sonicTransporter i7 with HQP Embedded - DSD512 to a micro/ultraRendu

No problem. It will be much easier/faster once Andrew/Jesus actually have a sonicT i7 to test with DSD512 DAC also.

It appears I’m the only person in the world right now testing this combination.

But JR said he has a sonicTi7 coming his way.

I had resigned to just giving the old man (dad) my ROCK NUC i7. That way both HQP Embedded and RoonCore stay headless for him to operate, while working reliably on separate boxes. The current working solution of his old iMac doing the RoonCore duties is a pain in the a$$ apparently (needing to log into the iMac…)

But I’m sure it would be a great selling point for SGC/Sonore to be able to say the sonicT i7 can do both on the one machine, with all 2s DSD512 filters, if we can get this working. And I get to keep my ROCK NUC i7.

Regarding testing the single box solution (HQP Embedded + RoonServer on sonicT i7):

After changing filters in HQP, to try the ‘lighter’ poly-sinc-shrt-mp-2s filter, we got the “Transport: can’t connect to HQPlayer” error in Roon.

The past few days when I saw this I went into HQP Config and went to the bottom left to select the ultraRendu under ‘Network audio backend’ and hit ‘apply’. These past few days that would fix things and Roon would then connect to HQP & Rendu and music would play.

But today it fails to re-connect. I checked everything. HQP was set to ‘local source’ in Roon again. It didn’t work so I tried the IP address (just for trying) and that wouldn’t work.

After 30mins of trying everything I deleted HQP Embedded from the sonicT i7 and HQA NAA from the ultraRendu and re-installed them from scratch.

Still failed to connect to transport. Arrgghhh what’s happened. I obviously can’t roll back to previous versions of HQP Embedded and NAA, before today’s update.

I then tried to revert back to the working 2-box solution that we had working flawlessly yesterday - we still get the Roon transport can’t connect error.

Dad has said there’s too much tinkering and silence from his speakers at the moment, with not enough music playing so further tests and troubleshooting will have to be done on the weekend.

I’ve left him with Roon doing DSD512 working again, so at least music is playing until I can screen share with him this weekend to fix the current HQP problem he’s having.

In the mean time, any ideas about what to try would be appreciated.

First posting here is fine, but we also have a thread on CA and things are getting mixed up. I recommend that we ALL move the discussion here:

For now be advised that Andrew has updated a stable version of HQ Player Embedded for the sonicTransporter series. I recommend that everyone install it. We will continue work on DSD512 on the i7 and in the mean time you can enjoy everything this powerful software has to offer with DSD256.

This will be my last post here regarding this topic.

Noted. Agreed, DSD256 is no issue and works with the sonicT i7.

But I am having issues with yesterday’s update. Even just connecting with DSD256.

Even after deleting HQP Embedded from the sonicT i7 and HQP NAA from the ultraRendu - and re-installing both from scratch.

I only get the ‘Transport: cannot connect to HQPlayer’ error no matter what I try.

The ultraRendu: Project S2 DAC is showing up in network audio backend (bottom left of the Config page) and I select it and hit apply but still get errors.

@jussi_laako is there anything I can try? Any idea what yesterday’s v4.1 update may have done/changed?

I even tried to go back to the 2-box solution which was working fine and still get the ‘Can’t connect to HQP’ error.

OK Jussi is working on this.

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No problem, thanks Andrew and Jussi.

I just released HQPlayerd 4.1.1. It has a bunch of fixes and improvements.

Test and post! :slight_smile:

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Updated and running great upsampling to DSD256! The sq of HQP is unreal and it just gets better. Also, embedded runs so much better than HQP desktop does on my Mac Pro. Don’t understand it but my job is to listen…lol Thanks @miska and @agills

@jussi_laako

Some good news with this update.

Firstly, HQP is working again ! After the previous update a couple of days ago killed all HQP music playback functionality (with Roon) :slight_smile:

Next, DSD512 is working with poly-sinc-xtr-2s filters , with RoonServer running on the same machine (sonicTi7) !

It’s pop free with the ASDM7 modulator but there are pops with the AMSDM7 512+fs modulator.

I’m guessing 512+fs is more CPU intensive? Is this something that can still be worked on at your end, or have we reached the limit of the sonicT i7? I know ASDM7 is all that’s really required but I’m sure you’d love to have all modulators working with all 2s filters, IF it’s still possible.

I also noticed the ultraRendu now shows up as ‘current’ in the bottom left ‘Network back end’ list which is good (as an indicator to the end user). Previously ‘current’ and ‘ultraRendu’ were separate options in the list and even after selecting the ultraRendu and then hitting apply it would still only show ‘current’. But now ultraRendu stays as current. So that looks good.

The below track is currently the old man’s favourite for listening for pops. The Damien Rice track (Sleep Don’t Weep - 2nd half) is too boring apparently.

While he was listening to this track, I was really browsing his Roon library at intense pace to really get RoonServer and CPU activity bursting a lot. We repeated quite a few times to try and force pops and everything stayed pop free with the ASDM7 modulator. We went back and forward with the ASDM7 and 512+fs to ensure it was repeatable and it was. Pop free with ASDM7 and still pops with 512+fs.

Thanks for this fix just in time for the weekend.

I’ll update you both if anything comes up during his weekend listening with the ASM7 modulator at DSD512 but so far so good.

Not to me to answer this but following the post seems the sonicT i7 is not the bottleneck but some piece of code in Roon not playing well with HQP, or am I missing something?

Very interested in this post thank you Sean

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No worries at all zbyte.

I haven’t got a clue but all the Big Guns are here @jussi_laako @agillis @brian

So I’m sure it will get figured out, even if it’s not answered publicly, then behind the scenes.

Btw - as per a few posts up, everything plays fine with the 2-box solution. HQP DSD512 up-sampling and RoonServer on separate boxes with all modulators and all 2s filters at DSD512.

This (hopefully) last hiccup is only with both HQP DSD512 up-sampling and RoonServer on the same box (sonicT i7). Just with this 512+fs modulator it looks now.

I tried really hard to force pops with the ASDM7 modulator and failed (a good thing) so hopefully the pops are behind us with with these settings. Will update this thread if the pops come back this weekend but so far so good. I have a good feeling.

I’m very very new to HQP but from looking at the manual I should be ok without using the 512+fs modulator and should be perfectly happy with ASDM7 but I’m sure Jussi and Andrew will still look at sorting it out, if it can be done.

The i7 was never the bottleneck it has 4 cores and 8 virtual cores. DSD512 is a huge amount of data and there is very little buffering in any of this code so the music must flow smoothly through the system. Also all 8 cores must be used efficiently. If this sounds complicated it is! it took a while to get everything prioritized correctly.

But it’s good to hear it’s all working now.

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Not all - the 512+fs modulator still has pops at DSD512. Is this something you will still look at?

Not that I care about that modulator. But you know someone else out there will probably use it and report pops soon enough at DSD512, if they don’t read this thread.

Appreciate all the great work by all, to get to the current state.

Just out of interest Sean, your Dad seems quite discerning as regards the different filters and options in HQP (good genetic stock there). Has he tried DSD512 using the DSD7 256+fs modulator ? I’m enjoying it on my system as I think it avoids a slight damping of attack which I hear on my system with some of the other modulators at DSD512.

Hi Andy, it’s not him - it’s me :slight_smile: None of my comments so far in this thread have been regarding sound quality (other than having pops). It’s only been about getting things working up to now.

I always want to know ‘does it do everything it says on the box?’. Andrew said it should easily do DSD512, so I wanted to find out myself (with dad’s help on the other end with the listening) and test everything, within reason of course, i.e. with DSD512 sticking with 2s filters. Pops indicated things weren’t initially working as they should at DSD512.

Now that everything, other than the 512+fs modulator, is working at DSD512, I’ll let the old man test any combination of 2s filters and modulators and output modes (i.e. vs PCM) and sample rates he wants.

The world is now his oyster. It’s too early to get feedback about which HQP settings combination he prefers in terms of sound quality.

But having it working now is a good starting point :slight_smile:

I’ll pass this on to the old man. Thanks for that. I’ll be visiting him in a month or two so by then he should have all his preferred HQP settings, for sound quality. That’s when I’ll come in and tell him he’s listening to it all wrong :grin:

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Can you look at he CPU load when this is running and tell me what it is?

-Andrew

Yup, can do later today.

I’ll Team View and bring up sonicOrbiter OS and compare CPU load of ASDM7 vs 512+fs modulators and take some screenshots.

Below is with the ASDM7 modulator. Average is around 32% (eye balling the average over ~ 1minute)

Below is with the 512+fs modulator. Average is around 38% (again just eye balling it).

All other settings:

Another observation @jussi_laako

After booting the system (sonicT i7 and ultraRendu) from cold (shut down last night) we need to select the ultraRendu in bottom left (Network Audio backend), even though the ultrarendu is showing as current - otherwise we get ‘transport error, HQP not connected’ in Roon.

When you click on the list, you see another option for the ultraRendu. I then select it and hit apply and then there’s only one option in the list (current) and it then it works. This needs to be done each cold start.

@agillis what are your thoughts of the above screenshots, regarding the 512+fs modulator? Is something being looked at to further reduce CPU usage overall or not much more can be done there?

Feedback from weekend listening is still no pops with the ASDM7 modulator, which is good news.