HQPlayer Desktop thread

11.56% single core performance improvement is more than decent. It is great. Apple is killing it on the SoC front. Their new laptops are great as well.

yup, they were killing it on the powermac G3 front for a while tooā€¦
pentium-snail-hires-1540140935

Not really. The PowerPC processors (they were not an SoC) were designed and built by IBM and Motorola and were never that great. Apple was the only company to use them in a personal computer. They were used in gaming systems and that is where they shined.

The M1 an now the M2 are significantly better than anything else on the market. Intelā€™s latest processors are 10 nm while Appleā€™s M2 are ā€œgen 2ā€ 5 nm.

Base model M1 and M2 are Appleā€™s ā€˜mobileā€™ (for laptop, iPad) class

Convincing me that buying a new Mac anytime soon is a good solid decision is going to be a tough sale. You have a better chance of me paying tidal monthly for their ā€œhi resā€ content.

Sorry, just not gonna happen.

On another topic, is there an naa setup that doesnā€™t pop when switching between pcm and sdm? Or is the dac? Or a combination of the two?

Nobody is convincing of buying anything.

Just donā€™t think it makes sense to compare mobile class CPU and desktop class.

The fact already is right now the M1 Mac Mini, for example, is quite a good HQPlayer machine, whether you agree or not :wink:

M2 looks to be better , on paper anyway.

If you have pops trying NAA OS, then itā€™s your DAC. None for me.

If you have pops with a different NAA but none with NAA OS, then could be your different NAA

First step with any NAA troubleshooting is to try NAA OS

Iā€™m running NAA OS. Have connected on the same NAA, a SMSL on one USB port and BrooklynBridge one the other.

SMSL

  • DSD512x48 to DSD512 produces small pop/click
  • SDM to PCM is a god awful pop pink noise sound.
  • PCM 768 to 705.6 small pop/click.

Just tried switching to BrooklynBridge usb input in hqplayer.

  • DSD256x48 to DSD256 seems ok.
  • SDM to PCM also ok.
  • PCM 384 to 352.8 also seems ok.

So must be the SMSL.
Kudos to Paweł Gorgoń at Hem for a stellar job.

I guess Iā€™ll have to use the mute button for the SMSL.

I just got my new MacBook Pro with M1Max. Also first ever Mac laptop for me. Iā€™m very curious to see how it performs for HQPlayer!

Almost two months delivery time. But now I can finally test and otherwise deal with Mac version also when Iā€™m on the go somewhere.

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may be a lame question. I just made ubuntu 22.04 desktop install + hqplayer desktop (jammy) hqplayer application works OK

canĀ“t get ā€œclientā€ to start. it crashes, sometime with error, sometimes donĀ“t start.

any thoughts?

Open terminal and do:

cd / ; sudo ln -s /usr/share share

And then it should work. This is a bug in Ubuntu 22.04. They will likely fix it at some point.

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wow, that was not obvious! muchas gracias @jussi_laako ! all works well now.

And on top ā€œUbuntu 22.04 + HQP Desktopā€ performace is above expectations for my old laptop.

  • Win10 maximum that I can do is 5EC DSD256
  • Ubuntu 22.04 it can do 7ECv2 DSD256 like peanuts, thanks Jussi!

@jussi_laako Jussi, couple of questions on the license, if I may:

a) If I get one license for ā€œDesktopā€ - can I use it under Win and under Ubuntu on the same laptop?

b) How much of Internet connection HQP would need? For a month or so I will be in very limited internet conditions (with expensive roaming) I prepare ā€˜hqp stationā€™ for that to take with me, obviously playback will be from local libraryā€¦

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I had the same experience with Ubuntu only with DSD512. Actually, with the filters I use and 7ECv2 most of the time I only have CUDA usage for convolution now.

Yes, HQPlayer will only allow one instance to run at the same time though. I believe if a second instance is launched it will not find any NAA points.

Embedded, however, is a separate license from Desktop.

I have only seen HQPlayer connect out to signalyst.eu and/or signalyst.com on startup. Otherwise the data stream seems to be all local network. I think it pings out to check licensing, Jussi would have to answer that part of it.

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Thanks @ffk !

seems I got very excited about my new performance discovery, so the next stop is CUDA on Linux, yeah!

@jussi_laako , all
wanted to double check if these are necessary or in the right sequence for HQP Desktop ?

first - custom kernels
libgmpris-dbg_2.2.1-10_amd64.deb
libgmpris-dev_2.2.1-10_amd64.deb
libgmpris_2.2.1-10_amd64.deb
linux-headers-5.15.39-jl+_5.15.39-jlĀ±1_amd64.deb
linux-image-5.15.39-jl+_5.15.39-jlĀ±1_amd64.deb

second - Nvida driver for CUDA (510 seems to be latest)
nvidia-driver-510

At least this is what I did, I can now see GPU performance on some ā€œheaviesā€ like gauss-xla, that I can not do on NUC for example. But I was not sure about this whole bunch in kernel folderā€¦

Yes, you need to use the nvidia-driver-510 (proprietary,tested)

I believe there is also a v515 build but the cuda driver is not updated to support it. but it appears to be updated hereā€¦ idk?

I am not sure about the custom kernels, I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the low latency kernel by default doesnā€™t support cuda, or maybe the other way around, but you can enable it somehow. May want to look into thatā€¦ I couldā€™ve read whatever it was I saw wrong.

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The one time I did have a low latency kernal installed the processor clock was always at 4.9ā€¦ I too am curious as to how to/which low latency kernel to use and if it is normal behavior for the clocks to stay high, even on balanced power setttings.

Iā€™m just a plumber. lolā€¦ Screen Shot 2022-04-16 at 6.30.22 PM (2)

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Yes, you obviously have only one copy running at a time on a computer in your possession.

Depends mostly on your streaming needs (if any). When you start HQPlayer, it will need to talk to servers on the internet. Amount of data for this communication is some tens of kilobytes. But as long as you keep it running, thereā€™s not much more communication if you are playing local content.

So very little roaming data to be used, unless some cover image metadata in your files is pointing to internet URLs. But this is very unusual, usually cover images come with the files, embedded in the metadata, or external separate file.

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Realtime kernel (used on HQPlayer OS for example), is not compatible with CUDA. But low latency kernel is compatible with CUDA.

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thanks. I know there was one that didnā€™t work with cuda.

Got ubuntu lowlatency-settings for 22.04.26 to work.

Initially unbuntu kept crashing at the login screen using lowlatency kernel setttings. I had to add the linux-modules-nvidia-510-lowlatency package which added Extra drivers for the lowlatency kernel.

Voila, ā€œMobile HQPlayer systemā€ project for my holiday break is complete!

Hardware is old 2016 Dell gaming laptop with i7-6820HK, 32Gb and NVIDIA GTX 980M 8 Gb. I have made a dual boot with Windows 10 + Lunux Ubuntu Desktop 22.04

1. Ubuntu 22.04 + HQP Desktop 4.19.0 + Jussiā€™s Kernel + NVIDIA CUDA performance is just stellar! Stable SDM@256 with 7ECv2 and CUDA can digest fairly demanding filters on this frequency. Iā€™m very impressed. @jussi_laako thank you for this product !
2. Windows 10 (fresh install) + HQP Desktop 4.19.0 + latest NVIDIA drivers performance in stable only at SDM@256 with 5EC. But I can see millions of processes that I have no clue about. But equally I need a very stable and secure system including running the antivirus that is a virus on its own, so performance ā€œoptimizationsā€ are minimal.

Comparing the deployment for the both operating systems, the difference in time and effort is insane. Linux set-up end-to-end with all updates bells and whistles takes less than 1 hour. And than it just works. Windows restore from factory image takes only 10 minutes, BUTā€¦ after that it takes more than 24 hours (Iā€™m not imagining) to get all the updates and bring it to the latest level. OMG, BUT WHY ?

Coming back to my questions discussed some time earlier about Windows Audio optimizations the answer is - get Linux if this is only about audio. But I still need my Windows to work, well I think I can live with 5EC@256 at time, huh ?! :slight_smile:

Headphones is an anecdote - I have been using BOSE QC25 for my business needs and never ever thought of them as of any audiophile value. Guess what - 10 point PEQ profile from Oratory and HQPlayer Matrix turns this into the stellar sound system! That was another least expected discovery!

Final stop is sorting out the portable DAC/DAP

  • I have FiiO Q3 based on AK4462 chip. It can do up to 512 Native DSD. But their 512 does not sound right thereā€™s seems to be a parasite whistling signal. At DSD 256 performance is very adequate. Amazingly undocumented by FiiO Q3 can play DSDx48, funny thing - you must start from 44,1 rates and than it can swith back and forth. This can also do 700k PCMā€™s, I need to try actually.

  • I still have my ā€œbluesā€ with iFi Audio about iFi GO/GOLD bar. While caught my self thinking that it actually sounds better than FiiO Q3, Iā€™m still trying to figure out with iFi how on earth this could play DSDx48 - no one from them knows and all are surprised when I point them to the iFi own specifications. Unbelievableā€¦

Either way I have a ā€œportableā€ DAC with some SDM@256 functionality, so ready to go, the rest is just fun!

PS: Before I go on the holiday break Iā€™m stepping into two ā€œHQP embeddedā€ projects, see you in the other thread, hehehe.

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