Just downloaded HQPlayer and did get it to play via Roon. My question is whether I can have it upsample PCM to the highest PCM rate my Bryston DAC will play but have DSF play as DSF.
Seems that my output is all PCM or all DSD. Am I doing something wrong or is that the way it works?
You can achieve this by selecting āAutoā in the right-most drop-list in main window. It will automatically switch between PCM and DSD output depending on source content. If you have āDirectSDMā checked in DSDIFF/DSF Settings (default), the DSD content is passed through without any processing.
Thanks! Heading home to check my settings.
Interesting. Got it to play DSD direct. Next song in the queue was a 44.1 PCM file. Started playing like a slow motion groan. I obviously need to do some research.
I had the same issue and solved tweeking/increasing the buffers of samplesā¦I also related it to lack of resources on my very limited pc (i5, 4GB memory, many processes running in parallel).
I am interested in using HQPlayer on my Mac mini (i5 with 8GB RAM running OSX 10.11.8) connected by USB to an Audiolab 8200CDQ DAC.
I have tried playing with the settings in HQPLayer, but can only get a burst of noise and no music (or even test tone from the speaker setup). What I get is an inital burst of noise for 2-3 seconds at the start of playback and then nothing.
The Audiolab 8200CDQ uses the Sabre ES9018 32 bit DAC and is capable of sampling rates up to 96KHz with bit rates up to 24 bits.
The Signalyst faq says that increasing the buffer time to 100ms may help, but I cannot change the buffer size (it is greyed out).
Anyone tried using HQPlayer with an Audiolab 8200CDQ ?.
Or anyone got any ideas what might be wrong ?;
Thanks in advance.
Setting are
Channels = 2
SDM pack = none
DAC bits = default
PCM defaullts, Filter = none, Dither = none, Sample rate /limit = 44100
SDM defaults, Oversampling = poly-sinc-2s, Modulator = ASDM5, Bit Rate /Limit = 2822400
Pipeline SDM = yes
DSDIFF/DIFF settings, DirectSDM = no, Noise Filter = standard, Conversation type = Traditional, InterprƩter = IIR
Volume limit is set to -3dB
Hi Stephen,
I havenāt used HQP with your DAC but there are two further things I would check:
What type of source file are you using ?
How are the setting pull down menus set on the front screen of HQP ?
The Settings menu in HQP defines defaults to which the setting pull down menus will default when started, but the actual settings can be changed using the pull down menus on the front screen and will then revert to defaults when restarted.
Thanks for your reply Andrew.
I have tried using aiff, alac, and flac files. They play ok via HQP to the internal speaker with āBuilt-in Outputā as the device.
The settings on the main page (left to right) are none, none, auto and auto. I have tried other settings as well - it is always the same.
I am going to try i) re-installing HQP on the mac-mini, and ii) installing HQP on my W10 PC.
Windows 10 works fine (with i5 processeur and 8GB - same as the mac).
OSX El Capitan doesnāt work on two macs with HQP and the Audiolab CDQ DAC.
Updated the mac mini to latest version - 10.12 OS Sierra - itās the same.
HQP expects to gain exclusive control over the sound output device. Check if another app is not using the default sound output that could prevent that. It may also help to select the DAC directly in the source drop down menu in HQP instead of default device.
I forgot to mention that you have to set the volume in HQP at maximum. After installation of HQP it defaults to lowest volume (= no sound). I remember finding that one out the hard way.
Cheers.
Hmmh, donāt set it to maximum. My recommendation for the volume setting is max -3 dBFS, and at least not higher than -2 dBFS.
In any case, keep eye on the āLimitedā counter value and make sure it doesnāt ever increase from 0.
I agree. I should have specified the maximum that I set in the settings panel at -3 dB. Upon my first use of HQP the main window volume knob was at -70 dB and took me a while to figure out why I had no sound.
I have a problem here:
Since I updated OS X to Sierra (10.12.2) and HQplayer to 3.14.4 I get A LOT of dropouts (the first one usually after 4 to 5 secs, sometimes there is not 5 secs without dropout). Roon is build 165, HQplayer is 3.14.4, both running on the same iMac 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5.
Roon and HQplayer (upsampled to DSD128) alone works perfectly, but as soon as use them together itās a mess. I donāt know if itās a buffer problem ā¦
Before with OS X Yosemite and HQplayer 3.13.something (everything upsamled to DSD128) there were no problems.
Question @jussi_laako : is there a location with older versions of HQplayer? I would like to see if anything changes if I go back to 3.13. ā¦
I am lost ā¦ I have the feeling I tried everything ā¦
Looking forward to suggestions!
Thanks
Hi @SW72,
First things to try are:
Uninstalling And reinstalling HQP and Roon;
Power cycling all devices.
Post again if the issue continues and weāll get some help.
Hi Andy
Did it all ā¦ reinstalled Roon and HQplayer, tried with the current HQplayer beta ā¦ unplugged all devicesā¦ restarted computer several times ā¦ sadly I donāt have HQ 3.13. anymore on my computer to try that ā¦
Send me emailā¦
3.13.3 did not help ā¦ dropouts still the same ā¦
In the meantime I deleted the Roon folder in the Library and replaced it with my last backup from a month ago. Dropouts still here.
Last night I was testing the case of Roon + HQPlayer again both running on the same Mac Mini, running El Capitan. No problems at all in three hours, streaming from Tidal. But my Roon is probably different version than yours. HQPlayer is 3.14.4.
I donāt have Roon on my iMac where I have Sierra, but HQPlayer works there fine standalone. I can try today streaming from that Mac Mini to the iMac to check again.
But sometimes that problem happens due to excessively aggressive power management on macOS side. What is your content source?
Also check out CPU loads using activity monitor (open the per-core load graph dialog too) and try with the -2s filter variants, just in case.