Need some help here please.
I am not really a computer fundi, not by a long stretch.
Wanting to use HQ Player but failing woefully.
So i run Roon(for life) on a server in one part of the home.
From there, via the home network have various Roon endpoints from where i listen to music.
I want to use HQ Player at two of those endpoints:
A Lumin U1 mini that feeds into a Holo May KTE
An Auralic Vega G1 streaming dac.
I installed HQ Player onto the server (HP Gen 8) and “added” it using the IP addresses of the Lumin and the Auralic.
I thought i was up and away as i see them in the Audio Zones in Roon.
I disabled all other zones and tried to play, but get this: “Roon could not connect to HQ Player”
That’s not possible as both streamers don’t support HQPlayer, you’re unfortunate.
You need a network endpoint that supports HQPlayer NAA like, the simplest way, a Raspberry Pi4 running NAA OS or RoPieee with NAA service enabled.
Then you can feed your dac using usb from that rpi4
Keep in mind you setup HQPlayer in Roon by using the IP of the HQPlayer server. Then in HQPlayer you set the endpoint it plays too.
When youbuse HQPlayer, roon hands off everything, including distribution to endpoints to HQPlayer. And Hqplayer has its own endpoint protocal.and does not use Roons.
As @Stefano_Antonelli said, Zen Stream works up to 384k PCM and DSD256. Although please note that it’s driver support may be a bit dated. So native DSD may not work an all that are nowadays supported.
Holo Audio Red with NAA OS works up to 1.536 MHz PCM and DSD1024 with Holo Audio DACs.
I’ve been experimenting HQA also ( trial) . It’s indeed a bit challenging to set up.
Most of the route I’ve taken is already explained and Ropieee with Naa enabled works very good.
To be honest I like HQA a lot. but…
I’m experiencing a long time delay. After I’ve pressed play ( play this song) it takes > 5 seconds before I hear something out of my speakers
I’ve asked HQA if, how to reduce that time. Ideally would like to have it as fast as Roon itself. that way the HQA software becomes invisible from a usage point of view.
I have HQA running on a NUC ( I5) Roon is running on a separate NUC. And I presume it has enough CPU power to do the job
But perhaps this community also an answer why the delay is there ?
If I use Roon for the conversion to DSD the conversion is really fast and invisible. However comparing HQA with Roon sound wise than HQA is doing a better job.
You can adjust the delay to some extent. For example by using the “short buffer” option. But also your algorithm selection has huge impact on the delay.
Also remember to set the “Idle time” setting in HQPlayer to something like 30 seconds when using with Roon. This will reduce delays significantly in most cases. This is just due to the way Roon is using HQPlayer (I wish they would fix this).
