HQP NAA - Raspberry Pi

Let’s drop a flag for @jussi_laako and see if he can help.

Hi Scott, did you find a solution for this. I am experiencing the same problems. In my case, I can not name the NAA using the HQP/Tools/Name. I put a name, press set, but nothing happens. My situation is the same as you described.
I am trying to enjoy the music but investing all my free time dealing with this.
Thanks

Unfortunately, no reply as yet. I have bought another RPi2 to get me by for now, but would still like to be able to get the RPi3 to work ultimately. Fingers crossed for a solution.

It appears that Jussi has recently (past few days) posted a few new NAA images for RPi. I quickly grabbed the RPi3 image and to my delight, my RPi3 now works flawlessly as a NAA. Thanks Jussi!
Not sure what the problems was - there seemed to be a lot of talk at the HiFiBerry forum about their products all having trouble on RPi3 initially. It was probably related to a conflict with a bluetooth controller and there were workarounds to bypass it. An updated kernel fixed it for them though, so perhaps that is all that was needed here. All good!

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I want to make a HQP endpoint for Roon on an RPi. I have an RPi3 and a Hifiberry Digi+ Pro, so that I can connect directly to my analog preamp.
My knowledge of RPi does not go a lot further than SSH into the OS and play around with nano and configure a simple Linux install like NOOBS.
If I use Jussi’s 6 Dec image of the NAA, how do I install my (Mac/Linux )HQP license on the RPi?
And how do I configure upsampling, filters, convolution, etc?
I hope someone can help me out.

Ruud

Hi Ruud,

Since you want to use the Digi+ Pro then the recently updated Signalyst NAA image for RaspberryPi3 is not for you if the Digi+ Pro needs an overlay or Linux configuration as the image is non-configurable. You cannot SSH into it or edit files attached to it. It is intended for the simplest Ethernet in, USB out operation.

You should be aware of the limitations of the Pi3 as an HQP NAA arising from the shared Ethernet/USB bus. If you were intending to use HQP to upsample to DSD 128 or higher I would recommend looking at a Cubox instead. You can see the problems that Mike Pinkerton had above. I think, however, that the Digi+ Pro may be limited to DSD64 in any event.

There are three alternative approaches to installing an NAA on a Raspberry Pi3 with a Digi+Pro.

Firstly, you could install a Stretch version of Raspbian on your Pi and then the latest armhf NAA. I’m not sure how you would configure the Digi+Pro in that case, there is likely to be an overlay to do so.

Alternatively you can use DietPi (currently Jessie) and update packages to Stretch:

  • Install DietPi and configure the Digi+ Pro as soundcard. You can also now take the opportunity to install Roon Bridge so you can swap between Roon Bridge and NAA should you wish to do so;

  • Install the latest armhf NAA, you will be notified that some packages require Stretch updates for dependencies as per Rene’s posts here and here.

  • edit ‘jessie’ to ‘stretch’ in /etc/apt/sources.list and run:
    apt update.

  • install the packages that need stretch manually:
    apt install package1 package2

  • install NAA again

  • edit stretch back to Jessie in sources.list

Lastly, you could wait a short time for Dan to finish updating DietPi to include installation of an NAA and required Stretch dependencies. He has started that process and it seems to be occurring very quickly, see the DietPi thread linked above. Once DietPi includes provision to install an NAA then you can simply select Digi+Pro, Roon Bridge and NAA in the menus for DietPi.

You don’t need to install your HQP licence on the RPi in order to run the NAA. All HQP licences include provision for NAAs.

You continue to use your usual installation of HQP to configure upsampling, filters, convolution etc. Instead of sending output to your DAC, once the NAA is installed and operating you will see the appropriate entries come up under Backend and Device in the HQP control panel.

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Hi @Ruud_Verrijk,

Since posting above Dan Kelly has provided details about using the testing branch of DietPi which now includes menu driven installation of Roon Bridge, NAA and Digi+Pro.

The first partition that Dan refers to in his linked post is visible in Windows once you have burned the DietPi image to SD.

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Hi Andrew, thanks for the extensive advise and walkthrough. Much appreciated. I do want some control after the install, so a locked image is not my preferred choice.
I will follow the steps and share the results here. I don’t know if the DAC in the Hifiberry prefers PCM or DSD upsampling but I will find out.

Ruud

Hi,

At its core DietPi is essentially a minimal and optimized Raspbian image, uses standard Linux commands, configs. Anything you can do on Raspbian, you can do on DietPi. It is not locked down :slight_smile:

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Thanks Dan,

DietPi sounds like the optimal option for me. I want to install HQP on the RPi for upsampling, use the HifiBerry DAC as HQP output and go analog out to my preamp. My assumption is that I can hook the RPi up to an ethernet cable, pick the RPi HQP as a network endpoint in Roon. In this setup I will not be limited by shared ethernet and USB buses.
Is this correct, or am I missing something?

Ruud

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@Ruud_Verrijk: to clear up a few possible misunderstandings:

  • The Pi cannot run HQP. Even if it could, it would be of little use, since it lacks the processing power to perform HQP’s upsampling.
  • You will need to run HQP on a Mac, Linux or Windows system powerful enough to perform the filtering/upsampling you choose. Note that upsampling to DSD256 or higher requires an i7 of recent vintage with most filter settings.
  • The Pi can run a software package named Network Audio Adapter (NAA), which is to HQP what Roon Bridge is to Roon. You can stream from Roon to HQP to NAA.
  • You mention a Hifiberry Digi and ‘analog out to your pre-amp’. The Digi does digital out only, the Hifiberry DAC(+)(Pro) does analog out.
  • The Hifiberry DACs do not support DSD, so you’ll be limited to PCM in HQP.
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Ah yes, the 100MBit network that goes through the shared USB hub on all RPi’s. One of my main gripes with the RPi and a performance bottleneck.

Although, I tested on RPi 3 over eth, seems fine.
Not sure what the actual network usage is for HQP > NAA Daemon, if I get a chance i’ll run some tests.

That pretty much depends on your upsampling settings: DSD512 is about 6MB/s, if I’m not mistaken. Combine that with a USB DAC and you’re bound to run into trouble sooner or later. A HAT handily avoids one side of the bottleneck.

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Aah. I did not realize that the Pi cannot run HQP for upsampling. Thanks for pointing that out, Rene.
My intention is to have the Pi as a selfsupporting Roon ethernet endpoint without having to use a Mac or PC.
I chose to have HQP in the audio chain to do upsamping and convolution for speaker/room correction.
I could live without the upsampling, so would HQP convolution-only be possible on an RPi 3, or should I better create a Roon bridge on the RPi and equalize the output from the HifiBerry Digi+ Pro with a software parametric equalizer that runs on the RPi?

Ruud

Just run HQP on the same machine that is running the Roon Core. Roon connects to it by localhost. When you select the HQP Networked zone then audio distribution is handled by HQP. You can use the RPi as an NAA which HQP will see as an endpoint, in the same way that Roon sees Roon Bridge devices as endpoints.

Hi Andrew thanks,
I am already running HQP on the same Mac Mini as Roon core. I want to make an independent endpoint in another room.

Ruud

That’s the usual use case and it’s what I do, using an mR. The audio chain is Core - HQP - NAA. The NAA is to HQP as Roon Bridge is to a Core.

@jussi_laako

Apologies if i’ve already asked this, or its been answered (can’t find it in search):

Any chance we will see official ARM64 (ARMv8) build/binaries for NAA Daemon? This would mostly benefit Odroid C2/Pine A64 users that would like to use NAA Daemon on their devices.

Sure, why not, but I need to first get my hands on one ARM64 device and have Debian Stretch installed on it. I know Stretch supports some ARM64 hardware, but not sure which one…

Any estimate on when the NAA-enabled DietPi will come out of testing? We talking like a month, or 6?