Yes there is something about ext2 that just sounds ‘right’ to my ears. Listening to the other filters they all have strong points but seem to miss out on overall presentation and sound staging. ext2 doesn’t seem to excel at one particular thing but overall, to my ears at least, just sounds so balanced.
Coupled with the lovely smooth delviery of ASDM7EC and DSD256 it’s just lovely. I will give it another few weeks and then I will try PCM upscaled to 768k and that gives me more latitude to play with some sinc-m and sinc-l as well…
I keep going back and forth between “poly-sinc-ext2” and “poly-sinc-xtr-lp-2s”. Both using ASDM7EC and upsampling PCM and DSD to DSD128. The former is a little more Chord Dave-like on my DirectStream and the latter is just really musical yet clean and detailed. I am happy with either!!
Best? That is related to the listener’s preferences, the DAC, and the rest of the system. Having said that, the two filters I mentioned do seem to be popular with many people. I think the EC modulators make a bigger difference.
By all means try others and report back what you think. Digital filters are different compromises of orthogonal variables (steeper in frequency domain means longer in time domain). Jussi describes where the filters fall in that technical space in the HQPlayer manual, but leaves users to experience how they sound for themselves. That’s what this thread is for.
Upgraded my Chord TT to a TT2 fed by HQPlayer on Antipodes EX. After extensive listening and filter rolling I am settled on pcm, poly-sinc-long-lp, lns15, 768k, adaptive.
Firstly… dsd is out of the mix because of the way Chord dacs (except Dave I’m told) handle dsd. Decimation back to pcm.
Second… I owned an mscaler before HQPlayer so that sound is my reference. I feel long-lp gives the same soundstage, smoothness and non fatiguing as mscaler.
Sinc-M is close but it narrows the soundstage. Sinc-L seems more detailed at first but after extended listening I can only hear the accentuated highs. Ext2 (very popular) is a bit harsh to me.
So it seems I like the smoothness is what draws me to long-lp.
Thanks for recommending poly sinc long lp. Don’t know why, but I’ve always seemed to just pass over anything with “long” and always opted for short instead. You are right; the highs are slightly easier on the ears than sinc M/L and a bit less “in your face”, but oddly on some passages with high pitched female vocals I did get a bit of harshness and edginess. Bass mids highs do sound more on a level playing ground overall.
I am still trying out diff combos but the RAM inc to 32GB in SonicTransporter i9 today opened doors prev closed from an upsampling plus convolution standpoint. This combo sounds great and no stuttering! I still cant do a native DSD 256 file with this combo without some stuttering
…but if I turn off the convolution in Matrix it will stream them unaltered…but the PCM upsampling of anything and everything to DSD 512 plus the xtr filters, AMSDM7 512+FS plus Thierry’s HAF filters in the Matrix pipeline is the best sound I have ever gotten c HQ player with the oppo 205 (with optical rendu in between) and it actually plays!! (my Mac Mini could never do this, and the Nucleus Plus doesnt do HQ Player embedded and wouldnt consistently do DSD 512 plus convolution and def not native DSD files plus convolution)…HQ Player def is a resource hog but def sounds amazing!
D
I found the EC modulator at DSD 256 preferable to DSD7 at DSD 512. Both using ext2 filter. Can’t say as regards DSD 128, but it’s well worth trying and seeing what you think.
A Ryzen 9 won’t run 7EC, 512 and a Ryzen 7 3700X runs 7EC, 256 just fine.
That said there are other reasons to getting a 9 if you run other packages that will use the extra cores-HQP seems to only make full use of 4 cores so a 7 is just fine.
I am very happy with Sinc-L no dither at 768 max, Feeding Chord Qutest no special tricks in Roon. Nice full detailed sound, quite sensitive to bad recordings but if everything is right, man!
Okay, the rest of my setup is Pass Labs that helps too but this HQP filter wins it by a mile compared to only running Qutest as is. Only caveat is regular white noise explosion every so many hours, no idea where that comes from, makes me have to reboot hqplayer or even the pc as a whole.
