sincerest apologies - I can find it now. Not sure what happened when I looked this morning. Thank you.
Update from me on this. Selecting different combinations of freewheel/prefetch didn’t appear to change the sound on my system at all.
Just also adding my experience.
I’ve just updated my setup with a dedicated HQPlayer NAA endpoint running on a leightweight Intel Atom UP Gateway.
HQPlayer Desktop and Roon Core are running on the same Mac Mini M1.
The headless UP Gateway is connected to my Holo Audio Spring 3 KTE.
After wondering about Qobuz sounding clearer, more direct with stronger punchy bass playing through my Abyss Phi TC out of my Ferrum OOR and HYPSOS poweramp stack once directly running through my IPAD connected through USB to the DAC than running through HQPLAYER in Roon and also wondering about Direct Roon to DAC sounded clearer too I was about to make HQPLAYER responsible for that.
But today I ve tried playing the same songs out of HQPLAYER Desktop with Qobuz plug-in on my Susvaras and now this sounded absolutely clearer, more punchy like lifting a small veil than Qobuz/Roon to HQPlayer to NAA.
I need to test more but my current impressions are that once running the native interfaces of the dedicated apps like Roon Direct or HQPLAYER direct it is leading to a “clearer” signal path though this cannot be obviously seen e.g looking into the Roon signal path…
Also remember to take volume differences into account when making any comparisons. With HQPlayer you should be setting volume to max -3 dBFS. In addition, when comparing PCM and DSD upsampling with Holo DACs, set PCM gain compensation in HQPlayer to -6 dB, because Holo has 6 dB higher output level with PCM inputs than with DSD inputs. Thus with recommended settings, PCM output level from HQPlayer is at -9 dBFS.
Also take these into account when you play from something else than HQPlayer.
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Thx, all mentioned tests done with same PCM filters and -3db Gain in HQPlayer no matter if playing through Roon or direct HQPlayer.
Still HQPlayer is sounding clearer / less veiled with Qobuz and also Roon Direct is sounding clearer to my ears as if there’s some processing happening in between Roon and HQPlayer which isn’t displayed in the signal path
Remember to dial down Roon’s volume by the same -3 dB when you compare with Roon direct (or from iPad or some other device).
If you are using PCM side of Holo, also remember to set “DAC Bits” in HQPlayer to 20. Noise-shaper to NS9, NS5 or LNS15 and use at least 705.6k or higher output sampling rate (1.5M if possible).
P.S. With Holo, I highly recommend to try upsampling to DSD256 output using ASDM7ECv2 modulator…
Am using Sinc-L and LNS15 shaper, 1,5Mhz the whole time, -3db
Can you do me a favor and listen to James Blake, Famous Last Words out of Qobuz, HQPlayer vs Qobuz-Roon-HQPlayer with my filters (don’t think these really matter for this topic btw) and tell me you don’t hear a difference?
I clearly hear sharper, more detailed transients, sharper rendered bass and also high frequs with HQPlayer alone, that’s more than subtle Imho.
Not saying Roon-combo sounds bad perse but still different enough to be recognized.
That’s behaving like a smoothening filter in Roon which can be a good thing for some mixes but worse for others.
I’d prefer equal behavior so I can work from that common baseline with any further adjustments
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Some possible causes for differences?:
a) are you sure you are using the same exact release/master in each case? I notice that there are 7 versions on Qobuz of James Blake, Famous Last Words. (24 vs 16 bit depth versions being the most obvious possibility).
b) is DSP completely disabled in Roon? (signal path will confirm this).
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Of course DSP disabled
I checked again
my observation stays.
Qobuz-Roon-HQPlayer is sounding smoother than Qobuz-HQPlayer direct, especially in upper mids and mid bass which can be a good or bad thing. It’s not night and day but with high end gear you will recognise it.
Same story with DSD upsampling btw, this is confirming my theory that the HQPlayer filters have nothing to do with it - It must happen somewhere between Roon and HQPlayer.
The transient response and signature of a direct Qobuz-Roon output and even Qobuz directly running native on Ipad connected to my DAC is closer to the HQPlayer signature than to the Roon-HQPlayer one.
Am now kind of torn what to do. OF course I want to be as close to the real thing as possible and having a dedicated, isolated HQPlayer NAA setup connected to my DAC I cannot switch between Roon endpoint and NAA so easily.
So technically I must either
a.) leave Roon in that scenario which makes me kind of sad as I really liked the interface and the additional value with song texts and context information
b.) follow the Roon endpoint streamer rabbit hole which would cost again additional time and money - eventually some Ifi Zen stream can give some bang for bucks as it has both Roon and NAA support but is limited to only 3XX kHz, so seems to be a step down in terms of technical performance.
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I first though that, huh, one through Roon really sounds muddy compared to one played directly by HQPlayer. Then I realized that Roon was playing MQA version from Tidal… 
For me it shows 8 versions. One with 12 tracks and marked explicit, one with 13 tracks and marked explicit, one with 12 tracks and marked non-explicit, one with 13 tracks and marked non-explicit, and then 16-bit versions of the same. So total 8.
When playing same 12-track explicit flagged version, shown first by both, I couldn’t at least quickly notice difference.
I have Roon Server running on old NUC with Debian 11 OS. HQPlayer Desktop running on Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 on my Ryzen 7 5800X machine, output through UP Gateway NAA (powered by Ferrum Hypsos PSU) to Holo Spring 3 L2 DAC at 1.4112M with the specified settings. Network is gigabit ethernet through Cisco SG350-10 switch (802.3x, QoS and EEE enabled). HQPlayer Client running on my laptop over WiFi and Roon app on my Android phone.
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My setup is:
Qobuz → (Roon Core) + HQPD on MM M1 → Gb Ethernet → Switch → Gb Fibre → NAA on Fitlet2 + LPS → (async) USB DAC
(Roon Client/HQP Client on separate devices/laptop).
I have tried listening to this exact same track (and many others) with and without Roon in the path and I am really struggling to hear any difference, as much as I may wish otherwise.
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I tried listening to James Blake, Famous Last Words and some other tracks.
No difference
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Good day.
I will share my experience here. More than a year ago I bought the Gustard X26pro jack, then I considered it better for my money. This is my first external dac, then I focused on its advanced input part and the ability to play MQA.
And I started experimenting, comparing streaming services and transports available to me, and after a few months I tried HQ Player, I noticed that my sound is better when the cap plays DSD. And since then, I used Hqplayer with Roon constantly.
Then the war started (I’m from Ukraine), and for a while there was no music, and I began to refuse paid subscriptions, because there were problems with funding at work, first I refused Tidal, and then Roon, I listened to music only through local Hq player library, it was like this for several months.
But later the money situation got a little better and I turned on Roon again, because I love its user interface, but I noticed a decrease in sound quality. And I started listening to Roon+Hqplayer vs. Hq player separately, the source is a local library with cd quality files. Roon and Hqplayer desktop are installed on one PC, my intel core i 5 8/256 laptop. So Hq player separately sounded cleaner and “brighter”, on the other hand, with Roon the sound was somewhat “smeared”. And for a while I gave up on Roon.
In the meantime, I added NAA to my system, on an Intel atom z8350, and put the laptop in another room. I missed Roon a little and connected it again, I wonder if with a dedicated NAA everything will not be so bad. And yesterday I tried again and compared Roon+Hq player vs Hq player. And this time there is also a difference, but less than a year ago without NAA . In the case of Roon, the sound is a little “warmer”, “softer”, now I would say that Roon does not sound worse, but differently…So for now I’m using both options…I plan to allocate a separate machine for Hq player.
And what made me very happy was that Roon really got better in the year that I didn’t use it, it picks up better mixes on the radio and the text information is now translated into other languages.
I voted because there should be no difference…
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