I’ve heard HQ Player is very resource consuming. this is my HQ player settings and its an embedded player thats installed on an antipodes Ex
However I find that it consumes only 3-4% of the CPU processing. what am I missing here? what settings are the best?
Depends on your DAC. In these screenshots output is 192k PCM from 192k PCM source which is very light weight. I think your output device is USB-to-S/PDIF converter? In such case you should set “DAC bits” to 24 unless you know better what figure would be optimal for the DAC in question.
@jussi_laako My DAC is a MSB Analog DAC. However I am using a empirical off ramp 5 inbetween the music server and the DAC to convert USB to SPDIF.
If I want DSD, what should I choose as options?
AFAIK, MSB is R2R type of PCM DAC, so you should always give if just PCM. However, S/PDIF is limiting the resolution you can pass there. Your settings are already good for that, just set DAC bits to 24.
With their USB input module you could get increased resolution to 384k 32-bit which would better allow you to utilize noise-shaped dithers in HQPlayer. And improved performance due to twice higher output sampling rate.
Thanks. If I wanna try different noise shaped filters, what options should I / can I choose for PCM? SDM refers to DSD right?
You can try NS9. But most of the shapers benefit from having at least 352.8k sampling rate.
Yes, DSD is marketing name for certain subset of SDM.
