HQPlayer on ROCK

I’d like to recommend being able to install HQPlayer on ROCK. There are excellent integration capabilities between the two already. Apparently this is possible on “AudioLinux”. I haven’t tried it, but will in the next week.

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You can also buy a fanless sonicTransporter i7 (i7-7700) that runs both Roon Server and HQP Embedded. In terms of CPU, this can handle running both Roon Server and the HQP poly-sinc-xtr-2s filter at DSD512 up-sampling, at the same time.

This and AudioLinux are different to ROCK though -ROCK runs Roon OS.

And the Roon officially supported ROCK machines (even the i7’s) may struggle with some of the HQP filters, even the 2s ones.

I know for a fact that the NUC7i7BNH can’t run the poly-sinc-xtr-2s filter at DSD512. This is the same guts as the Nucleus Plus.

Of course, the NUC7i7BNH can run a limited number of the 2s filters though and limited DSD up-sampling rates. So it would have to run a light version of HQP.

I haven’t tried to see if my NUC7i7DNHE (quad core i7-8650U) can run poly-sinc-xtr-2s at DSD512 yet.

ROCK and HQPlayer won’t happen on the same platform. It defeats the point of ROCK which is to keep matters as simple as possible. But there are other ways to achieve that aim as stated by Sean.

Danny has expressed interest in working closer with Jussi, so it’s possible this is related to the feature request John is asking about.

If it’s filters that Danny had in mind, it may have to be a limited set and limited up-sampling rates. Maybe limited to Jussi’s PCM filters. Or maybe it’s something other than HQP’s filters that Danny had in mind. Who knows.

It could and should. It doesn’t defeat the point of ROCK, it improves it. As @dabassgoesboomboom mentions in his reply, @danny has expressed interest. HQPlayer’s strength is in Jussi’s filters. Roon can already upsample and I don’t think whether that’s done by Roon or HQPlayer matters. If Jussi’s filters could be applied through Roon by some collaboration that should serve the same purpose.

Roon could charge an additional fee for those who do not already own HQPlayer or the HQPlayer license could be applied through Roon if purchased separately. @jussi_laako would not have to spend time in development on his user interface but instead focus on the filters. This would also expand Jussi’s customer base to those interested in adding on his filters but do not want to use the HQPlayer interface. This can already be done today, but not on ROCK which would leverage the simplicity of a Roon focused Linux package.

I could be missing something and probably am but with the same goal of bringing out the best possible sound quality I see this as a win win integration.

I won’t argue against a legitimate feature request. However I do think ROCKs main attraction is simplicity and what ever is done needs to preserve that.