HQPlayer / Roon 256 DSD Stuttering, 64DSD is ok [Fixed by 1.2]

I can’t figure this out but I can play 256DSD fine with just HQPlayer but thru Roon, the best I get is 64DSD without stuttering.

My setup is latest 27" iMac i5 3.2 Ghz with 24gb ram
Roon and HQPlayer running on same machine. I’ve tried localhost and using IP address
ifi micro idsd using latest firmwire

Thought my machine wasn’t powerful enough so finally tried HQPlayer on it’s own and shocked that 256DSD has no issues. Using Roon doesn’t seem to be taxing the cores much further than HQPlayer alone, so not sure how to fix. I can live with 64DSD but think my machine should do better. Don’t have much use for HQPlayer on it’s own.

@Mike_Scheinkman Just to make sure, are you using latest HQPlayer version (>= 3.13.2 )?

I assume it’s a quad core CPU like my 27" iMac, so make sure you have “Pipeline SDM” enabled in HQPlayer settings.

I have a slower quad core processor at 2.7ghz in my iMac and it works. I had the same issue and checking pipeline SDM solved it.

Yes it’s quad core and I have pipeline enable and still get a lot of stuttering with 256DSD with Roon. And 128DSD is only a little bit better, and 64DSD has none. As said, without Roon no issues. I even tried reinstalling Roon at one point. Can’t figure it out. Activity monitor only shows the cores around 1/3 to 1/2 usage with both programs.

For filters, I’m using:

poly-sinc-mp-2s
ASMD7

I am not aware of such behavior on most recent version of HQPlayer and Roon. There were fixes related to such behavior somewhere between 3.12 and 3.13.2 versions of HQPlayer. This happened due to strange behavior of OS X networking stack and we found a workaround for it.

Yeah using 3.13.2 and it stutters about every 5 seconds on 256DSD. I notice no spike in the cores when the stutter happens.

Anything else I can check on my iMac? Even though it’s only a few month’s old, I used migrate assistant to bring all my stuff over from my old iMac. I’m on latest OSX 10.11.3.

I had similar issues and discovered they were related to my network more than the computer. Upgrading to Gigabit Ethernet and Cat7 wiring somehow seemed to increase the throughput enough that the stuttering completely stopped. In addition, I was using a Macbook and discovered that its USB/Ethernet dongle is quite slow and so that too seemed to be creating a bottleneck.

One thing to watch out for are USB3 ports, some DACs don’t play nice with USB3. For some of such DACs, using Apple wired keyboard’s USB2 hub output has fixed the issues.

Apple has also fixed one USB audio issue on the new OS X update just released…

I’ve tried the USB port from wired keyboard and didn’t make a difference. Last OSX didn’t help either

Not sure how network connections make difference when both Roon and HQPlayer are on same machine.

As said, works fine with just HQPlayer on its own. With Roon either stutters every 5-10 sec or occasionally works stutter free for a song or two. Can’t figure out why stuttering stops.

I can play one sampling rate higher than 64dsd without issue. Wasn’t sure if best to keep at standard 64dsd than an in between one.

I can’t be the only one with this issue.

Just something to rule out, but you mentioned “latest OS X 10.11.3”. Latest is OS 10.11.4 as of the other day, and that’s the one that fixed the USB audio issue Jussi referred to.

Yep. I updated the other day and still have issue.

This problem existed before and after lot of work was found out to be OS X internal network stack issue and we also found workaround to it. But it still seems to somehow haunt…

Are you using wired network connection? If so, have you turned off the WiFi adapter?

I’m just using Wifi. I haven’t tried with Wifi off just see if fixes problem. Obviously this would only be test since I can’t use wired connection and need internet. But may pinpoint something.

Nope, no better.

Ok, I just downloaded 3.13.3 and check Auto Rate Family and it seems to be working much better. Will report back if actually fixed or just lucky moment.

So 1.2 fixed my issues. I recently did a clean install on my iMac and it still didn’t help. But now with Roon 1.2 can play DSD256 with the regular filters. No stutter and pretty quick load time.

Can close this out.

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