Would HQPlayer bring anything to my party?

Audio Gear Talk HQ Player
1

Newbie alert - Would HQPlayer bring anything to my party?

My (very simple) system consists of a Nucleus (first generation I believe) - Two Devialet Phantom II speakers (which have a DAC*), and Qobuz. Everything is on ethernet and works fine. I have a Mac that can be used for the software.

So - would HQPlayer improve sound or am I barking nuts? I don’t care about the cost or time it takes to set up. (I lived thru the years if MS-DOS Himem.sys)

Thanks!

*Devialet DAC embedded in Devialet Intelligence Processor 24bits / 96kHz

2

Well, first you’d need a new. Computer as the nucleus won’t run hqplayer.

3

I have a Mac that I can run it on. (Should have mentioned this in my post. Duh)

~P

4

Just try it. It works for 30 minutes at a time until purchased & licensed.

5

I wanted to try HQPlayer some time ago with my Devialet Expert Pro but stopped the project.

HQPlayer does not work with your Phantoms over Ethernet. HQPlayer needs an USB connection either from the Computer on which HQPlayer runs or an additional NAA device it streams to (dedicated hardware or eg. RasberryPi with NAA OS). But your Phantoms don’t have an USB input. I don’t know, if HQPlayer could use an S/PDIF output on the Computer or the NAA device, this would be the only way to connect to your Phantoms.

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6

Hqplayer does work with spdif connection. I used to have a pi2aes rpi4 hat and connects coax to my dac and hqplayer works to 24/192

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7

It’s no problem to use a NAA client (e.g. a RPi with s HAT, which has a SPDIF out) with SPDIF.
But: The Devialet Phantom II supporting as max 96/24 as input and I’m sure, that they will upsample internally every input.
So I expecting that HQPlayer will not change much in the SQ.

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8

So at last just my 2 cents. Although my Devialet Expert Pro has USB input I stopped the project. Like me you would loose the functions of Roon Ready with your Phantoms (e.g. auto turn-on, volume control), and you would need additional hard- and software to take care of.

Your Phantoms with Roon are a perfect match in usability and sound quality, there is nothing to worry about.

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9

thanks very much! I will close this project and open next one.
Cataloging my dead collection. :joy:
dead

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The issue is that those devices lack support for HQPlayer NAA. If Devialet would add such support, it would solve the problem…

Holo Audio Red as NAA has built-in DDC and can output S/PDIF both coaxial and optical, AES/EBU and also I2S-over-LVDS (using HDMI cable).

11

Like others have said, HQP can’t play directly to Phantoms. Roon will just be a front end to HQPlayer so you’d need a USB to SPDIF Toslink device to send data from HQP to Phantoms via optical. Something like the Douk Audio U2 XMOS XU208.
It is difficult to say if HQPlayer in this setup would give better SQ than you have today. HQP is stellar for dealing with DSD, but there is less to gain in PCM mode, even for HQPlayer.

The MiniDSP Flex has a UAC2 compliant USB port so it should work either directly connected to the HQPlayer computer or via NAA. The Flex also has a mixer matrix that can split the SPDIF Toslink feed to L and R if you find you need that. If you split L and R and actually connect Phantoms as two single/mono units you will most likely avoid downsampling from 96kHz to 48kHz in the speakers too.
If HQP could convert all incoming data to DSD and then back to 96/24 PCM via it’s excellent filters you’d probably notice an improvenent. @jussi_laako I hope I’m not suggesting something silly here!

There is a Matrix mixer in HQPlayer too of course, but you’d need two USB to SPDIF devices and a USB hub to connect everything if you want to keep L and R separate. This would make the setup more complex and I am not sure it would work at all.

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12

Thanks for all for their thoughtful responses. This forum provides such quality input that always leaves me impressed and appreciative. No HQPlayer for me.