HQPlayer - Better Than a $5,000 Upscaler?

**joeinid** · March 19, 2021, 12:19 AM

HQPlayer - Better Than a $5,000 Upscaler? - Audio Bacon

**Randy Myers** · March 19, 2021, 12:07 PM

Interesting article. He confirms what I was hearing, that Roon with HQPlayer is better than Roon by itself. It sounds like he feels the Hugo M Scaler is ever so slightly better but also seemed to be impressed with HQPlayer. It sounds like for an absolute reference, price be dammed system the Hugo is better, but for anything but that level HQPlayer is well worth considering. So basically HQPlayer at $260 gives the $5000 dedicated scaler a serious run for its money!

**W9TR** · March 19, 2021, 08:15 PM

Interesting review. I learned that:
The Author really likes Chord gear.
Midrange can coagulate.
Roon direct sounds better than HQPlayer direct.(no upsampling)
HQPlayer sounds better than Roon Player when upsampling.
What wasn’t clear is that somewhere along the line he switched from USB to coax for the final comparison. That seems to be an odd methodology.

The discussion of filters was really interesting. I’ve said with properly designed digital we are listening to the noise shapers, dither, and anti-aliasing filters. The article appears to confirm that view.

**Vincent Kars** · March 22, 2021, 03:53 PM

I most of all wonder how this is going to work.
You have a media player, set it to up-sample, use a specific filter, etc and send this to your DAC.
Except in the rare case you have a filter less NOS DAC, all will be resampled and filtered again as all non-NOS DACs are up/oversampling and have their own filters as well.
So why should SQ improve if I resample and filter 2 times?

**crwilli** · March 22, 2021, 07:53 PM

I have played with HQPlayer and EOON on my system.

Am I correct in concluding that HQ Player can only be used with a XLR/USB/RCA output from your PC?

**nicoff** · March 23, 2021, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by crwilli

I have played with HQPlayer and EOON on my system.

Am I correct in concluding that HQ Player can only be used with a XLR/USB/RCA output from your PC?

PCs typically do not have XLR or RCA analog outputs unless you have added a DAC in your PC that have those connections.
You can send any kind of digital signal from your PC to an external DAC via AES, Coaxial, Toslink, or USB as long as your computer has those types of outputs. All computers have USB connections; the others are less common. USB allows DSD512 (which is a reason why many folks use HQP), so USB to your DAC is likely the most used.

**crwilli** · March 23, 2021, 10:32 AM

I use a Network based RoON endpoint so HQ Player doesn’t work for me.

**Vincent Kars** · March 23, 2021, 10:56 AM

Originally Posted by crwilli

Am I correct in concluding that HQ Player can only be used with a XLR/USB/RCA output from your PC?

Like any other media player it supports the audio devices you can connect to a PC.
Unlike most media players, it also offers NAA, Signalist own network protocol.
This allows you to send the audio over the network to a NAA enabled device like Sonore Rendu etc.
See Signalyst

**crwilli** · March 23, 2021, 12:23 PM

Originally Posted by Vincent Kars

Like any other media player it supports the audio devices you can connect to a PC.
Unlike most media players, it also offers NAA, Signalist own network protocol.
This allows you to send the audio over the network to a NAA enabled device like Sonore Rendu etc.
See Signalyst

So I can configure HQ Player to output via my Network to my Bricasti M21 endpoint?

**Vincent Kars** · March 23, 2021, 01:56 PM

If you feed it using any device in this list

Devices with built-in NAA:
aqua LinQ
exaSound s88 Streaming DAC
T+A SDV 3100 HV
Sonore microRendu/ultraRendu as a NAA
SOtM sMS-200/sMS-200ultra/sMS-1000SQ as a NAA
StackAudio Link II
exaSound PlayPointDM/Sigma Streamer/Gamma Server
totaldac d1-streame

**nicoff** · March 23, 2021, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by crwilli

So I can configure HQ Player to output via my Network to my Bricasti M21 endpoint?

I don’t see why not. I noticed that the Bricasti also has both a USB port and a Ethernet port.
Just to be sure, go to the HQPlayer forum in the Roon community website. The developer of HQP participates there all the time.

**Puma Cat** · March 23, 2021, 11:14 PM

I sure wish I could get HQPlayer to work in my system with Roon and my SMS-200 UltraNeo.

I can toggle HQPlayer to "on" in my local.Eunhasu page, but I can't get HQ Player to show consistently in Roon.

And, when it does...I can't get music to play out of it.

**wklie** · March 23, 2021, 11:21 PM

Originally Posted by nicoff

I don’t see why not.

I don't see how it can work if the requirement is "via Network". From what I found from google, I don't think the device in question supports NAA.

**Randy Myers** · March 24, 2021, 12:34 PM

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

I sure wish I could get HQPlayer to work in my system with Roon and my SMS-200 UltraNeo.

I can toggle HQPlayer to "on" in my local.Eunhasu page, but I can't get HQ Player to show consistently in Roon.

And, when it does...I can't get music to play out of it.

Not sure on this one. HQPlayer is handled differently then other zones in Roon. Since it is basically the engine that Roon hands off to and is actually added to Roon rather than simply being setup as a zone, in my understanding, and I do not claim to completely understand how your device works, but in my understanding and how I use it, HQPlayer is installed and configured on the same machine as the Roon Core. I do not believe an end point is the same thing but rather that HQPlayer is integrated more as the actual playback engine in conjunction with Roon. I am also 100% sure that I probably just added more confusion

.

**Alkyogre** · March 26, 2021, 04:11 PM

Does anyone know what kind of pc is needed for DSD conversion in HQplayer? was looking for a list with all these filters and recommended specs.

**nicoff** · March 26, 2021, 04:58 PM

Originally Posted by Alkyogre

Does anyone know what kind of pc is needed for DSD conversion in HQplayer? was looking for a list with all these filters and recommended specs.

I suggest that you go to the Roon Labs community forums and check out the HQP group discussions. The developer of HQP is a contributor there.

**Randy Myers** · March 26, 2021, 05:05 PM

Watching resources with HQPlayer I believe it is more CPU intensive than most other programs. My currently machine is a i7 which has eight sperate core (actual cores not threads). All eight appears to be used an equal amount. They do not get thrashed but are all being used. Other filters may push the CPU's even more.

I highly recommend SSD drives or even better M.2 drives. Speed, no moving parts, low power usage... did I say fast

.

16 to 32 GB RAM should be plenty.

HQPlayer can also use the processing power of Cuda cores (nvidia video cards). I have choose to not use this function even though I have an extra nvidia card. Their cards usually use quite a bit of power (two power connectors) and anything worth considering will have multiple fans.

**dminches** · March 27, 2021, 07:26 AM

Originally Posted by Alkyogre

Does anyone know what kind of pc is needed for DSD conversion in HQplayer? was looking for a list with all these filters and recommended specs.

There is an entire thread here that discusses that. And there are other threads there as well.

Thread: HQPlayer - Better Than a $5,000 Upscaler?

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