Almost bought HQ player (completely untested) because I’ve heard such wonderful things about it when paired to the Holo May KTE which I own. But after installing it I noticed that I couldn’t choose Lumin as an output device. Reading further I discovered that Lumin has a missing Signalist NAA protocol needed to work with HQ player.
So what I’m asking here is, is there an open source workaround for NAA or any workaround for the NAA protocol?
I don’t think there’s much you can do other than try to convince Lumin to include HQPlayer NAA support.
Lumin was multiple times asked to integrate NAA in there streamers, but they’ve no plans for this.
So you have the option to sell the Lumin and buy for example the Holo Red streamer…
Is this a fairly trivial task? I ask because I have an opportunity to meet President Nelson Choi, Angus Leung and chief engineer On Li within the next few weeks. And with a bit more information at hand I could hand them something personally.
Last thing I wish to do… I just had one of their Lumin products modified, and it sounds better than ever. I really do like their streamers, I think they are a cut above after auditioning so darn many of their competition . But yeah, I was already headed in this direction with the Holo Red streamer, in fact I looked it up today.
The USB input on the May KTE is so good that even a Holo Red may be overkill as it supports multiple outputs that do not offer any advantage over USB for the May KTE. For my May KTE, I use the combination of an Up Gateway running the NAA image from Signalyst and an Intona USB isolator (which might also be overkill, but…).
I’d also like this. I have an X1 that I’d love to send a stream to. Maybe a DSD512 radio station as a workaround?
I need a streamer for another system. I really want something that’s reliable like an appliance (like the X1 is) instead of a computer. Laptop at my easy chair makes it so I have to power cycle the DAC anytime I sit down to listen. Usually I have to power cycle the DAC and open HQPlayer settings to get it to pick back up again. (using Mac core audio)
Antipodes maybe?
Just make sure you close HQPlayer when you’ve stopped listening. And start it after reconnecting your DAC.
CoreAudio assigns a different ID to a DAC every time it is unplugged and replugged, likely because it has no way of knowing whether’s it’s the same one or different. And nowadays it also asks you whether you want to allow the DAC to connect to the Mac.
If HQPlayer notices DAC has disappeared behind it’s back while in use, it will try to reconnect. But usually drivers don’t tell HQPlayer that DAC was disconnected while in use, they just begin to behave in obscure ways.
So far, I’ve only seen TEAC’s ASIO driver (on Windows) for UD-501/UD-503 that properly reported such things to the application and kept the state after reconnection.
HQPlayer is running = DAC is in use
I’ll try that! I’ve always just left it running. Thanks for the info!
I was also just looking at the exaSound sigma streamer.
I recently tried another streamer and it needed to be restarted after every HQPlayer change I made. Sent it back.
Another streamer I have uses SD cards, and I find that it just dies randomly after a year or so. $40 to get a new SD card from the company. This run-in with the SD cards makes me leery of the Holo Audio Red…though maybe this is different if you can always make your own SD card. I’ve never had cards fail so often in other devices.
Well, Holo Red works well, and my NAA OS images support it. If one card fails, you can always make another. UP Gateway is another device I use. It has been running couple years 24/7/365 here in front of Holo Springs (1 - 3) without any issues.
(if you want to go a little extreme, you can also run HQPlayer OS on Holo Red, but of course it cannot do much DSP)
Thanks for the recommendation. I’m gonna give the Holo Audio Red a try.
All of this talk inspired me, and I mounted the bad SD card and fsck’d it. Seems to be back to normal again, so I have something to use until the Red comes in.
I still hope Lumin will add NAA support one day.
FYI :
I have 2 of those streamers. Not had that problem with SD cards failing although it can happen.
If you are handy with Linux, you can make a backup image of that companies SD card. Probably there is a program for Windows as well to do it.
I use “dd” on Linux to create the backup image. I’ve restored it to a new SD card to test that it indeed is good, works fine. No need to purchase again unless they upgrade to a new version.
The iFi ZEN stream works fine with HPQ Player NAA (and the SQ improvements are considerable). But I very much hope LUMIN is finally also supporting NAA soon like so many.
No further progress on this subject? It is a pity that two of the best available solutions can’t match and work together.