[kennyb123]

I find it amusing as well when people comment on PGGBs subjective performace (PCM and now DSD) yet lack the hardware that avoids internal dac conversions modulatiors and oversampling.

The conclusion that should be drawn from that is that the improvements PGGB offers must be awfully profound if even that is not enough to keep them from being observed. Further, the improvements should be even more profound with DACs that offer a pure path for DSD. I think we will soon see many reporting that this is what they’ve observed.

The reason I began monitoring the Gustard A26 thread is because I was considering making the move to it. Switching DACs is no big deal - people do it all the time. I know for certain now that my next DAC will be one that offers a pure DSD path, but it won’t be the A26 because I don’t have a preamp. More likely it will be the T+A DAC200. The really nice thing is that PGGB-DSD provides me a nice some benefit now while also positioning me well for getting even more from my next DAC. The same can be said of my investment in a music server that also allows me to run HQPlayer, which I use when streaming from Qobuz.

 

[Ghoostknight]

just if someone is curious, i used a aune x8 before and preferred DSD with it but i have since a few days a black lion revolution 2x2 interface , it only supports PCM, so its hard to compare but somehow with the older CS chip the PCM playback of the BLA interface is pretty close in terms of smoothness to what i got with DSD and the Aune x8 (and even better in some ways and overall)

so the dac (or dac chip) is definitely crucial here and what it does to the PCM or DSD signal i think, for ESS dacs its pretty clear that DSD sounds better

 

[camrector]

It doesn’t push any rate on any DAC. It gives people the option to choose the rate. Same as HQPlayer.

Sorry you didn’t pick up on my slang.
There are multiple threads all over the interwebs where the developers recommend using the highest rates possible for PGGBDSD. And of course they would. It’s their highest priced program. They never post a dac output measurement to back these claims tho.

But we have seen time and time again from actual measurements of higher rates not performing as well as lower rates. Thats on the majority of dsd direct dacs.

What sense does it make to ask a member of the trade to ask about a competitor’s product?

Well that’s what’s strange and a bit shady. They weren't a competitor for years. @jlaako answered tons of their questions and provided a great deal of guidance.

“The PGGB dev actually mentioned he's not implemented DSD because Jussi's HQP modulators are so good that he can't improve on them.”
Just over a year ago this was said. Shady.

Jussi has been working with and developing dsd for over 30years.You think PGGB developers discovered some better implementation in less than a year and a half?!

I was one of those people who thought DSD was inferior - and I said so many times. I formed that opinion based on DSD from SACDs and DSD as a scaled output from HQPlayer.

And you were listening to dsd ( N multi-level SDM) the whole entire time with the conversion process of your dac!! That must of really blew your hair back when you learned that!

The conclusion that should be drawn from that is that the improvements PGGB offers must be awfully profound if even that is not enough to keep them from being observed.

No im going to say your confirmation bias is the cause of whatever you think you are hearing because your PGGB has been decimated, converted and remodulated by your esspro dac. Might perform a bit better with a DSD signal but still not ideal.
I highly recommend the A26. Direct dsd, built in renderer with NAA. LAN input. Performs the best at dsd256. T+A dac200 performs best at dsd256 as well despite whatever the PGGB developers are pushing.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

[EMINENT]

Helo.

Please.
Let us not get sidetracked with deviations out of topic.
Or even PCM vs DSD which are merely tools towards end product.
Of which those that may impede the progression of HQP.
There are better areas of focus and more pressing matters.
Such as:
DSD 2048 when?

 

[dericchan1]

Helo.

Please.
Let us not get sidetracked with deviations out of topic.
Or even PCM vs DSD which are merely tools towards end product.
Of which those that may impede the progression of HQP.
There are better areas of focus and more pressing matters.
Such as:
DSD 2048 when?

I think the more pressing matter is when will the next hqplayer desktop version come out that will allow switching of pcm/sdm and sampling rates on the fly!!!! I have been patiently/inpatiently looking forward to that!!

 

[kennyb123]

Sorry you didn’t pick up on my slang.
There are multiple threads all over the interwebs where the developers recommend using the highest rates possible for PGGBDSD. And of course they would. It’s their highest priced program. They never post a dac output measurement to back these claims tho.

That was what was recommended when PGGP only output PCM. The guidance has changed with DSD. You should ask before leaping to conclusions.

It’s ridiculous to post measurements at the output unless measurements can be devised that would illustrate the improvements. But that’s no needed as PGGB aims to cater to audiophiles who use their ears. That’s why a free trial is offered.

As far as objective performance, PGGB may have been the first upscaling program that actually allows one to generate plots showing the objective performance metrics of the selected noise shaper and resampling method using either standard test signals or music. He’s even posted some of these graphs on his website. I’ve heard his competitors talk about their objective performance but (to the best of my knowledge) they haven’t been as transparent about it.

I really didn’t come here to pitch PGGB. I actually hate that I have to gum up this thread like this, but I couldn’t let your misstatements go unanswered. I suspect you may have just helped PGGB get some attention that it wouldn’t have otherwise received. Hopefully that leads to a few licenses being sold (I don’t profit).

Jussi has been working with and developing dsd for over 30years.You think PGGB developers discovered some better implementation in less than a year and a half?!

You repeatedly speak from ignorance. The developer had a professional career that had him working with the sampling theories for years (I think it was two decades but my memory is fuzzy). His deep professional expertise is what made it possible for PGGB to win over so many listeners right out of the gate. Report after report were shared from folks who stated that they preferred PGGB over both HQPlayer and MScaler immediately after PGGB was made available for sale. Several of us actually sold our MScalers after hearing it.

And you were listening to dsd ( N multi-level SDM) the whole entire time with the conversion process of your dac!! That must of really blew your hair back when you learned that!

No it didn’t because none of that proves anything. You embarrass yourself because there are many HQPlayer users who have reported positive benefits using HQPlayer with their ESS-based DACs. I license HQPlayer for that very reason.

You hold an outlier view. It’s astonishing that you think you know better about a DAC you don’t even own than those who do. A man of integrity would at least try to hear these things for himself before taking a firm stance.

No im going to say your confirmation bias is the cause of whatever you think you are hearing because your PGGB has been decimated, converted and remodulated by your esspro dac. Might perform a bit better with a DSD signal but still not ideal.

It’s you who is showing that your bias speaks for you. You refuse to even evaluate PGGB on your own - instead you look to Jussi to tell you what you should hear and what you should think. You mostly just repeat his talking points but you don’t understand them enough to actually argue them convincingly.

I highly recommend the A26. Direct dsd, built in renderer with NAA. LAN input.

I appreciate your recommendation and I’m sure it’s a wonderful DAC. I actually got as far as adding one to my Amazon cart. I was bummed when I learned that the volume control doesn’t work with DSD direct. I had kind of hoped it had an analog volume control.

 

[gammi]

I think the more pressing matter is when will the next hqplayer desktop version come out that will allow switching of pcm/sdm and sampling rates on the fly!!!! I have been patiently/inpatiently looking forward to that!!

Is this actually coming? I would love that.

 

[Rayon]

IMO one big thing that HQP teached to me is that there are many kind of filters, noise shapers and modulators and all of them sound different and different people have different preferences. My analysis of the situation is that some group of people choose products because of measurements and assume that all the people do the same. That's why we have arguments like: "you think you hear x, because you've been influenced by y". However, for many this is about sound. When I hear about some new toy in town, I get intrigued and try it in my system. If I don't like it, I move on. If there is something I like, then I start to dig deeper on what are the potential variables that are in play as those lead me towards the system that best matches my preferences.

I don't believe that anyone who is 1) willing and 2) capable to build a high-end setup around PGGB/HQP running after arguments or seeking the last decimal in measurements. It's a lot of work and gray hairs. Learning about science and theories behind design philosophies is interesting and part of the fun, but the preference is not tied to measurements (although there is often strong correlation up to certain point). Preference is preference and many of us are slaves of it (willingly). That's the source of fun. I'd love to base my preference on just measurements as then I could had just kept the first dac I bought 15 years ago and just listened to flacs. The reason for using this hardware and software isn't about seeking the ultimate gadget that performs best in front of a measurement device. It's about the ultimate sound that matches the given preference. PGGB and HQP both deliver, but there is no one tool to rule them all.

 

[Solasuke]

Dear @jlaako

I'd appreciate your help with a problem I'm having please. I can't seem to get my holo red working as a NAA endpoint, attempting with both Red OS and RopieeXL. When I launch the NAA daemon (500), I get this repeated sort of error message come up:

The only outputs listed in HQPlayer under the NAA option are those 5 ASIO output drivers which don't point anywhere real. I don't know what I'm missing about the setup (perhaps the NAAd has to be in a particular directory?). I have disabled and reenabled just about every config I can think of in Roon and through the Holo Red.

Your help is greatly appreciated!

 

[plumpudding2]

Digitally encoded sampled signal is not band limited. The signal represented by digital samples consists of infinite number of spectral replicas (images) of base band.

Picture source:


Do D/A conversion without proper filtering and you will get these images at analog output. They are best visible at NOS DAC output, when only slow DAC analog filter is in action, so that the filter is able to cut the nearest images only partially. Look at the 1st graph here, it shows what brings 0 - 22.05k sweep at DAC output in NOS mode (output scale is up to 5 MHz):



You see series of audio band images, their amplitude is lowered by shape of DAC analog filter. That's in reality what you called band limited signal! One needs to distinguish encoding of digital signal samples and the signal itself.

I've been thinking about this point. You posted this to demonstrate that since the digitised music signal has infinite bandwith, the dac filter will necessarily have to ring to turn it into a band-limited signal again.

I completely agree, but I was thinking about the mystical ideal case where the recording started its life perfectly band-limited.
If you take this perfect recording and then use the Shannon-Whittaker interpolation formula (since we're thinking about the ideal case) as a reconstruction filter you would get the exact original signal back (the math doesn't lie).
However even this perfect recording would have infinite bandwith in its digitised form. Reconstructing it using the S-W interpolation formula the filter will ring infinitely since the filter is infinite in length.

The paradoxical thing here is that we have an infinitely ringing perfect filter that reconstructs the original signal exactly, it must logically follow that this ringing is part of the reconstruction or in other words adding lots of ringing together gives you the not-ringing original signal.

I know that real-life recordings are not perfectly band-limited and that's why you want a shorter filter but i'm still curious if there's a flaw in the above reasoning.

 

[jlaako]

DSD 2048 when?

HQPlayer has supported DSD2048 for several years. Just DAC has been missing. And I'm not sure if such would provide any improvements. USB Audio Class is not really fit for the purpose though. DSD1024 is already exceeding the specs. So it would need network interface, or using custom USB implementation like exaSound is doing.

Current technical output rate limit is 2^32, so a bit over 4 GHz.

It’s ridiculous to post measurements at the output unless measurements can be devised that would illustrate the improvements.

That's what I've been doing for past couple of decades.

I’ve heard his competitors talk about their objective performance but (to the best of my knowledge) they haven’t been as transparent about it.

I've been at least posting a lot of measurements from DAC outputs displaying the improvements. That's what I do all the time, since that's primary focus area of HQPlayer development. That's why I have plenty of expensive measurement gear and tens of different DACs.

You repeatedly speak from ignorance. The developer had a professional career that had him working with the sampling theories for years (I think it was two decades but my memory is fuzzy).

Yet likes to stay anonymous. Who are the persons and the company behind this one? Just curious.

You embarrass yourself because there are many HQPlayer users who have reported positive benefits using HQPlayer with their ESS-based DACs. I license HQPlayer for that very reason.

And I've posted a lot of measurement results displaying these benefits. Also works nicely on latest ES9039 chips:

But some of the important things don't describe much as graphs. For example, do you understand from these plots below why the two filters sound different? Why they sound different and what is the technical effect in question? Which one is better for what? I don't expect that all HQPlayer users would be able to read into a lot of technical babble. So instead I rather explain it. This is very fundamental.

I don't want to have the website or manual written for engineers...

I'd appreciate your help with a problem I'm having please. I can't seem to get my holo red working as a NAA endpoint, attempting with both Red OS and RopieeXL.

Have you tried with NAA OS? I don't have experience with RopieeeXL. But I know it needs to be enabled in Red OS. If it is connected to your home network and up, it should appear in HQPlayer, at last the DDC side, but also the DAC if you have connected such to the USB. You could also try the IPv6 backend, it usually finds endpoints more reliably.

When I launch the NAA daemon (500), I get this repeated sort of error message come up:



The only outputs listed in HQPlayer under the NAA option are those 5 ASIO output drivers which don't point anywhere real. I don't know what I'm missing about the setup (perhaps the NAAd has to be in a particular directory?). I have disabled and reenabled just about every config I can think of in Roon and through the Holo Red.

You shouldn't need to launch the NAA daemon locally on your Windows machine, it is the NAA endpoint binary. It is already running in your Holo Red (at least if you booted NAA OS there).

 

[dericchan1]

Is this actually coming? I would love that.

Of course it is coming. Latest embedded version already supports it

 

[gammi]

Of course it is coming. Latest embedded version already supports it

Oh, I don't use the embedded version and thus I don't follow the updates for it. I didn't know that, thanks.

 

[dericchan1]

Oh, I don't use the embedded version and thus I don't follow the updates for it. I didn't know that, thanks.

Yes I am also using desktop version hence patiently waiting hahahaha

 

[camrector]

That was what was recommended when PGGP only output PCM. The guidance has changed with DSD. You should ask before leaping to conclusions

“PGGB Max: Supports PCM rates up to 64fS with 256-bit precision and DSD rates up to DSD1024. Similarly, for most sigma-delta DACs, the highest DSD rate, often DSD512 with a 9th order modulator, will likely outperform 16fS PCM at 256 bit precision. For R2R DACs like Holo or Denafrips that can handle DSD1024, we have found that DSD1024 delivers superior sound quality compared to 32fS PCM.” -ZB

“For T+A DAC200, what would be the best choice for SQ from a designer's point of view?
Answer- “From a pure reconstruction accuracy perspective, DSD1024 *should* provide the best results.” -ZB

I’m not leaping to any conclusions. These and many more are directly from the developer. Jussi can easily show where these statements are wrong from measurements.

It’s ridiculous to post measurements at the output unless measurements can be devised that would illustrate the improvements.

@jlaako answered this. He has been doing this for years. Geez by now there are hundreds of posted measurements illustrating what filters are doing and for what DACs. Like these multi ones of your desired T&A Dac200:

Draw whatever subjective conclusions you like. The important part is seeing what effects are happening and how your dac is performing AT THE OUTPUT.

No it didn’t because none of that proves anything. You embarrass yourself because there are many HQPlayer users who have reported positive benefits using HQPlayer with their ESS-based DACs.

The point being you admitted to trashing DSD yet were listening to it the whole time. Lol
I have never said there isn’t positive benefits.
Maybe I do hold an outlier view. How can one have an accurate reference or hold a valued opinion of something’s performance when they have 20 variables in the way?
One of your so called “useless” output measurements could help a little but you would still have to state “x filter and y modulator plus the effects of Ess decimation and modulation is why I hear what I hear”
I like things simple. Nothing in the way to change, alter, or undo.
You’ll see once you go direct what something really sounds like.

You refuse to even evaluate PGGB

Between the two of us, sounds like Im the only one that has heard PGGB unaltered. Lol. Wasnt a fan. Digital glare and etching from what I now know as excessive ringing. Sounded a lot like chord with the bad parts of Ess chips added. Thats my subjective take. I asked about the new DSD to see if it was even worth my time, and if the issues it causes has been addressed. Jussi clearly answered my questions and how it pertains to dsd and HQplayer. Unfortunately looks like moderators deleted that post. So nope, my goals do not align with creating more problems that I’ll need to address later.
I’ve spent enough time here talking about something I care nothing about.
Only responding to address the personal attacks and insults you continue to make towards me.