HQP NAA - Raspberry Pi

Check – thank you for clarifying, @jussi_laako!

I had clicks and digital noise with a Raspberry 2 streaming DSD256 to an Ifi Micro iDSD.
I got a Raspberry 3 and all Noise and Clicks are gone. Now streaming DSD 256 is pure pleasure.

Is streaming DSD 512 with a Raspberry 3 as NAA possible? I will get a skylake 6700 based setup in July and want to organise the right NAA tool.

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@miklats,

Is the Pi3 connected to your network via cable or wireless? I assume you are using the USB out connected to your iDSD? Any issues with drop outs due to the wired ethernet and usb being on the same bus?

The Pi3 is connected via cable.
There are 4 switches between the Audio Pc decoding with HQPlayer and the Pi3.
I had issues with the Pi2 (clicks, no dropouts).
No clicks or dropouts with the Pi3 at DSD256 (polysinc-ext,ASDM7)

Just to be clear, you are using USB out from the Pi3? I assume so in order to get anything above DSD64. How do you enable USB out from the Pi3?

I’m trying to make an install that works with both RoonBridge and NAA for HQPlayer so I can use the same image for multiple RPi’s (one that has a DSD-capable DAC for HQP, the other a lesser DAC where I don’t care about upsampling). Also sometimes I don’t want to fool with HQP, because it’s still a little quirky.

I got the RoonBridge part working a-ok. I figured I could just start with that same JesseLite image and add the NAA package to it but I get tons and tons of “not found” errors. A few questions:

  1. Does it have to be “stretch” in order for NAA to work? I didn’t do that part, but I can’t see how non-stable would have so many extra packages.
  2. Would this work better if I started with the raspbian-ue-netinst image got NAA working, then ran the RoonBridge installer afterwards?

Does anyone else have this config and tips to achieve it?
-mike

Mike,. I had a lot of issues getting NAA to work on my Pi3 as well. If you PM your email I will send you a link to an image it got to work very reliably on my Pi3. BTW, I had to use an older version of NAA. None of the new ones would work for me.

Thanks to @tboooe’s help I got NAA installed on stretch along with RoonBridge. RoonBridge continues to work, but nothing shows up in HQPlayer’s NAA dropdown in preferences.

This is my first attempt to use HQP in NAA mode, am I missing some tweak or checkbox or setting somewhere?

Did you manually start naa?

sudo systemctl start networkaudiod

While you are at it check the status to see if there are any errors

sudo systemctl status networkaudiod

BTW, which version of NAA did you install?

Ah yup. That was it. For some reason I assumed that was inserted as part of the package install.

No errors, now it all shows up and “works”. The first time it played, all I got was static. The second it seemed to work but there are tons of audio hiccups (i’m upsampling to DSD128, but trying DSD64 is no better). The third time the left channel was ok, but the right channel was static. I’m hardwired on the pi, but my laptop with Roon is on wifi. It’s basically un-listenable. I don’t have any problems with RoonBridge at DSD64.

I installed the 3.1.1-27 version of NAA.

Are the static issues related to using an older NAA version? I didn’t have any static issues with HQP when I was connected to my DAC directly via USB. Ideas?

How is your Pi attached to your DAC? Are you using a HAT like the Digi+? If so, the best you can do is DSD64. Does PCM also give you static?

Not using a HAT, just USB out to DAC. DSD64 and 128 seemed to work about the same, though I must say DSD64 is “better” in terms of fewer dropouts.

The static is sporadic and is either there or isn’t. It doesn’t come and go. It’s there when I start playing a track. Stopping and playing again fixes it. I’ve noticed that the album art displayed in the upper left corner of HQP is blue waves when things work, and a gray staff when I get static (I think, not confirmed).

Ok, as I recall you have to download something to use the pi USB for audio right? I am pretty sure I read that somewhere. Second, since the USB and ethernet is on the same bus you may be running into traffic issues. To verify if its a bandwidth issue on the pi bus, try just playing PCM upsampled to just 88 or 96.

I thought about that, but I don’t have the same dropouts when playing DSD64 via RoonBridge. I assume the traffic would be the same in both cases. PCM at 96k still has some dropouts via HPQ (fewer than DSD) Seems to be specific to HQP in this setup, since I can play a long stretch of DSD64 on RB with no issue, then quickly reproduces in HQP. CPU on the MacBookPro is low.

At least while trying to diagnose the dropouts, I haven’t gotten any more static :slight_smile:

As far as having to download something additional, the standard ALSA packages (libasound2, alsa-utils) seem to be present (some previous posts in this thread implied you needed to install them, but they are already present).

Appreciate the help so far!
-mike

The other good news, for anyone finding this thread in the future, is that in this setup with both RoonBridge and NAA working, it’s very easy to switch between them as long as you make sure to quit HQPlayer on the desktop first before switching back to the bridge. The NAA releases control immediately once you do that.

There were comments earlier in the thread that implied this setup might not work very well because of the output being device being held onto. Hope that helps someone else!

-mike

Took one more look at the signalyst site and found an updated NAA install that installed perfectly with no issues (on stretch):

https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/linux/stretch/networkaudiod_3.4.0-32_armhf.deb

So far with NAA 3.4, no hiccups even on DSD64!!! [EDIT: Ok, they are still there, seem to come in bursts]

I did find that DSD128 predictably caused the “only static” behavior and switching back to DSD64 caused the static+music combo. Every time I had to restart the HQP to get static to disappear.

DSD128 is a larger stream than DSD64 and so on. I ran into sporadic clicks and pops on the Pi with DSD128. The Digi+ USB out doesn’t share the bus with Ethernet (it takes the output through the HAT connector). Other ARM devices like the CuBox, BeagleBone Black or Odroid also don’t share the bus. The Pi3 still shares the bus but is reported to have better results with DSD than a Pi2.

The Digi+ has USB out? The version I have only has SPDIF and optical.

Yes, my bad. The Digi+ is only SPDIF out. I’m confusing it with another HAT board which I will now try to find.

Edit: I think I may have been thinking of this Pi2 Design HAT which has an additional 2 USB ports that come off the l2s expansion pins.

I recently grabbed a RPi3 to use as another NAA (my others are PRi2’s). I loaded up Jussi’s Rpi3 image (v3.4.0) and have not had any success getting it to work.
The problem seems to be the NAA losing contact with HQP (v3.13.3). The NAA boots fine, and can be located and named using the Network Naming tool in HQP initially. Streaming to it then results in a very distorted signal irrespective of output method. More troublesome is that it seems the connection freezes often, sometimes randomly, but definitely every time I skip forward a track. Once the network connection freezes, HQP needs to be exited and the NAA is locked and unable to be seen on the network again until rebooted. I assume this is because the NAA is exclusive to only one HQP session, and when it crashes, it remains hidden to others.
This isn’t a RPi3 hardware problem, as I can boot up with a Moode player image that works perfectly. Similarly, if I put a RPi2 NAA in the same network position, all is good too.
Any suggestions? I am a bit frustrated as I am used to my RPi NAA’s working flawlessly…