I read some posts from the plugin developer and it seems it converts and resamples so as to handle troublesome formats. It was not totally clear to me and the explanations required quite a bit of previous squeeze server command line experience. Hopefully someone can dumb it down for us.
CX, EX, K, S, Oladra, Antipodes, Owners Unite
- Thread starter Clive101
- Start date
frankensmurf
Head-Fier
So bear with me, gents (is this really an all-male forum?), I've just gotten HQP working for the first time on CX / EX. I've compared to Roon > Roon Ready and Roon > SqueezePlayer. Where are all these Squeeze plug-ins and settings? Is this in Squeeze Server?
I'll reserve my impressions of Roon Ready vs SqueezePlayer vs HQP NAA (with Roon Core as a constant) until I've sorted out the basics, and probably until I've got my PSA DS back.
kennyb123
1000+ Head-Fier
Thanks for sharing that!
Top is when playing my 16FS files, bottom is when scaling 44.1K files to 16FS.
Triode User
Member of the Trade: WAVE High Fidelity
@kennyb123 @td19 etc, i know it is possible to use squeeze (LMS) + Squeezelite to play 705/768 wav files and also lower resolutions without upsampling because when i had an innuos Nuno did an online session with me and tweaked the squeezelite settings to enable this.
it cant be beyond antipodes to do the same.
it cant be beyond antipodes to do the same.
td19
New Head-Fier
I think it is more a question of how Squeezebox Server and Squeezelite interact. As suggested initially it definitely seems to behave differently when the server and Squeezelite are running on the same server as opposed to the Squeeze server on one server and Squeezelite on a different one. I noted earlier that the Squeezelite on the CX, where Squeeze was running, did not need to have C-3PO enabled i.e. no resampling/conversion, whereas Squeezelite on the EX did.
Also, turning off conversion and upsampling on the C-3PO-enabled EX Squeezelite did not affect playback; it still played at the 768 rate.
It may be related to the comments here by the C-3PO author, at the Slim Devices website:
It might be worth contacting him for clarification about 'local' vs 'remote' Squeezelite.
Also, you could ask Mark Cole to pass the question on to his tech colleague in Colorado who does know a fair bit about Squeezelite and how to configure it.
Triode User
Member of the Trade: WAVE High Fidelity
@td19 thanks. This rings some bells with what Nuno did and I recollect he had to alter Squeezelite to get it to play 705/768 wav files by telling it what to look at to get the correct file information otherise Squeezelite thought that it was, for example, a 44.1 file despite it actually being a 705 file.
i will try mark cole to see if he can pursue it.
i will try mark cole to see if he can pursue it.
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frankensmurf
Head-Fier
Interesting stuff. I am currently playing with HQP settings with a Chord TT2, which is certainly designed with upsampling in mind, and in a fairly ruthlessly-revealing current setup (particularly with some new AQ Wind XLRs) appears to 'need' it. However it is responding very nicely to upsampling everything to DSD.
On my CX, I can upsample everything (i.e. local redbook files, Qobuz 24/96 streams) to DSD 128 nicely. When I try DSD256 two of the CX cores are saturated and playback stops regularly. Is this consistent with others' experience? (see CPU and settings below)
Has anyone here experimented with anything higher? Does anyone know offhand the performance ceiling (in terms of SDM oversampling) or the processor in the CX vs K50 vs S40? Perhaps I could go to CX core > S40 HQP > EX NAA > P2 > ...
If I were going in this direction (for instance I put some thought in about trying the Holo Audio May DAC, which accepts up to DSD1024 and PCM 1.536) I feel I would end up with a custom-build PC with a quite high-end processor (basically a somewhat specialized quiet Gaming PC) and graphics card(s) for HQP CUDA offloading. For me it begs a couple of questions: if I'm offloading HQP super duties to a separate box, which certainly will not have sophisticated power supplies and other audio-related tweaking like the Antipodes boxes, what is the CX for? I already have it on a separate power circuit, and separated from the EX by 2 EtherRegens (not as many as SOME people, I know). I've always thought that, in the presence of EtherRegens (or an Innuos PhoenixNet or whatever), my money would be optimally spent on a NUC for Roon ROCK, an optimized upsampling machine (if you're going to do it), and max $$$ saved for and S30/S20/S60 rendering side, including ethernet filtration between it and everything else.
The irony, of course, is that as soon as I get my DAC back I will likely lose interest in all this super-high oversampling in sw as the DAC is already doing it. : D (There is some talk on the PS Audio forums of the benefits of upsampling PCM to DXD, the highest PCM rate the DS will accept..)
But I will absolutely be using HQP as my renderer. I bought the license this morning.
CX load at DSD 128 (from 24/96 qobuz)
CX Load at DSD 256 (from redbook)
HQP settings (for both above, less SDM Rate Limit)
You could try checking auto rate family and unchecking short buffer to see if it lowers the cpu drain.Interesting stuff. I am currently playing with HQP settings with a Chord TT2, which is certainly designed with upsampling in mind, and in a fairly ruthlessly-revealing current setup (particularly with some new AQ Wind XLRs) appears to 'need' it. However it is responding very nicely to upsampling everything to DSD.
On my CX, I can upsample everything (i.e. local redbook files, Qobuz 24/96 streams) to DSD 128 nicely. When I try DSD256 two of the CX cores are saturated and playback stops regularly. Is this consistent with others' experience? (see CPU and settings below)
Has anyone here experimented with anything higher? Does anyone know offhand the performance ceiling (in terms of SDM oversampling) or the processor in the CX vs K50 vs S40? Perhaps I could go to CX core > S40 HQP > EX NAA > P2 > ...
If I were going in this direction (for instance I put some thought in about trying the Holo Audio May DAC, which accepts up to DSD1024 and PCM 1.536) I feel I would end up with a custom-build PC with a quite high-end processor (basically a somewhat specialized quiet Gaming PC) and graphics card(s) for HQP CUDA offloading. For me it begs a couple of questions: if I'm offloading HQP super duties to a separate box, which certainly will not have sophisticated power supplies and other audio-related tweaking like the Antipodes boxes, what is the CX for? I already have it on a separate power circuit, and separated from the EX by 2 EtherRegens (not as many as SOME people, I know). I've always thought that, in the presence of EtherRegens (or an Innuos PhoenixNet or whatever), my money would be optimally spent on a NUC for Roon ROCK, an optimized upsampling machine (if you're going to do it), and max $$$ saved for and S30/S20/S60 rendering side, including ethernet filtration between it and everything else.
The irony, of course, is that as soon as I get my DAC back I will likely lose interest in all this super-high oversampling in sw as the DAC is already doing it. : D (There is some talk on the PS Audio forums of the benefits of upsampling PCM to DXD, the highest PCM rate the DS will accept..)
But I will absolutely be using HQP as my renderer. I bought the license this morning.
CX load at DSD 128 (from 24/96 qobuz)
CX Load at DSD 256 (from redbook)
HQP settings (for both above, less SDM Rate Limit)
frankensmurf
Head-Fier
Thanks.. I tried both and while there are variations in the per-thread usage number, neither resulted in sustainable DSD256 playback. (see below)
I don't understand 'Auto-rate family' -- assuming Auto rate family = true, SDM Bit rate = Auto and SDM Rate Limit = 6,144,000, does HQP upsample n*44.1khz material to 5,644,800 (44.1k*128) and n*48khz material to 6,144,000 (48k*128)? If Auto rate family = false then what?
In practice, checking 'Auto rate family' results in very finicky behaviour, where, depending on SDM rate limit selected, some formats will play and others won't.
Unfortunately both Roon and my DAC just say 'DSD 128'. Is there somewhere I can view the specific DSD output rate?
11-14 baseline DSD 128:
uncheck short buffer, 256: 11,289,600. (interruptions in playback)
check Auto Rate Family, 256: 11,289,600. (interruptions in playback)
kennyb123
1000+ Head-Fier
The TT2 really excels with PCM upsampling. The nice thing about sending it music scaled to 16FS is that its own filter will just step aside. I am pretty sure DSD will be sent through the filter regardless of the rate.
kennyb123
1000+ Head-Fier
There are two fundamental sample rates: 44.1k and 48k.
It‘s best to upscale by an even number else there will be decimation. Thus with auto-rate family, a 44.1K file will be scaled to 2, 4, 8 or 16x that rate (depending on the DAC). So 88.2, 176.4, 352.8, 705.6. This is how it applies to PCM. I am not sure how it works with DSD.
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td19
New Head-Fier
I think the Squeezelite -W command line option deals with the issue but don't know if it is applicable to, or compatible with, the Squeezelite version in Antipodes 3.1.
kennyb123
1000+ Head-Fier
@td19 @Triode User
I just came across this: https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?105309-C-3PO-plugin-a-trnscoding-helper. Sharing ICYMI.
This is good to know: "Please remmber that C-3PO is not adding any functionality or capability to LMS, other than a better integrated interface over File type conversions and custom-convert.conf file, but everything it does was already here before.
I'm feeling better about this now. My guess is that this is enabling the player to receive the actual sample rate when the file is upsampled. The player can't know whether or not the server upsampled these so it needs a helper even if the files were upsampled using an external process. I think as long as we ensure that the player isn't asking for these files to be resampled, these files should be passed along just fine.
I just came across this: https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?105309-C-3PO-plugin-a-trnscoding-helper. Sharing ICYMI.
This is good to know: "Please remmber that C-3PO is not adding any functionality or capability to LMS, other than a better integrated interface over File type conversions and custom-convert.conf file, but everything it does was already here before.
I'm feeling better about this now. My guess is that this is enabling the player to receive the actual sample rate when the file is upsampled. The player can't know whether or not the server upsampled these so it needs a helper even if the files were upsampled using an external process. I think as long as we ensure that the player isn't asking for these files to be resampled, these files should be passed along just fine.
Triode User
Member of the Trade: WAVE High Fidelity
@td19 and @kennyb123 I was away from my hifi all weekend (playing with horses and other outdoor stuff) but now I am back indoors I have been going through the settings options on Squeeze player and realise there is an Extra Player Settings which I had not previously found or accessed. This has given me access to the C-3PO settings you guys have been using. I now have Squeeze Server and Squeeze Player selected on the K50 and it is passing through all frequencies un upsampled all the way from 44.1 to 768.
It sounds wonderful with the PGGB offline upsampled 705 and 768 files. I always knew it sounded best for the less than 16FS files but now I can get that SQ with the 16FS as well.
I am just going through the settings options and basically trying to set everything to do nothing with the file apart from pass it through. Perhaps when the dust has settled on this exercise we can share settings to make sure the correct ones are being used.
Happy Days (I hope).
kennyb123
1000+ Head-Fier
Squeeze is absolutely the best I've heard yet with my PGGB files.
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