Is HQ Player DSP better than Roon?

Another good question is whether HQP’s DSP is better than Roon’s. You’re already paying for Roon, and if you think about it, you already paid for a good DAC that should be more than capable to do its own DSP. In the end, you’re basically paying 3 times for the same thing.

Just take a listen :slight_smile: Then you know :slight_smile: To me, it is a lot of fun too to try the different HQP filters, etc. Recent days feeding Sonos via HQP. They never did sound that great. Current favorite for Sonos (44.1/16) PCM SyncMx-NS9 :slight_smile:

In theory, the only filter that can perfectly reconstruct a band-limited analog signal from samples (assuming sampling was done without aliasing) is the sinc (aka brick-wall) filter. The closest practical realizations of that filter are fast roll-off, linear-phase filters present in most modern DACs. I do not care about any departures from theory (or what you might call secret sauces). If another filter sounds better to you, you might want to take that up with the mixing engineer.

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HQPlayer is significantly better than Roon when it comes to upsampling, converting, and all that goes with that. It’s not even close…

Plus, going through HQPlayer sounds better than Roon even if HQPlayer is doing nothing to the track.

Well, I guess that preempts any logical conversation about digital transports that I’d be willing to entertain.

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When listening to music, I just pick what I like and have fun with :slight_smile: One will never be able to reproduce what the mastering engineer did hear, simply because you do not use the same equipment etc…Not talking about, what the artists intended. Stichwort: loudness-war etc etc. + Anyway I do not care and want to have fun :slight_smile:

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Maybe it is a bit too easy to push this aside like that? It could e.g. proove that NAA is superior to RAAT. Just one idea for this observation. @musicjunkie917

Are you suspecting RAAT is unable to deliver the bits intact and on time to endpoints?

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Did not dig into this and not willing too :slight_smile: For sure at audioscience some folks did already? Just a thought. If someone makes an observation, would take it serious. Of course there is a lot of placebo in the game too.

Audioscience? I’m sure folks at Roon did plenty of digging already.

Thanks. I know ASR. RAAT is Roon’s protocol though, so no connection.

All of these posts were moved to a new topic because they were seriously off topic in the HQ player support topic.
Please keep on topic where possible
Thank you

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Sorry, you are right.

HQPlayer does offer a few sinc filter implementations, including some modeled on the Chord filters. I’m interested enough to test these using a trial and see if there’s an improvement. Finding the time is the thing…

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Theory can save time :slight_smile: Once you have a linear phase filter that approximates sinc, the only practical considerations are passband ripple and stopband attenuation. If you bring those under audible limits, there should be no differences. A passband ripple under 0.001 dB up to 20 kHz and a stopband attenuation over -120 dB from 22 kHz on are more than enough in my book. For 44.1 kHz sampling rate, that is.

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Great. You use what you want and the rest of us will use what we want…

Sinc-M is fantastic imo. Sinc-Mx too. My current favorite however is brandnew Sinc-Lx :slight_smile:

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I’m pretty sure @Marian won’t be alone as a non-HQP user. His input’s welcome and I suspect he has a better idea of what he’s talking about than most of us.

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Like I said, he can use what he wants. You can use what you want, I can use what I want, and everyone else can use what they want.

I prefer HQPlayer by a huge margin. Others may prefer Roon or HQPlayer or nothing at all.

Oh, I tend to think Jussi knows more about upsampling, filters, noise shapers, etc. than Marian does or you do or I do…or all of us combined.

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