The HQPlayer thread

I think it’s just important not to go all the way down the nervosa hole. When I tried the filters with the Clear Mg, I just listened to everyone for a few minutes with a well-known album on a good day (when not everything sounds more or less the same, anyway).

I noted down those that seemed really good and never revisited the others, only did closer A/B comparisons with the remaining five or so, whereupon it quickly became clear that only a few actually stood out for me with the Clear Mg (poly-sinc-gauss-xla and sinc-M, and there was a third I forgot that was a relatively close runner-up).

And, personally, when I first tested it, I exclusively listened with the defaults (at least critically), all the rest would have been overwhelming. Although the defaults don’t create a perfect synergy with the Clear Mg to my ears, it’s still loads better than what the DAC does by itself. It would have been more than good enough to just keep these settings and call it a day—much better than getting all stressed out about the possibilities and not enjoying music anymore.

 

Agreed. I have gone through similar process of trying different filter settings. What I found is some filters may sound a touch better on one track but not as nice on other tracks. While the default filters in gauss long and hires lp are excellent all rounders that uses little resources and sound well with just about anything you throw at it.

I have now reverted back to the default settings with the 7EC super modulator and just call it a day…

 

Nice to know the defaults are solid. This all sounds fun, and I'm look forward to trialing HQP. Of course, I'm anticipating some press-button-no-sound-dick-around-in-manuals-and-forums-four-hours-maybe-days but isn't that half the fun of this stuff?

Music listening made hard, as my ex used to say.

 

Justing things started is nothing complicated, just download the desktop version on windows on your laptop, change output format to

SDM=DSD

Set dsd rates to 256x48
Set modulator as ASDM7EC SUPER

Import a library of music, then use the hqplayer client app for playback, or set up for qobuz. Will likely take no more than 10 min

https://www.signalyst.com/quickstart.html

cheers

 

Honestly I continued to be puzzled that ppl finding hqplayer difficult to setup then they managed to get something like roon or Audirvana up and running that is way more steps …

 

Depending on the DAC, setting "Adaptive rate" on the "Output" tab to "when needed" (gray) may be necessary, and setting it to "match" (checkmark) may be desirable to avoid less efficient non-integral resampling. But yes, setting up HQP Desktop initially is really easy.

 

Having trouble getting HQP to recognize the May on the output side. This is unusual. It's happened before but HQP always ended up recognizing it eventually. Would really like to solve this so I can evaluate 2 different DACs. Anyone have any ideas? I've googled and restarted everything in the chain in different orders etc.

 

Please tell us a bit more on how you are connecting your May to your computer, what os are you running… etc

 

I tested the filters with the HEDD2 now, and it was much harder for me than with the Clear Mg. My top 3 were quite easily found: poly-sinc-gauss-long, poly-sinc-ext3, and ASRC. closed-form-fast was a runner-up, but far enough away that I didn’t really have to consider it in the shoot-out, only checked a few times.

But then, trying to find “the best” … Depending on the music, it was that one or that one—and it didn’t help my nervosa that the one preferred with most music (ASRC) is marked as “Not recommended” in the HQPlayer manual. I hope that’s only because it’s rather CPU hungry for what it does?

So, the default poly-sinc-gauss-long was my baseline, I had listened with it for the recent months. It sounds good to my ears with most music, apart from some treble fuckery with very few songs. However, things can get better.

poly-sinc-ext3 produces unbelievably great results with some music, Kruder & Dorfmeister’s Sessions album or most Hidden Orchestra music being two examples. It sounds similarly resolving to me as poly-sinc-gauss-long, but produces a strong emotion in these cases for me that no other filters come close to. I can’t use it as all purpose standard filter, though, as with some music it just sounds off: Too closed in, strange voices, constricted.

ASRC often produces better detail than poly-sinc-gauss-long to my ears, which in comparison often sounds a little smoothed over. The flip side is a little graininess now and then, but never so much that it bothered me. The sensation in some songs is to me like the feeling I had when I listened to the Immanis in Heidelberg, not as strong, but still that “Wow, detail!” feeling. I never felt that anything sounded bad with this filter, but there was some stuff where poly-sinc-gauss-long (better timbre in these cases) or poly-sinc-ext3 (more feeling) sounded better.

For high-res material (>= 96 kHz), the differences were smaller, but still ASRC was my favourite, though not for 192 kHz where it downsamples to 96 kHz in my setup where 192 kHz is the maximum the DAC can swallow. It is closely followed by the default poly-sinc-hires-lp.

It’s striking how … different the differences are from song to song. Some songs sounded nearly identical to me with all three filters, some were different but sounded good with all three, and for some I had a strong preference for one of the filters. As this happened most often for ASRC, this is my new default filter for the HEDD2. I’ll sometimes switch to poly-sinc-ext3 to see if I prefer it for a certain album.

 

Managed to get HQPlayer downloaded and set up to play through Roon. A little fuss here and there, but it wasn't as bad as I expected, and it recognized my R26 as an NAA endpoint right away.

Right now I'm listening with the following settings:

768khz sample rate / PCM as default output
16-bit depth
Sinc m filter for 1x
Sinc L for nx
Lns 15 noise shaper
NOS mode on the DAC itself

There seem to be differing ideas about which bit-depth to choose. Jussi suggests 20-bit, others say 19, 16, and 15.

Anyone have any thoughts there?

Most albums on Quboz seem to upsample to 706khz.

Also wondering where to put the volume on HQP itself. I've seen some folks suggest -0.3 db

ROON -- HQP -- R26 (NOS mode) -- Enleum -- Susvara

Think I'm hearing some improvements.

What should I be listening for? Better timbre? Resolution?

 

I recall for R26 bit depth should be set to 16bit. Schiit dacs 16bit
Holo dacs and Denafrips 20 bit

 

Volume should be set at -3 db to allow headroom if you don’t use convolution

 

On my DS DAC, the experience was like carrying a portable speaker from a room with reverb to a room with dry acoustics: Clearer, more exact, less smearing.

That was my overall experience. The details depend on the filter chosen, and possibly on its interaction with your gear. Among the improvements I hear with my preferred filter are better resolution, better timbre, less strange unwanted stuff in the treble, more space, better instrument separation. You might also notice changes in macro dynamics, slam, emotional engagement, you name it. Everything that could change with a new DAC.

Also note that not every filter is necessarily better than what your DAC uses. The FIR filters, e.g., are widely used in DACs, so there’ll probably not be much of an improvement.

 

try taking out roon in the mix too. I find best sound quality is achieve streaming qobuz directly from the hqplayer client app, the improvements are not subtle - better clarify as if veil lifted.

I now only use roon for playing as background music or while working from home. Any critical listening sessions or playing my favorite albums/playlists are done directly through hqplayer client app

 

Do you have your DAC directly connected to the computer Roon and HQPlayer are running on? I could imagine that it might make a difference then.

If the DAC is connected to a streamer with NAA, though, I don’t think there’s a way how Roon could make a difference. To be sure, I tested it here with my NAA setup and, to my relief, couldn’t hear a difference.

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/19715-hq-player/?do=findComment&comment=1272811

yes there’s a group of us who determined Roon with hqplayer sounded inferior compared to hqplayer direct. There are some interesting discussion as to how Roon utilizes RAAT in managing networking endpoints that potentially impact the sound compared to hqplayer going direct or utilizing something that is purely a upnp control point and direct a location or web address to hqplayer of the source and not having to go through Roon RAAT processes

I mean it’s great if it somehow does not impact you. But to many of us the sound quality difference is much more significant than playing with different filters

this is indeed what I wrote there:

“No need to ditch anything really. With hqplayer you have a choice.

when I have friends over and I want to impress? I would use hqp client.

For my favorite albums or I feel like a critical listening session, I would use hqp client.

when you don’t have a clue what to listen to and don’t want to take the time to choose or just like some music to play in the background, roon is an excellent choice for that “

 

Can you give a mechanistic explanation for this claim? The HQPlayer server controls the NAA stream to the NAA endpoint. The RAAT stream from the Roon server to the HQPlayer server is fed to HQPlayer according to HQPlayer's internal buffering. Unless there are bugs in the HQPlayer code that handles this, or the HQPlayer server is overloaded, the source for the HQPlayer stream is irrelevant.

 

No ASR measurements or proof. Just ears of mine and many others. In RAAT, Roon is streaming audio content to HQPlayer and that it makes the difference in processes compared to streaming Qobuz using HQPlayer Client or using UPnP control point that basically directing hqplayer to stream the content directly in a given web link. Miska also confirmed it and told that a customized solution is used here but he never mentioned any sound quality differences as a result. (Since he does not use roon himself)

Again, no scientific proof this will indeed make a difference to sound quality or not hence I suggest people to try it. I honestly would not have a clue what exactly RAAT does that impact the sound but it makes a pretty significant difference to my ears.

 

I don’t think that RAAT is even used, as the setup process is different to RAAT (Roon ready) devices. No uPnP either, though, as Roon doesn’t support that, so it must be something special on both sides.

Anyway, as much as I don’t believe there can be a difference as long as the DAC isn’t connected to the computer HQPlayer is running on (and even then, depends), if you hear something, don’t use Roon for critical listening. It’s as simple as that, I don’t think we have to fight about this.

 

I do use output NAA to a dac, (fitlet3 for my main system and RPI4 for my other 3 systems) but the differences I suspect is potentially to do with the difference in process before it hits hqplayer and the output NAA. Roon RAAT vs upnp vs simply streaming directly from hqp client app.

again, I am throwing this out as a suggestion only because there are quite a large group of people with similar observations. Obviously it’s great for others who don’t notice it!!! Roon + hqplayer is a match in heaven if the sq clicks for you!!