HQ Player from Signalyst ...

joeinid

joeinid

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Since I now have my dac situation sorted out, I am starting to try different players (again). I just tried HQ Player for the first time and it sounds amazing. Interface is a little sparse but the sound is beyond what I have heard so far. I have not even scratched the surface yet with DSD or any upsampling.


Signalyst
 
I recently downloaded the HQ player 3.7.1 because I was not happy with the sound of upconverted music above 192 with JRiver. HQ player sounds much better than JRiver. Music has more texture and detail. The depth and weight of the music is better. I found that as I went up in rez above 192 with JR, bass would get weaker. HQ does not do this. The down side of HQ is the user interface which is a little clunky. By the way, the beta version of 3.8 is available.

Does any one know of a remote user interface for a tablet for HQ Player ?. I have an android based tablet and J Remote and Gizmo work just fine for JRiver.
 
Mechnutt said:
I recently downloaded the HQ player 3.7.1 because I was not happy with the sound of upconverted music above 192 with JRiver. HQ player sounds much better than JRiver. Music has more texture and detail. The depth and weight of the music is better. I found that as I went up in rez above 192 with JR, bass would get weaker. HQ does not do this. The down side of HQ is the user interface which is a little clunky. By the way, the beta version of 3.8 is available.

Does any one know of a remote user interface for a tablet for HQ Player ?. I have an android based tablet and J Remote and Gizmo work just fine for JRiver.
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From what I read over on CA which is where the developer "Miska" post a lot . "A client for HQPlayer does not exist"
 
Audioseduction said:
You mean you make your track selections by getting up and walk over to your server to make yuor selections?
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Yes, there is no remote app to allow you to control it with a smart phone or tablet like JRiver. Sometimes I am a lazy fart after work and I just want to have a drink, sit down and veg out to music.
 
Mechnutt said:
Yes, there is no remote app to allow you to control it with a smart phone or tablet like JRiver. Sometimes I am a lazy fart after work and I just want to have a drink, sit down and veg out to music.
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Well that's a deal breaker for me. I will stick with JRiver it works extreamly well for me and it has a few remote apps for it. I use JRemote on my IPad.
 
Audioseduction said:
Well that's a deal breaker for me. I will stick with JRiver it works extreamly well for me and it has a few remote apps for it. I use JRemote on my IPad.
Click to expand...
Wait for the ROON integration at Summe'rs end. Should solve all your apprehensions.
 
HQ Player sounds best on i7 Surface Pro 3. Up sampling DSD directly to the iFi iMicro DAC's native USB driver yields best results with CPU utilisation approx 30%. (better than JPlay intermediate layer which cannot go as high as the iFi driver.)

What I have discovered is that Upsampled DSD sounds better but Upsampled PCM does not.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Steve said:
HQ Player sounds best on i7 Surface Pro 3. Up sampling DSD directly to the iFi iMicro DAC's native USB driver yields best results with CPU utilisation approx 30%. (better than JPlay intermediate layer which cannot go as high as the iFi driver.)

What I have discovered is that Upsampled DSD sounds better but Upsampled PCM does not.
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Hi Steve,

Sorry, I pushed the wrong button and edited your post. I think I fixed it and put it back like it was.



Have you upsampled PCM to DSD? I like it but have not critically analyzed it.
 
You might want to take a look at Muso as a front end for HQ Player. It does not have a remote app, but does have a web interface that can be used from phones or tablets. I don't use HQ Player, but Muso does support the software.

http://klarita.net/muso.html
 
Hi Joe... Have not tried a PCM to DSD up sample conversion on the fly. Hope to play with the iFi Micro stack this week.

The Nano + iPurifer + Mercury USB was a nice traveller coupled with the Surface Pro and Sennheiser PXC 450!
 
Does hqplayer allow you to convert pcm to dsd and save as a permanent file like jriver. Would be fantastic to use conversion power of hqplayer to make permanent files.
 
No, upsampling and conversion is realtime.

if you are not careful with the configuration settings, it can be detrimental. Eg a DSD to PCM down sample.
 
joeinid said:
Hi Steve,

Sorry, I pushed the wrong button and edited your post. I think I fixed it and put it back like it was.



Have you upsampled PCM to DSD? I like it but have not critically analyzed it.
Click to expand...



I have been doing PCM to DSD on the fly on HQP. I find that some music sounds great at DSD and others sound better at 384,192 and 96K. Playing around with the Modulator settings makes a difference. Again, the different Modulator settings sound better with different types of Music. I was talking to one of the guys on CA who very experienced with HQ player and he brought up the point of finding the sweet spot of you DAC, whether it be DSD or 4x, 8x upsampling. I think that this is true to some extent.

Frequency rates above 96K sound much better on HQ than JR in my rig. And DSD with HQ player makes JR DSD sound midfi.

What settings are you guys using for HQP?


For PCM I am using N5S for dither, Poly Sinc for filter and -3dB for max volume. For DSD I am using Poly-Sinc for Upsampling, ADSM-7 and DSD-7 for Modulator depending upon the music, SDM set to none, SDM pipeline unchecked.
 
Here are my settings which push the DSD oversampling to DSD256. Pushing the Bitrate to DSD512 taxes my CPU on an un-optimized stock Surface Pro3. The DAC switches up but the PC stream is compromised.

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