HQ Player

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bluegrassphile

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As many of you know, I'm a relative newb to home/high end audio. I've been away from it for 40+ years. So I'm in the learning phase of not only high end audio but high tech audio. It's with that in mind that I ask some questions.

I stream all my music through Qobuz, Tidal, and Amazon HD. Is HQ Player something I should consider? I keep reading where it has superior SQ to other media players. Is it difficult to pair with Roon? Do any of you currently run HQ Player with Roon? Anything else I need to know about it?
 
bluegrassphile said:
As many of you know, I'm a relative newb to home/high end audio. I've been away from it for 40+ years. So I'm in the learning phase of not only high end audio but high tech audio. It's with that in mind that I ask some questions.

I stream all my music through Qobuz, Tidal, and Amazon HD. Is HQ Player something I should consider? I keep reading where it has superior SQ to other media players. Is it difficult to pair with Roon? Do any of you currently run HQ Player with Roon? Anything else I need to know about it?
Click to expand...

Q1. "Is HQ Player something I should consider?"
A1. Yes.

Q2. "I keep reading where it has superior SQ to other media players. Is it difficult to pair with Roon? Do any of you currently run HQ Player with Roon?"
A2. I use HQP with Roon. Any music service that works with Roon (Tidal, Qobuz) will work with HQP. I have run Roon/Tidal/Qobuz/HQP with no issues. AFAIK, HQP does not work with Amazon HD (certainly not through Roon since Roon does not support Amazon HD). It is not difficult to pair HQP with Roon, in fact, Roon gives you an option to enable HQP. The advantage of HQP over Roon is that HQP gives you a lot of flexibility to play around with different filters that DO affect the sound. However... see next answer.

Q3. "Anything else I need to know about it?"
A3. Unfortunately, HQP is not plug-and-play (at least at first). Setting it up the first time requires a learning curve that can be frustrating for many folks. If you are not afraid of computers/tech you can make it work. And once you get it to work and have it set to your liking, it does becomes plug-and-play in that it will run in the background and you do not have to worry about it anymore. Keep in mind that in order to get the best from HQP, you need a powerful computer to run it and often need to carefully select the equipment that you are going to pair it with. (That means that those nucleus computers from Roon do not qualify). The developer of HQP is a regular contributor to Roon community forums (there is the HQPlayer forum there) and will provide timely answers to any questions from users.
 
I also use HQPlayer. It is pretty amazing and I consider it the finest playback engine out there. It works excellently with Roon! Roon literally has a HQPlayer zone available in their setup. I have directly compared Roon playback versus Roon -> HQPlayer. HQPlayer is better. HQPlayer does an amazing job at up-sampling also. I have all my music up-sampled to DSD512/48... which is 24.6 Mhz.

So for me Roon is the controller and meta data provider and HQPlayer is the playback engine. As Nico said there is a bit of learning in HQPlayer setup however. It is not terribly difficult.

Now for the downside; HQPlayer does not work with everything. It really works best with a robust Windows based computer. Yes, there are Linux and Mac versions but they usually do not have the same capability as a Windows machine does. Native DSD support is essential if you want to up-sample to DSD256, DSD512, or DSD1024 depending on your DAC's capability. To get to above DoP (DSD over PCM, max capacity is DSD128), in other words native DSD, a USB connection is used.

I am not sure and I rather doubt that your Roon server can be used with HQPlayer... I have not heard of anyone having any success with using HQPlayer on the customized operating system that is used on the Roon machine. I am not saying that this is impossible, but I am saying I have never seen it actually working on a Nucleus server.
 
i too am interested in learning more about HQP so thanks for starting this thread.

as a supplement to this thread, there was a tangential but lengthy discussion of HQP, integration with roon, necessary hardware, etc in this thread:

On the future of Roon...
 
My understanding is also that you will need to either connect your DAC directly to the computer where HQ Player is running, or to get a bridge that supports the HQPlayer Network Audio Adapter (NAA) protocol to place before the DAC. Someone more experienced can correct me or provide more details.
 
NekoAudio said:
My understanding is also that you will need to either connect your DAC directly to the computer where HQ Player is running, or to get a bridge that supports the HQPlayer Network Audio Adapter (NAA) protocol to place before the DAC. Someone more experienced can correct me or provide more details.
Click to expand...

I would assume there are other methods, but I do have the USB output of my PC/Server connected directly to the input of my DAC. It works perfect in this way, and since Roon and HQPlayer both run on the server machine all works as it should.
 
I've been using Roon with HQP for a few years. Great combination. Lots of choices of different filters and other settings on HQP. Some just require experimentation, although there are some filters that many people think sound great and would be a good place to start (or end). One issue is that some combinations which sound very fine also demand quite a bit of computational power, multiple cores, etc. so they are not for every set up. There is a lengthy thread on the Roon forum which goes through many different configurations and gets updated as different versions of HQP get updated. Jussi Laako, the creator of HQP, is a frequent contributor and he answers questions all the time about specific setups. Chris Connaker's website (Audiophile Style) also has a lengthy thread with Q and A about HQP and Roon. Jussi also participates under the name Miska.

When I went the Roon HQP route back in 2018, I had my computer builder (Chris Connaker) work with Jussi to get me something powerful enough that I could use the power of the computer to upsample multichannel files from DSD64 to DSD256 without issues. It took a quite powerful computer to do this, but the results have been great.

Larry

Which HQP Filter are you using? - #953 by Roasty - HQ Player - Roon Labs Community
 
If I have to go purchase a mega powered computer just to use HQ Player I'm out. Plus I'm not a computer freak. My working knowledge of the technical side of computers, and computers in general, is very shallow. I'll have to wait for the user friendly version.
 
bluegrassphile said:
If I have to go purchase a mega powered computer just to use HQ Player I'm out. Plus I'm not a computer freak. My working knowledge of the technical side of computers, and computers in general, is very shallow. I'll have to wait for the user friendly version.
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You don't need a mega powered computer for HQP if you are not using some of its filters and up sampling to high DSD rates. However, you do need a good computer with newer cpu's and a good amount of ram 8-16gb. I have not run HQP for about 2 years so things may have changed.
 
In the Roon Labs Community, several people recommend the Small Green Computer for HQP with Roon. As I mentioned above in #9, the reason I use a powerful computer is because I am upsampling 6 channels from DSD64 to DSD256, not just 2 channels. If you are doing stereo, a big computer is not necessary. Larry
 
Well it appears that HQPlayer has finally stopped working in my system. I think it is great software but I am not a fan of how Jussi does his business, or more so his policies.

I purchased a license and started using it and a short time later he came out with version 4. He offered a really small discount for version 3 users. I talk with him about it and he said version 3 gave free updates for six years. I said true but I only just bought it and would have waited if I knew you would want to charge me almost full price. He said oh well... so the bottom line is I would have to pay an additional almost $250 when I had just bought his product a couple months earlier. I said no, but now my version does not appear to run with the new Roon update, even though it should.

It is a very slight difference to the Roon up-sampling so for now I will run Roon only. At some point I may get over my butt hurt to Jussi basically feeling it was ok for me to pay virtual full price again to get the new version when I had recently purchased the older version not knowing a new version was coming. So it would basically cost me double, or as much as my lifetime Roon subscription. That is absurd in my view.
 
Randy that is unfortunate and just downright bad business practices on Jussis part. This is a small market for him to pull from and doing customers wrong like this it doesn’t take long for the word to get around. I tried HQP a few years ago but got frustrated at the myriad of settings that had to be “just right’ for the hardware I was running it on. I gave up because I could not reliably upsample DSD 512 to my T&A DAC. Might give it a try again since my Termy will accept DSD 1024! I am going to rent time on the government’s NSA computers to make it run.

Randy Myers said:
Well it appears that HQPlayer has finally stopped working in my system. I think it is great software but I am not a fan of how Jussi does his business, or more so his policies.

I purchased a license and started using it and a short time later he came out with version 4. He offered a really small discount for version 3 users. I talk with him about it and he said version 3 gave free updates for six years. I said true but I only just bought it and would have waited if I knew you would want to charge me almost full price. He said oh well... so the bottom line is I would have to pay an additional almost $250 when I had just bought his product a couple months earlier. I said no, but now my version does not appear to run with the new Roon update, even though it should.

It is a very slight difference to the Roon up-sampling so for now I will run Roon only. At some point I may get over my butt hurt to Jussi basically feeling it was ok for me to pay virtual full price again to get the new version when I had recently purchased the older version not knowing a new version was coming. So it would basically cost me double, or as much as my lifetime Roon subscription. That is absurd in my view.
Click to expand...
 
That is what I thought. How could someone doing a very specialized product that already has a reputation as being overly complex and picky then offer such poor service. It would have been different if I had been using it for some time, but I had purchased just months prior.

Marty, I can't remember if you use Roon, it does a nice job up-sampling to DSD512. Not as many filters as HQPlayer, but who cares. I pick out one I like and pretty much leave it.

Sorry I have a wild hair, but I had a suspicion that sooner or later it would stop working without new version. I did not think it would be so soon though.
 
Two months ago I took the plunge and bought the newest version (HQP4). I got a 20% discount.

I decided to purchase it because I am using it to play Spotify (upsampled to DSD). Also, eventually I plan to use with an ADC to listen to my albums through HQP4. This is something that HQP3 cannot do.

I agree with Randy that Jussi should have given him a bigger price break. In my case, I feel that I got my money’s worth since I got to use HQP3 for several years.
 
I only have one sort of direct experience with Jussi. What I found was that he is very generous with his time, working with individuals and their specific requirements and equipment (hardware and software) to tailor the settings of his very complex software to meet their needs. I had a major problem back in 2018 with running Roon with multichannel files through HQP, particularly upsampling six channels simultaneously. I had a computer custom built by my regular computer builder Chris Connaker (who runs another Forum) and he worked with Jussi to choose the proper components to get a computer that could handle my requirements. I've seen him do similar things on the Roon Forum and Chris's Audiophile Style forum.

What is quite apparent, is that Jussi is not a businessman. He apparently doesn't understand how to treat a customer and the value of what that can mean to his business. I am guessing he runs everything himself and that means the priority is on the technical aspects of the business, constantly improving code, testing out the software on the myriad of different combinations of hardware and other software. At some point, it would be great to have a customer service person working for him to handle problems like Randy's. We can all see the simple solution, but Jussi can't. He may eventually become a good businessman, but he may not. For the sake of his business and the many of us who really like his software, I hope he is able to become better at customer relations or hire someone who is.

Larry
 
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