Hi, I’d like to consult you guys whether this setup would work and what’s the right gears to get.
I’m new to Roon and HQ Player and I wanna switch from a dedicated streamers (Eversolo A6 / Aurender N100) to Roon + HQPlayer solution after I tested drive and found that SQ of PCM 1.536 upsample was far superior to what I can get from my streamers.
I know that I can install Roon on my PC alongside the HQP, but I don’t wanna do that. I want flexibility of Roon core so that I can access my music library with various devices. So this is the plan:
Get a 2nd hand Roon Nucleus and migrate my 4TB SSD from my Aurender to it. Install Roon Core on it. If I just wanna use it as a core (no HQP rendering), would the plain Nucleus (i3 CPU) be suffice (in case I can find it 2nd hand cheap)?
Get a reasonably fast NUC and install HQPlayer on it. The plan is to setup the Nucleus to render HQPlayer using this NUC.
Questions
A. What version of HQP should I get? Desktop or Embedded?
B. Any guideline on how to setup HQP to use in this manner (i.e., headless and only serves as “HQP rendering” device?
C. How fast should the CPU be? The plan us to upsample everything to PCM 1.536M max with the settings shown below.
D. What OS should I install on this HQP rendering machine? Can I use HQP OS? Any list of compatible NUC I can find? Any brand of NUC I shold look for e.g., Asus / Intel or I can use pretty much anything?
I already have Holo May + Holo Red. The plan is for the Nucleus to send music to Holo Red through NAA (already have working setup using my main PC).
More Question
If I buy a lifetime subscription of Roon now, and use it with the Roon on Windows installed on my main PC, when I can get my hand on the Nucleus, can I move the license from my main PC to the Nucleus?
budget limits ? My budget is a bit flexible, but overall including a GPU I wanna keep it under $3-3.5K
do you plan to keep servers in your listening room or nearby your gear or you want to have them away? Plan to tuck it in corner of my listening area. I can find some solutions for silent operation e.g., water cooling / acoustic-optimized fans.
do you use / plan to use convolution? This is beyond my comprehension at the moment (is it the same as DAC correction?) but it doen’t hurt to keep the door open… unless this significantly impact the setup (e.g., way more power required)
what HQP version did you already try? Current version
I’m not 100% sure, nor, am I sure what Jussi’s Rollout is on that. @jussi_laako is quite active on the forums here, so I pinged him for a direct response. He can also give you the differences between embedded and desktop.
This should fly. I assume you want to use Nucleus for Roon ROCK installation, and finally move your roon core to this unit? You may do it with 2nd hand Nucleus, you can also look for example at different fanless NUC models as well, here RoonLabs are giving council on this subject:
4Tb SSD can be installed, but be careful, if I’m not mistaken ROCK will format the drive and then it will become available for use. So you can copy over your library. This was mentioned in some roon knowledge-base articles.
You mentioned GPU above. Here, may I ask - why NUC for HQP machine ? I mean it will surely work but NUC is somewhat a) power limited b) may be more expensive than PC for example (at the same performance).
Hmm, no it is mainly Room correction, which, can have a greater impact on the sound than any DAC correction. And yes, convolution can be processing heavy depending upon what other filter and modulator choices are made.
You might have heard it under different names like Dirac, Audessy, etc. where the deficiencies of your room are analyzed and the signal corrected to account for it. With HQPlayer, you have to create the convolution files yourself using 3rd party products like REW, and then load them into HQPlayer.
Thanks for the clarity then no room correction required for me at all, as I’m using this in headphones setup.
Then may I say there is noting to lose (especially sonic quality) if I go HQP desktop and install it on Windows PC in the network to work as HQP renderer?
OK. Yes for headphones no room correction, but in a future you may explore PEQ settings for your headphone models, it is optional of course.
Yes, if you are more familiar and comfortable with Windows OS, the HQP Desktop is a good choice (but you will need Windows OS license)
With HQP “trial mode”, i.e. without the license, you have a very reasonable 30 min playback before you need to restart, and this gives plenty of flexibility to test any imaginable set up.
Note: Desktop and Embedded are different licenses and you cannot transfer desktop license to embedded and visa versa.
For the tests please also consider HQPlayer OS. It is a ready made bootable solution, very nicely optimised for music playback, where you don’t need to install anything. HQP OS is controlled via Web interface and is great for “headless” set-up.
In general for HQP server / renderer three components to consider in the build: CPU, RAM and GPU (optional). PCM is much less demanding than SDM(DSD) playback.
As you have MAY DAC - did you try SDM output from HQP?
For HQP OS, is there any place I can read about its compatibility list?
I’m starting everything from scratch so I wanna make sure components I will buy will be compatible. Now I’m picking a MB… thinking of some nice Micro ATX Z790 with one PCIE for future expansion.
I have not seen such list, but may be I was not looking enough. I have HQP Embedded Server running on Linux Ubuntu 22.04 and this defines compatibility frame in my use case.
As you plan your servers be placed next to listening area also consider “silent” solutions for PC case and cooling.
For PCM 1,4/1,5M playback you normally don’t need much specs. I can check over the weekend what my fanless 8th Gen NUC can do…
Thanks so mich much mate, for your willingness to help!
Also I have tried both PCM 1.536 & DSD 512 to the May, but I seemed to prefer the sound of PCM.
In my setup DSD seems to sound less tight and more dull. However, as my system should not be able to handle DSD 512 (Ryzen 9 5900x / RTX 3080), but it happened to play fine, I suspect that something might not be right with my DSD settings (e.g., too light filtering making it sound dull).
Do you have any recommended setup that sounds good for DSD for me to try? If my current system can’t handle, that means I have the right setup haha.
PCM can sound punchier. Is 512 the best resolution for the May? Not sure, Jussi may know as he measures such things. Some DACs “do best” with 256. Even so, my favorite filter/modulator combo sounds better to me at 256, than another combo at higher resolutions.
I use and love ASDM7ECv3 modulator. The filter side I move around on, currently it is poly-sinc-ext3. The ASDM7EC modulators were/still are stunning to me and the main reason I moved on from HQPlayer 3.
I don’t have a May, but, do have friends with other Holo gear. One loves the same modulator, the other skips HQPlayer completely, leaves the DAC (Cyan2) in NOS mode and that is it. So, it all depends on your ears and a willingness to tweak in the beginning to find the settings you like best.
Will put together my i9 12900KF this weekend and will find some reasonable priced 3080Ti. Hope that this setting can cope with 48@512 DSD with DAC Correction.
Also be careful to adjust PCM Gain Compensation setting in HQPlayer to -6 dB with Holo Audio DACs. Otherwise you may get misled by the 6 dB volume difference between PCM and DSD modes…
DSD256 gives best audio band performance. But at DSD512 out of band (ultrasonic) noise disappears. So either one works and for example with class-D amps I would choose the DSD512. One may choose depending on the overall audio system.
For MAY and your set up in SDM/DSD I would reccomend to try EC modulators, particularly 7ECv3 and 7EC-Light and 7EC-Super, but aslo have a try of similar 5EC’s
If with your current setup you can go up to @512, have a look at Light+512fs and Super+512fs, they are addictive.
At start, I can imagine you want to try all filter portfolio, welcome “Standard” reccomendation from Jussi : 1x:gauss-long and Nx:highres-lp is an excellent start.