So, to anyone who’s interested, I take back everything I’ve said about HQPlayer!!
up-sampling via HQP does sound significantly better. I decided to try running the Qutest off a battery as opposed to the wall mart supplied.
Heck!! suddenly the bass impact & weight of the music takes on added resolution.
I can now hear a real improvement with HQplayer as opposed to without.
I’ve followed the Qutest linear P.S/battery debate with interest & it seems the DAC will/does indeed benefit from a far better supply than that supplied.
No, Hugo2 runs off the wall charger mostly, when it runs in “desktop mode”. This is to significantly reduce battery cycles and increase battery life. The internal battery only provides power during high current transients when driving headphones.
The point of Hugo2 batteries is to make it transportable where you don’t have access to 5V power.
Since the beginning of time, there are always unhappy people with every product.
Even some Dave owners aren’t happy with its internal SMPS. So if you don’t like Qutest stock PSU there’s no guarantee you’d be happy with Dave and its stock PSU. See below links.
I’m quite happy with Hugo2 and stock PSU but everyone’s mileage varies.
I’ve had the Mytek Stereo192-DSD DAC they designed since the beginning without issues. By the way, it was the first DAC to support DSD over USB. And first one along with dCS to support DoP (in addition to native DSD support).
Interesting, I didn’t know they were involved with Mytek since way back then. Anyway we won’t go there - they are in a battle with each other. Off topic for this thread. There’s another thread about that:
@jussi_laako Jussi, tell us what’s your magic trick?!
Does anyone else here find new ASDM7ECv2 to be euphonic, or should I say, euphoric experience?! It is just brilliant.
With my current i7-8665U set up i can listen to ASDM7ECv2 at DSD 128x with no staggering, in combination with classics of filters like poly-sinc-lp or poly-sinc-short-mp with sources up-to 192/24.
Previously, while ASDM7EC was giving, somewhat, fuller body to the sound at my DSD 128x, I would often jump to « -2s » filters with AMSDM7 512+fs at DSD 512x in search for extra clarity in sound.
Now, with new ASDM7ECv2 at 128x I hear similar clarity as with higher resolutions, but with « EC » signature full body sound!
Amazing.
Jussi thank you for your work and the joy it brings.
Pulled the trigger on an M1 Mac Mini the other day, sole function is a Roon core & HQP. I’ve been listening for about a week upsampling to DSD256 with gauss-long / ASDM7EC. My previous iMac was capable of DSD256 with gauss-long / ASDM7 (non-EC). I struggled to notice much of an improvement to be honest.
About an hour ago I switched it up, back to DSD256 with ext2 / ASDM7EC and I noticed the magic immediately. I’ll be keeping it here for awhile, I definitely have more options to play with now that I have an M1 Mac Mini.
I still slightly prefer sinc-L but it doesn’t work well with HQPe UAC2 input feature when changing sample rates (get muffled audio mixed with some static).
Hopefully you can find and fix that issue @jussi_laako !
At least with ext2 I can set HQP output rate to a fixed number. Works flawlessly this way, even if the music content itself changes sample rates.
ext2 is still nice but sinc-L transients feels tiny bit better.
The huge ringing settling time of sinc-L might be a theoretical problem but doesn’t really have an audible impact to me. Whatever ringing problems and non-apodizing problems there are, seem masked by the upside, ie superb frequency response and fast fast transients. And 10 seconds for music to start isn’t a problem with UAC2 input. For Roon thats annoying , for every track. But no issue for non-Roon use.
Thanks for delivering the Mk2 modulators. I have been enjoying ASDM5EC along with poly-sinc-gauss-long at DSD256 on a base M1 Mac. Having upgraded to the ASDM5ECv2, the sound is much superior. But I’ve found that upsampling from MQA 48k → 96k 24bit → DSD256 stutters now. Weirdly, it doesn’t do so when upsampling from MQA 44.1k → 88.2k 24 bit → DSD256 is okay. So is redbook to DSD256. I decided I can’t live without the new modulators so tried out tweaking settings for auto family and multicore (both greyed out) but no joy. What eventually worked was swapping out gauss-long for the new mqa/mp3-mp which works with all upsample rates. I feel I am now right on the edge of what the M1 can deliver.
Now it is mostly powering the NAA.
