I am stumped, a friend is on a trial with roon, recent version and a trial with HQ Player, also the most recent non-beta version. He has no music on a HDD, just integrates tidal with Roon. In settings and audio tab roon sees HQ Player and he added it selecting local host, as roon is on the computer he uses to play music and connected via USB to his dac. He named the zone HQ Player and selected that zone as output. In the lower right side of roon the (Signalyst notes) appear but there is no name under the notes as I would expect (HQ Player, the zone name). On my Roon set up the zone name is clearly under the symbol. Also when he selects a tidal album the play arrow in the lower left corner of Roon is greyed out. If he selects play album from the upper part of the screen nothing happens and that play arrow in the lower left remains greyed out.
I have used roon and HQPlayer since december his settings are as I would have mine and I cannot get his system to play music. He is in MN and I in TN and we use Skype and screen sharing to talk about this. Based on my experience with his settings Roon should play thru HQ Player and output sound thru his speakers.
He did manage to get tidal by itself to play thru his dac and his speakers. We briefly tried roon only tonight and changed the zone to “Roon Only” (what we named roon with no HQ Player output) and again no music but the play arrow in the lower left changed to a pause symbol and was white, as opposed to grey.
Any idea what could be going on? Windows 10 pro PC with i5 processor.
Roon and HQPlayer communicate over a network connection. If a local software firewall is blocking this communication, then Roon probably behaves as you described.
It would be good to check with one single local FLAC/WAV file that
HQPlayer alone can playback a file
Roon alone can playback the same
HQPlayer + Roon together can playback the file
Then you could add Tidal. Otherwise there are a bit too many variables in the picture to figure out whereabouts of the problem.
It is also good idea to make sure Roon doesn’t have a zone with same audio device output configured as HQPlayer. Otherwise there are possible conflicts due to both applications trying to gain exclusive access to the same device.
Jussi, we finally got roon and HQP to play today. I confirmed the driver was a connected device, I made sure the windows audio output did not have the xmos driver in its list, we actually disabled it. We then uninstalled HQP and installed the new beta version. We made sure it had the proper settings. We then went into roon and added HQP (beta) and selected that as the zone. When we went to play music it worked and sound came forth, up sampled to DSD128. So it looks like we finally did it. Not sure what the issue was earlier except the driver was used to play tidal without roon or HQP and it was listed as a output in windows until we disabled it today.
I forgot about the firewall issue, thanks for reminding me.
Hi Quadman, Would you be able to share the setting of the HQplayer.? My NUC is i7 with 32GB of RAM but no luck to play music well. It plays and freezes now and then. Much appreciated. Thanks, Derek
HI Jussi, I did buy the key product of HQPlayer over this weekend. My NUC is i7 with 32 gb of RAM. I am struggling to get it plays music on Roon. Would you be able to give me some basic tips or setting?. So I can try to see ? Much appreciated and looking forward to hear from you soon. Derek
Derek, Are you connecting the NUC direct to your DAC via USB or are you using an NAA? Are you trying to up sample to PCM or DSD and if DSD what rate are you trying to achieve? If music plays and then stops a bit then plays odds are you are pushing the NUC CPU to hard with difficult filters and modulators. I would then suggest trying something less demanding to see what is going on. Try upsampling to DSD128 with a lite filter (one of the 2s) versions and then select a non-EC modulator like DSD5 or DSD5v2. Then see if it plays successfully. Another option would be to upsample to PCM which is by far less demanding then DSD. Make sure in the default output mode box you select PCM (this box determines what format HQP outputs, then select filters in the PCM defaults side, dither and maybe 384K or 768K for sample rate and see what happens.
I have attached a photo of my HQP settings, but I use a RTX3060 GPU so I enable CUDA offload, you don’t have a Nvidia GPU so leave cuda offload unchecked. In my settings I am outputting SDM (DSD) and upsampling to a pretty heavy load filter and modulator.
What version of HQP are you using? straight 4.14 had issues for me and almost nothing would play without stuttering. I found in the Audiophile style forum under the software thread, HQPlayer, a link to download 4.14.3 and that solved my problems with 4.14.
Hi Jussi and Quadman, I appeared that I was able to get it playing at 256 DSD after an extensive search on this Roon Forums… I am a happy camper for now. Thank you so much both for very responsive reply. @Quadman… Thanks again for the screen shot and information. Derek
never mind. see it my inbox now. Thank you so much. I may need to build a new pc for HQ Player. Would you be able to give some suggestion ? I like a smaller form factor pc case. I currently have NUC i7 gen 8 with 32 gb but… it is too slow for the HQ Player.
Yes hqp can push even the most powerful CPU’s. I’d wait a bit for the 12 the gen Intel CPUs to drop in price a bit. Then look at a small htpc case for it. Much bigger then a nuc but will perform better. A Mac mini with the newest m1 chips, if they release one might work too.
What is the attraction of a smaller form factor ? It restricts choice of video card for CUDA and limits cooling solutions. Stick the computer in a computer case and keep it cool with fans in the computer room. Use a network connection to a silent NAA in the listening room.
Thank You Andrew. Now I need to search as how to use a network connection to a silent NAA in the the listening room ( my apology for not knowing that). The Black Friday is approaching and it is time for me to shop for deals on computer parts to build a decent PC to play DSD 512 with more popular modulators.
If possible, hardwire between the devices but that isn’t practicable use ethernet over power adapters (Easy-peasy ).
There’s lot’s of help in the community, just ask.
12th gen intel, i9-12900K has proven to be a beast and will meet almost any need. The i7-12700K should be pretty potent as well. I use a i7-10700K and can do most filters at 512 with my 3060 GPU. The 11th gen offered almost no improvement to the 10th generation. I will probably wait for the 13th gen before I upgrade again. I just built my 10700k server a few months ago. All the above options need significant cooling and depending on your dac and its USB input can be directly connected to your dac without an NAA. I have a Holo May dac and it has a excellent USB input which eliminates most noise and works well connected straight to the PC. That’s even easier then a NAA.
Which 12th gen again is trying to disable, because the efficiency cores don’t support it. And Microsoft has failed to implement support in Windows that would understand that threads using AVX-512 cannot be scheduled to efficiency cores.
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