Roon Software and HQ Player

Have been using Roon with Qobuz over the last year and decided to try the HQ Player.

I have been trawling different forums trying to resolve , understand how the HQ Player works within Roon, to no avail. Here’s my current system setup.

I have the Roon Core and Roon Remote running off my iMac both v1.8 versions.

End Points include a few Sonos Speakers and a Chord Qutest DAC.

As per instructions I went into Roon remote settings and added the HQ Player naming it HQ Player.using the local host as running off same machine as core.

You will see from photo one I have been able to add this as a zone (See Photo 1) and can play the output to my Mac. following the music direction as per Photo 2.

I have see photos of people selecting another endpoint eg Sonos 5 which had the direction as "Source Flac to Output HQ Player to the end point Sonos 5.

When selecting any of my end points and analysing the audio path, the HQ Player is never listed.as per Photo 3

I have opened the Settings in the HQ Player as shown : Photo 4

The only way I can get any sound is with the settings as shown coming out of my iMac.

In the Output backend settings Core Audio, neither of the network settings do anything.

How do I set this up so the HQ Player is there in the audio path just before the end point.

Currently can only output sound from HQ Player to. my Mac, so what’s the point in having it. Am I doing something wrong, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank. you

Brian
Photo 1
Photo 2
Photo 3

  • Usually the Backend on hqplayer is set to NetworkAudioAdapter (NAA).

  • The device section would list the DAC connected to the NAA.

There is a short list of DAC’s that have NAA built into them or that you can use as an NAA on the signalyst.com webpage. Most use a Raspberry Pi (good luck finding a Pi right now). You can download the NAA software from the signalyst NAA section, put it on an SD card using balenaEtcher, and boot the Pi from it. Then plug your USB dac into the Pi.

  • If your DAC only supports DSD64 over DoP you need to select DoP under SDM Pack. Otherwise leave it to none.

  • The Default Output Mode is set to your desired output stream, usually PCM or SDM(DSD).

  • Filters and dithers in PCM and Oversampling and Modulator in SDM are personal preference. Jussi’s defaults are a good place to start.

  • The SamplingRate and the BitRate should be set to the max your DAC will accept.

I’m sure others will chime in, I may have left something out…

Deleted as a much more helpful answer than mine has appeared!

I think you’re trying to do something that may not make sense, at least not within the Roon framework as it exists today. As I understand these things, HQ Player runs on some computing platform (Mac or whatever) directly attached to local HiFi output (preamp/amp plus speakers). This is one endpoint. Roon Core sends music files to this and any other endpoint(s) in your system, for playback. Each endpoint with its associated HiFi gear applies its own filters, tone controls, etc, to the music for that room/area. Roon broadcasts the same music files to each and every endpoint. However, HQP filtering/upsampling is not applied to other endpoints, any more than a volume or tone control change to one endpoint’s preamp would apply to the output of any other endpoint.