Which HQP Filter are you using? [2023]

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This sounds exceptionaly good to me and my system went from harrier jet to silent.

Nice!

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I am really enjoying this new combo

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Wish I could enjoy…

This new sinc-MGa filter sounds really interesting (very early impressions). As I’ve mentioned many times before, the super-long sinc filters have the space that no other filters have, but what happens within that soundstage in terms of interaction between sounds (transients?) is usually less natural than e.g. poly-sinc-gauss filters. To my ears sinc-MGa takes a significant step towards addressing that, whilst maintaining the same huge soundstage which makes it quite unique.

I’ve thought for a while that an extremely long poly-sinc-gauss filter would be my dream filter, I think that this one gets close to that ideal, although (again, very early impressions) poly-sinc-gauss-xla still seems to have more body and tactility to it (but not quite the same soundstage).

@jussi_laako What is this new poly-sinc-gauss-halfband filter? When I saw ā€œhalfbandā€ I thought that this must be an even longer version of the xla filter, but as it’s not marked as being for ā€œclassical, jazz, bluesā€ it doesn’t seem to be the case. There’s no apodising version of it which makes me think it must be more different from the other poly-sing-gauss filters than I originally thought.

PS One thing I forgot to mention, and it’s actually the thing that struck me the most - the SEPARATION on the sinc-MGa! Like there’s much more air between individual sounds. It’s almost like Focal (poly-sinc-gauss) vs HifiMan (sinc-MGa) presentation of sound. Very interesting.

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Just got V5 back up and running on my Mac
Testing out a new power amp and speakers out with this evening from a Raspberry Pi running the NAA client into a Matrix Audio Mini-i Pro 3 and got to say I am really enjoying the sound. I might not stick with DSD512, I just want to see if is starts to drop out after 10-15 mins on the M1 Mac Mini.

One thing that I did that broke things was to import the settings before Applying the license key and that led me to not being able to apply the license until I went to help and clear data (it would apply but never work). I then imported the license files and then imported the settings and all worked well.

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Patience. Andrew will respond soon as he sees your message.

cc @Jesus_Rodriguez also

I really agree with this. I would be curious how a sinc-SGa would sound, fewer taps, but with Gaussian constant time. And also a sinc-LG (I suppose it would have to be non-apodizing). Maybe something to look forward to on future V5 releases??? :slight_smile:

It is a special case of non-apodizing one that cuts precisely at Nyquist. As property of such filter, it is also lighter to process. But as it is non-apodizing, so it is useful only for a small subset of content. And as property of such filter, it will always leak a little bit. It can be used relatively safely for content that keeps Apod counter at <10 throughout.

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sinc-SG(a) would be possible, but sinc-LG(a) is mathematical impossibility, because sinc-L group is completely different type.

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haha! completely agree! good problem for the weekend :slight_smile:

This may come down to system synergy. Listening with the DCA Expanse, which are a more intimate, warm presentation to begin with, I think sinc-MGa is a nice match, giving it more air and space. It is similar on the Focal Radiance, really opening up the sound stage and taking advantage of the natural warmth of the headphone. When I switched to the Focal Utopia, the sinc-MGa tended to be too much, making things sound a little too thin/distant and a bit fatiguing. Switching back to sinc-M on the Utopia, I like the spatial presentation better, and everything felt more right in the sound stage. Even sinc-S is a good match to the Utopia’s tonality / spatial presentation.

Nice to have a Gaussian filter in the big sinc filter family to experiment with!

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Thanks for quoting my post, because I’ve deleted it by mistake and somehow I’m not able to bring it back (I’m being asked to wait X seconds, then 23 hours, then X seconds again - if @moderators read this, can you please restore the above post?).

I’ve actually done all my testing today on the Focal Utopia, hence my big surprise because I have never ever heard the Utopia sound so ā€œopenā€ in terms of not presenting sounds as ā€œabsolutesā€, but in a more ethereal way, like Hifiman headphones. Speaking of which, I have a hunch that this will be overkill for my HEKse, but I’ll find out tomorrow.

I find that the Utopia’s precision makes the sinc filters really hard to listen to as they’re not the most natural sounding. Poly-sinc-gauss-long and -xla make the Utopia sound very real and believable.

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I have the Focal Mini Utopias and am loving the sinc-MGa along with AMSDM7EC 512+fs at DSD512. I suspect that DAC pairing plays a bigger role than speaker pairing, but that’s just an opinion. My DAC is a Lampi Baltic3. What’s yours, @MistaLovaLova?

Hm, I’m a headphone listener and because my headphones have such different tuning and presentations of sound, I’d say the DAC matters in terms of how much of the HQPlayer’s goodness it’ll be able to actually convey further down your chain, but it’s the headphones and their properties that determine which filter ends up sounding the most convincing.

For instance, the Utopia’s presentation of transients is so direct that I really enjoy the poly-sinc-gauss filters and their smoothness. Whereas the Hifiman HE1000se’s softer nature means that sinc filters don’t bother me that much and they actually add to the headphone’s huge soundstage. It’s a game of trade-offs and synergies.

By the way, I have a Gustard X26 Pro in NOS mode, fed DSD. I’ve never heard of your DAC before. Am I right in thinking that its delta-sigma processing is proprietary?

Speaking of DACs, @jussi_laako if I remember rightly, you’ve had the Gustard A26 (DSD Direct) for a while now.

What are your subjective impressions of how this DAC performs with your software? Given my experience with its older brother, if you get the same build quality (linear power supplies, discrete components), streaming capability (I’d think this should help with jitter vs USB connection) and on top of that the DSD Direct capability - it sure looks like a killer partner for the HQPlayer.

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Yes, and I like it running at DSD512. It is particularly interesting with headphones.

It works nicely. I just wish they would fix the firmware so that the DSD filter selection would actually work…

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Oh no, I remember they had the same issue with X26 Pro where changing filters in the menu wouldn’t do anything (initially reported on the ASR and later fixed). Hopefully the DSD Direct mode works, I guess it will disable the volume control if it does so it should be easily verifiable (unless it disables volume control but filters still remain applied… hope I don’t jinx it, hehe).

DSD Direct changes the output measurably, so at least it does something. The DSD filter setting makes no difference in the measured output, so it is not working since I’m comparing to what the chip datasheet says.

In addition, as the datasheet says, there’s a bit of click’n’pop with DSD Direct, so I’m relatively optimistic.

But overall, I would have more warm and cozy feeling if the setting would work. Also because that setting only works in DSD Direct mode…

Yes, I think that is correct, Mista.

May you tell me how do you use dsd512? I thought DoP only supports dsd256.

If you use a NAA device (I have an ultraRendu) then you can send DSD512 to it. No DoP required.

Holo May is also capable of DSD512 over DoP from USB (with the upgraded firmware) but I prefer to use an NAA