[Currawong]

I've just been using my regular iMac with HQPlayer, and indeed, with PCM up-sampling, there's little CPU use.

I wish I had tried it when I had a Holo Spring here, but HQPlayer gives wonderful results with the Audio-gd R-27HE. I think the most intimidating thing about HQPlayer is that it has many filters that most people just wont use. If they made an MScaler-type device where you had one button to select between sync, closed-form, gauss and a couple of others, and a second to select, where appropriate: linear, intermediate, minimum or MQA-type phase (or the various options for the sync filter if selected) and you could switch between them on the fly without interruption, that would be perfect.

 

[sajunky]

As with NOS R2R, I find that you must use an extremely good wordclock / oscillator to get amazing sound quality out of them or they can sound rolled-off and have collapsed soundstage. The magic happens when you feed the R2R NOS DAC with ultra-low jitter source

Absolutely. Magic happens with low sampling rates as well. Low jitter source is critical for SQ, it is much more important than any influence of upsampling.

Actualy increasing sampling rate increase jitter, it is another reason to not exceed certain sampling rates. Now it comes interesting question:

If we take a low jitter source and downsample, what will happen? Of course the best is to test it on NOS DAC. I suggest the latest album of Patricia Barber, Clique!, available in DXD (24/352.8kHz) from NativeDSDMusic. I don't say it is the best quality Patricia recording, but definitely it is very low jitter source.

Before I upgraded oscilators on my R2R-11, the best sound was at 88.2kHz. Now with Crystek oscilators 176.4kHz sounds better, but I don't see any difference to the original DXD source. Any takes?

 

[Skyediver]

I've just been using my regular iMac with HQPlayer, and indeed, with PCM up-sampling, there's little CPU use.

I wish I had tried it when I had a Holo Spring here, but HQPlayer gives wonderful results with the Audio-gd R-27HE. I think the most intimidating thing about HQPlayer is that it has many filters that most people just wont use. If they made an MScaler-type device where you had one button to select between sync, closed-form, gauss and a couple of others, and a second to select, where appropriate: linear, intermediate, minimum or MQA-type phase (or the various options for the sync filter if selected) and you could switch between them on the fly without interruption, that would be perfect.

This! It’s weird, I know HQPlayer is powerful, but as someone who works in tech (SaaS, specifically), I can only imagine they’d expand their customer base if they considered updating their UI. I do appreciate the point you and GoldenSound are saying, that while it looks funky it’s manageable.

 

[theveterans]

Absolutely. Magic happens with low sampling rates as well. Low jitter source is critical for SQ, it is much more important than any influence of upsampling.

Actualy increasing sampling rate increase jitter, it is another reason to not exceed certain sampling rates. Now it comes interesting question:

If we take a low jitter source and downsample, what will happen? Of course the best is to test it on NOS DAC. I suggest the latest album of Patricia Barber, Clique!, available in DXD (24/352.8kHz) from NativeDSDMusic. I don't say it is the best quality Patricia recording, but definitely it is very low jitter source.

Before I upgraded oscilators on my R2R-11, the best sound was at 88.2kHz. Now with Crystek oscilators 176.4kHz sounds better, but I don't see any difference to the original DXD source. Any takes?

I listened to both 44.1 KHz and the 176.4 KHz with the Patricia Barber, Clique! Qobuz streaming on my Bifrost 2 NOS via Roon + SP2000 as Toslink transport. The main difference that I find is that the bass definition is a tad better with the 176.4 KHz however the 44.1 KHz is slightly more transparent on vocals but subtle. Either way I enjoy both formats. BF2 does not have a crystal oscillator reclocker on SPDIF AFAIK and just uses the AK4113 chip for the wordclock on SPDIF. I find a slightly more noticeable difference between toslink sources being fed to NOS BF2 as opposed to OS mode hence my comment regarding ultra low jitter transport/source. As good as Schiit implemented USB, I still find it inferior to a quality streamer/transport connected to it via toslink or coax. Regarding the huge preferences with the burrito OS filter on the BF2 thread, I truly suspect they're not using a really good transport to compensate with the lack of internal reference master clock that's only available on higher end DACs like the Yggdrasil and Holo Audio unfortunately

 

[ra990]

Great to hear. And yes, same thing for me where the M1 is for work, lol

I did some testing tonight between M1 and my 2018 Macbook Pro with an Intel Core i7 - same configuration on both (posted on last page). Surprisingly, the M1 had issues with stutters, clicks and pops. A quick google search shows this seems to be a common complaint with the M1 and hires streaming audio. The intel macbook pro has been running HQPlayer without any issues.

I made sure to use the arm64 build of HQPlayer for the M1 Macbook Pro and the intel build on the Intel Macbook Pro.

 

[gancanjam]

This! It’s weird, I know HQPlayer is powerful, but as someone who works in tech (SaaS, specifically), I can only imagine they’d expand their customer base if they considered updating their UI. I do appreciate the point you and GoldenSound are saying, that while it looks funky it’s manageable.

I went towards Rockna WL DAC due to the HQP setup & usability hassle, hope they improve the usability. Heard HQP is easier setup with Roon and also for PCM OS, a commodity laptop like even i5 can handle it, DSD OS may need more juice but PCM OS is a good starting point

 

[sajunky]

DSD OS may need more juice but PCM OS is a good starting point

DSD upsampling requires dual DSD/PCM conversion with loses SQ on every step.
1. Conversion DSD to PCM
2. PCM upsampling
3. Conversion back to DSD
So there are three operations in total and if a source is in compressed DST, then is an additional processing burden.

Why not just play upsampled PCM? The third step is redundant, as R2R converter plays PCM with the same quality as DSD, in my opinion even better. HQPlayer do not tell you that?

 

[alekc]

I went towards Rockna WL DAC due to the HQP setup & usability hassle, hope they improve the usability. Heard HQP is easier setup with Roon and also for PCM OS, a commodity laptop like even i5 can handle it, DSD OS may need more juice but PCM OS is a good starting point

@gancanjam I have been experimenting with upsampling with WaveLight including: HQP, Audirvana, Audirvana Studio (when I had trial version) and finally my upsampling CD transport (upsamples both to PCM and DSD). I did all listening tests first with NOS and later with all the other filters and came to a conclusion that Rockna does not need upsampling at all unless some dedicated upsampling algorithm can be designed. That is why I would like to listen to upsampling feature of Rockna Server eventually, but otherwise I am so happy just switching from NOS to other filter depending on the track and my needs.

 

[gancanjam]

@gancanjam I have been experimenting with upsampling with WaveLight including: HQP, Audirvana, Audirvana Studio (when I had trial version) and finally my upsampling CD transport (upsamples both to PCM and DSD). I did all listening tests first with NOS and later with all the other filters and came to a conclusion that Rockna does not need upsampling at all unless some dedicated upsampling algorithm can be designed. That is why I would like to listen to upsampling feature of Rockna Server eventually, but otherwise I am so happy just switching from NOS to other filter depending on the track and my needs.

Hey, did you found Rockna WL NOS + HQp > Rockna WL + internal OS modes? For Holo May, May NOS + HQp is epic improvement so wondering how much of SQ improvement we get using HQp with Rockna WL. If it is significant then will try to setup HQp ( pain!!! LOL ) for my WL. When I had reached out to HQp forum a while back, they said not all DACs have the synergy with HQp and they did not mentioned Rockna as one of the pairing. I remember they mentioning Holo and T&A DACs to get most bang for the buck pairing with HQp

 

[sajunky]

wondering how much of SQ improvement we get using HQp with Rockna WL. If it is significant then will try to setup HQp ( pain!!! LOL ) for my WL.

Answer is already given, I think. Enjoy your WL.

 

[gancanjam]

Answer is already given, I think. Enjoy your WL.

Yeah, I dont think there was much improvement

 

[GoldenSound]

Hey, did you found Rockna WL NOS + HQp > Rockna WL + internal OS modes? For Holo May, May NOS + HQp is epic improvement so wondering how much of SQ improvement we get using HQp with Rockna WL. If it is significant then will try to setup HQp ( pain!!! LOL ) for my WL. When I had reached out to HQp forum a while back, they said not all DACs have the synergy with HQp and they did not mentioned Rockna as one of the pairing. I remember they mentioning Holo and T&A DACs to get most bang for the buck pairing with HQp

The rockna DACs already have much better internal OS than most other DACs.

The wavelight uses a 2500 tap filter compared to say a 128 tap filter in an ess9038 pro.

The wavedream uses a 5000 tap filter.

I found hqplayer to be an improvement, but less so than on other DACs.

Definitely worth giving it a go though!
Though make sure you put a decent config in. The standard hqplayer configuration is quite basic and you have to adjust it to use the really high performance filters/noise shapers

 

[alekc]

Hey, did you found Rockna WL NOS + HQp > Rockna WL + internal OS modes? For Holo May, May NOS + HQp is epic improvement so wondering how much of SQ improvement we get using HQp with Rockna WL. If it is significant then will try to setup HQp ( pain!!! LOL ) for my WL. When I had reached out to HQp forum a while back, they said not all DACs have the synergy with HQp and they did not mentioned Rockna as one of the pairing. I remember they mentioning Holo and T&A DACs to get most bang for the buck pairing with HQp

@gancanjam: no I haven't found any upsampler adding any improvement in qualities of Rockna WL sound. The sound is smooth and is not missing any micro details, the sound stage is reasonable large and instrument separation is brilliant (only sometimes I would say M Scaled Hugo TT and Dave can beat it - out of dacs I have pleasure to listen/own) already out of the box. This applies both to speaker and headphone listening and to PCM and DSD settings. Therefore I'm really looking forward to test Rockna Server upsampling, since I guess it would take a lot tweaking to get better results. Keep in mind that I haven't experimented much with HQP so somebody who has mastered HQP configuration maybe could get better results.

 

[Mista Lova Lova]

The rockna DACs already have much better internal OS than most other DACs.

The wavelight uses a 2500 tap filter compared to say a 128 tap filter in an ess9038 pro.

The wavedream uses a 5000 tap filter.

I found hqplayer to be an improvement, but less so than on other DACs.

Definitely worth giving it a go though!
Though make sure you put a decent config in. The standard hqplayer configuration is quite basic and you have to adjust it to use the really high performance filters/noise shapers

Have you tried putting the Gustard X26 Pro in NOS mode (I know it's not true NOS - but I think it allows for external software to do the upsampling or perhaps even the full D/S modulation?) and using it with the HQPlayer? If so - what were the results? It's such a well-engineered DAC that it makes me wonder if it can compete with the best when its off-the-shelf chipsets are overridden by external software.

And would the same HQPlayer settings as you've posted before for the May DAC be compatible with the Gustard, too? (Except for the sample rate as Gustard won't go past 7xx from what I remember.)

Edit: Having read some more on the topic, I can see that my above reasoning could be wrong and it might not possible to fully bypass the Gustard's processing as the NOS mode is just a different type of filter (although I've also read an opinion that the signal goes straight to the IIR bypassing the first stage of oversampling) . I have played with different settings and the DAC sounds slightly different with NOS mode off, with the Vivid filter applied (being fed upsampled signal) to when the NOS mode is switched on. Still, I'm wondering how the Gustard compares against the more expensive DACs when it's fed upsampled signal (the difference might seem minor at first, but it's the kind of difference that makes you never wanna go back to the default setting).

 

[Fried dr]

I get snaps, crackles and pops when I try to run higher than 192k upsampling from HQPlayer to my SMS-200 Ultra Neo to my Qutest. My server and network seem adequate. Server is well under 50% cpu utilization when upscaling. I have read that Goldensound had success using SRC-DX USB to dual coax converter. However I understand there is a settings issue in the SOTM streamer's volume settings that needs to be addressed to make this work. Has anyone done this who can share how technically complex the settings fix is? I would hate to brick my streamer...