DoP, but what I suggested is still necessary.

Sorry for changing issues. but I installed HQP/Roon on my new Surface book and I am having problems with the size of the setting box in HQP; itā€™s tiny. I tried everything: changing the scale in general and in particular, disabling scaling in HQP, etc. The screen is 3000x2000 and the OS is Windows 10. Is there any other person around facing a similar problem? Thx in advance