[plumpudding2]

Stopping by to share my journey into HQPlayer. I've spent the majority of my time trying to optimize for DSD512 playback according to my taste. Since putting this together, I've already stumbled upon setting "Bits" to "20" for my Spring 3. Hopefully this can help some MacOS users. I've included my Hardware info so people can compare apples to apples. As far as DSD goes for most tracks I've tested, this sounds amazing. I'm still chasing the magic combination for the realism that you get in NOS on the Spring 3.

I posted this a while earlier but if you're chasing that NOS spring/may sound I've found the polynomial-1 and polynomial-2 filters in PCM to be a kind of 'enhanced' nos. Maybe something to try!

 

[LoryWiv]

Check your settings in the advanced tab.



Tick [x] Multicore DSP. Try with both Cuda offload fully ticked (like on my picture) and unticked. Both are tri-state checkboxes. Ticked is like on my picture.

HQPlayer users usually use higher performance graphic cards. If the GPU is slower than the algoirithms running on CPU expect, CPU then needs to wait for GPU. Therefore I suggested to try two different CUDA offload settings.

For CUDA offload really to work you need to have the latest nVidia drivers installed for your card. If CUDA offload works, after starting playback you see for few seconds on HQPlayer Desktop status line (bottom line) such a message:



Important is the 1st part resampler=enabled.

Then, set DSP pipelines to 8 (like on my picture) to lower RAM usage.

If that wouldn't help, maybe your CPU clock is not enough high. What is your CPU exact model? i7 doesn't tell much since many i7 generations exist.

I'm assuming you are running Windows...

Hi @bogi, thanks for the tip re.: DSP pipeline. For my learning curve, is there any potential downside to setting it manually to 8 rather than allowing default setting, or use case situations where one would need a setting >8?

Thanks!

 

[dericchan1]

Hi @bogi, thanks for the tip re.: DSP pipeline. For my learning curve, is there any potential downside to setting it manually to 8 rather than allowing default setting, or use case situations where one would need a setting >8?

Thanks!

If you are attempting to set pipeline to 8 to address the dac correction setting. The latest hqplayer desktop version had already the memory and cpu resource issue

 

[LoryWiv]

If you are attempting to set pipeline to 8 to address the dac correction setting. The latest hqplayer desktop version had already the memory and cpu resource issue

Got it, thanks @dericchan1. I have deferred using DAC correction thus far, so therefore it may be best to leave DSD pipeline at default, correct?

 

[dericchan1]

Got it, thanks @dericchan1. I have deferred using DAC correction thus far, so therefore it may be best to leave DSD pipeline at default,

Enabling dac correction will work now even not setting the pipeline to 8 under the advance settings

 

[photobillyli]

I have spent a week comparing different filters for the SDM of pop musics. It was initially a frustrating process due to the vast number of filters available. However, I managed to narrow it down to around 10 recommended filters for pop music and some filters that I wanna try. I compared each one individually, and whenever I noticed anything unpleasant from a particular filter, I eliminated it from consideration. After a few days, only the filters from the poly-sinc-gauss family remained. There were moments at night when I was so tired that I couldn't distinguish between a few filters, but the next day, I could clearly identify and eliminate the less suitable ones.

In the end, the poly-sinc-gauss-short filter emerged as the best choice for my music chain in the context of pop music. I am now quite confident in declaring it as the optimal filter. BTW, I found ASDM7ECv2 the best to me, not the v3 or -super or -light versions.

Soon, I will begin searching for the best filters for classical/instrumental music.

 

[plumpudding2]

I have spent a week comparing different filters for the SDM of pop musics. It was initially a frustrating process due to the vast number of filters available. However, I managed to narrow it down to around 10 recommended filters for pop music and some filters that I wanna try. I compared each one individually, and whenever I noticed anything unpleasant from a particular filter, I eliminated it from consideration. After a few days, only the filters from the poly-sinc-gauss family remained. There were moments at night when I was so tired that I couldn't distinguish between a few filters, but the next day, I could clearly identify and eliminate the less suitable ones.

In the end, the poly-sinc-gauss-short filter emerged as the best choice for my music chain in the context of pop music. I am now quite confident in declaring it as the optimal filter. BTW, I found ASDM7ECv2 the best to me, not the v3 or -super or -light versions.

Soon, I will begin searching for the best filters for classical/instrumental music.

Totally agree on gauss-short! I have a small hunch you will end up with poly-sinc-gauss-xla for classical/instrumental

 

[bogi]

Got it, thanks @dericchan1. I have deferred using DAC correction thus far, so therefore it may be best to leave DSD pipeline at default, correct?

The Desktop version 5.7.0 contains a memory allocation bug and hence the setting of 8 to workaround it. That bug does not add to CPU utilization, it just eats RAM unnecessarily. It is present if you have enabled Matrix pipeline processing, regardless on using DAC corrections or not.
Setting to 8 cannot be wrong in any case if you don't need more than 8 pipelines (you are probably using none).
It's probably already fixed in 5.7.1.

 

[Failed Engineer]

Totally agree on gauss-short!

Agreed. To me the best pop filters are easily poly-sinc-gauss-short and poly-sinc-xtr-short-mp. I swap between the two of them.

 

[dericchan1]

Agreed. To me the best pop filters are easily poly-sinc-gauss-short and poly-sinc-xtr-short-mp. I swap between the two of them.

Agreed on both but recently preparing the poly-sinc xtr short mp or the xtr short lp a bit more

 

[Darion]

Strange situation.

Hqplayer (5.7) at a certain point (a few days ago) started playing slower than usual, by 10-15 percent. A complete reinstall didn’t help.

Any filter with minimal modulators and a length of 512. Doesn’t change anything.

Before this everything worked fine, my PC is 13700/32gb/4090.

Tested with roon (on a separate nuc 11 i7 server), and through integration with qobuz on a PC where hqplayer is installed.

Dac - Chord Hugo TT 2, connected to PC usb. where is hqplayer.

Where to look for the problem?

 

[bogi]

Where to look for the problem?

That can happen with incorrectly implemented 48k DSD support in some DACs when [x] 48k DSD is checked. Some DACs don't refuse to play content sent them at 48k DSD rates but they play it at a slower rate in ratio 44.1/48, since they don't switch the base clock as needed when DSD output is selected.

Check your HQPlayer settings and think about 44.1k / 48k sample rate families.

 

[Darion]

That can happen with incorrectly implemented 48k DSD support in some DACs when [x] 48k DSD is checked. Some DACs don't refuse to play content sent them at 48k DSD rates but they play it at a slower rate in ratio 44.1/48, since they don't switch the base clock as needed when DSD output is selected.

Check your HQPlayer settings and think about 44.1k / 48k sample rate families.

Yes, you were right. Thanks for the help.

 

[daverich4]

Enabling dac correction will work now even not setting the pipeline to 8 under the advance settings

Nope, not for me. It wouldn’t play at all when set to default but would play when set to 8, however with dropouts every couple of seconds. Upgrading to the latest version had no effect on the dropouts.

 

[bogi]

Nope, not for me. It wouldn’t play at all when set to default but would play when set to 8, however with dropouts every couple of seconds. Upgrading to the latest version had no effect on the dropouts.

In such cases more help is possible only if you provide more information (computer specs, HQPlayer settings).
See https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hqp...-settings-rolling-thread.968141/post-18106669