HQPlayer Embedded Discussion [2021-2022]

Hi Jussi
HQPlayer Desktop for Mac won’t allow to change (grey out) the CoreAudio buffer time. On RAVENNA network the HQPlayer Desktop for Mac sounds really bad, very noisy, audible pops all the time… On the same machine (2020 Intel i5 MacBook Pro 13) has no such problem under Windows 10. Please advise.


I’ve put the RAVENNA buffer to max value already.

CoreAudio determines the buffer time. In the end it is up to the driver. If Windows works better, then it may be better to use that instead.

But build-in DSP of Roon and Audirvana for Mac doing upsampling to DSD playing over CoreAudio RAVENNA have no such issue, too…

No issues with my Anubis

This is the Embedded thread but I’ve used Desktop also without issues

Maybe those are lighter algorithms and you are just running out of CPU power with HQPlayer algorithms (which you didn’t state).

Its a very long thread so if @dabassgoesboomboom @jussi_laako or anyone can simply tell me again, can I plugin my iphone and play apple music to raspberry pi 4b with HQPlayer embedded and upsample to 768k to DAC? I supposed this would work with auto rate switch from iphone?

iphone > Apple camera adaptor > USB-B > Raspberry pi 4b > USB-B–USB-A > DAC

Or I should replace raspberry pi 4b with upboard to enable auto rate switch?

iphone > Apple camera adaptor > USB-B > Upboard > USB-B–USB-A > DAC

I have only tested this functionality on UP Gateway. Theoretically it should work on some other hardware too. But depends a lot on the low level USB device interface implementation and driver.

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Yes this is what I do - works fantastically well

Its not a USB B that feeds the UpBoard - it’s a micro B OTG port

Same cable type that comes with external hard drives normally

You can run Embedded on the UpBoard but it will be limited to PCM upsampling

What I do is use the UpBoard as an NAA input for my more powerful 11900K HQP Embedded server which is in a different room

How do you feed the DAC? Care to draw the whole chain?

Do you mean this one?

Normal way HQPlayer can output to any DAC - ALSA or NAA backends, can be either.

The UpBoard in my case is only part of HQP “Input”, like a Roon input or UPnP input.

But if you are happy with light PCM filters you can just run Embedded on the UpBoard itself I guess. And connect with USB cable to DAC.

Is that mean you are running two HQPlayer, one at upboard another one at 11900K HQP embedded server? How can you feed from the upboard to the server?

On UpBoard it is running NAA OS which features support for UAC2 input

Then this outputs over the network to HQPlayer Embedded (UAC2 NAA input).

After that it is normal process - you output to USB DAC or NAA endpoint

Thanks, one more question. Where to set HQPlayer embedded to receive NAA input?

Yes, there’s a link from my web page too, under “Recommended hardware”.

Product page is here:

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May need to edit the config .xml file, especially if have other NAA’s on the network

I can share instructions here if you get the UpBoard

Are you already using Embedded?

Yes I am running embedded on a Ubuntu

And USB DAC is ALSA connected or you are using NAA? Which NAA?

USB DAC can connect to my Mac or RopieeeXL.

Ok so you would need to possibly rename the UpBoard input NAA.

With NAA OS it comes with default name “naa” and you can’t have multiple NAA’s with same name.

So I renamed mine to “UPBOARD” and then make Embedded config xml file point to this UPBOARD NAA for network input

I can share all the details if you order it.

It’s just changing a few lines in .xml files

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