HQPlayer Impressions and Settings Rolling Thread

[dericchan1]

Thanks I would like to hear from you actual performance of the Z1E for hqp use. I do suspect the MSI claw intel ultra 7 may perform a touch better. A good use of this would be running hqp desktop and client for qobuz streaming on the go or connect to your iPhone wifi hotspot and use jplay ios to control hqplayer with the iPhone

MY oc’d rpi5 can do dsd128 or pcm 1524 but that’s quite a performance gap compared to the handheld gaming pcs (and lacking a screen and battery power…) by the time you add up the cost, it may cost close to the first gen Asus ally which is on sale right now for about $300 usd… (similar price for the Msi claw)

 

[BShaw]

After reading derricchan's ravings about the updated JPlay ios which now hosts HQP, I thought I'd give it a shot. I was a JPlay user back before I had Roon and always liked it, but have really enjoyed the functionality of Roon. But it is indeed heavy and there's no way to tell what Roon is doing to the signal as it passes things along.
Listening to JPlay with HQP suggests to me that Roon is actually very much doing something to the music. My big takeaways from listening to JPlay are a first off, more refined soundstage - wider, taller, deeper, with instruments more separated and clear. There's more sparkle in the highs, but not brightness. Imaging is notably more crisp. The presentation is more spacious and 3 dimensional.
Following the last note on a piano all the way down to black really highlights how quiet this player is, pretty delightful to hear how much ease there seems to be in passing the music into the air (listening with speakers, mid and treble horns).
I do miss the UI of Roon, and although I've never been blown away by their discovery feature, it's pretty decent, and locking in JPLay. Roon is an environment, JPlay is a player. But the quality of the sound is SO obviously better to my ears, I'm going to have to live with the tradeoffs.
My biggest gripe right now is that in order to play LAN material, I'll need to install mimimserver, whereas with Roon I can plug in any external SSD/thumbdrive and it just shows up in my Roon folders and populates my library. I really love this about Roon, and friends can send loaded drives back and forth this way. I've written to Marcin to ask about writing this into JPlay, will chirp back in if/when he replies.
Oh - and another huge plus, controlling HQP from within the app is super slick and filters and settings can be changed on the fly, love it.

 

[dericchan1]

After reading derricchan's ravings about the updated JPlay ios which now hosts HQP, I thought I'd give it a shot. I was a JPlay user back before I had Roon and always liked it, but have really enjoyed the functionality of Roon. But it is indeed heavy and there's no way to tell what Roon is doing to the signal as it passes things along.
Listening to JPlay with HQP suggests to me that Roon is actually very much doing something to the music. My big takeaways from listening to JPlay are a first off, more refined soundstage - wider, taller, deeper, with instruments more separated and clear. There's more sparkle in the highs, but not brightness. Imaging is notably more crisp. The presentation is more spacious and 3 dimensional.
Following the last note on a piano all the way down to black really highlights how quiet this player is, pretty delightful to hear how much ease there seems to be in passing the music into the air (listening with speakers, mid and treble horns).
I do miss the UI of Roon, and although I've never been blown away by their discovery feature, it's pretty decent, and locking in JPLay. Roon is an environment, JPlay is a player. But the quality of the sound is SO obviously better to my ears, I'm going to have to live with the tradeoffs.
My biggest gripe right now is that in order to play LAN material, I'll need to install mimimserver, whereas with Roon I can plug in any external SSD/thumbdrive and it just shows up in my Roon folders and populates my library. I really love this about Roon, and friends can send loaded drives back and forth this way. I've written to Marcin to ask about writing this into JPlay, will chirp back in if/when he replies.
Oh - and another huge plus, controlling HQP from within the app is super slick and filters and settings can be changed on the fly, love it.

Wow You have written this impression of jplay iOS better than I can write mine in light years. 100%, at least to me, being an audiophile, it’s hard to let go once you have a chance to compared the two and jplay iOS is quite obviously better in sound quality. There are so many other things we try to do to improve the sound quality and very seldomly they make much differences let alone improvements.

Jplay iOS thus far I have not heard a single comment from anyone that it is not better sounding than Roon. I know it does not make a lot of sense, it’s definitely one of the mysteries in digital audio how switching a streaming app can yield such a sound quality improvement!!!

You do give up on certain features from Roon, after all, jplay iOS integration with hqplayer is a brand new feature that only launched a week ago. Marcin at this stage is still working to fix a number of reported glitches, including fixing the radio feature, connection stability, better sorting of albums. I believe he is also looking into jplay iOS accessing hqplayer local library content directly but no guarantees on timeline (regardless, MinimServer is rock solid so I am not losing sleep over it). But jplay iOS has its own strengths over Roon in addition to sound quality improvement being such a slick and elegant way to control hqplayer!!!

 

[sendler2112]

Listening to JPlay with HQP

Have you ever tried HQ Player Client with local files and with Qobuz? I would be curious how that sound quality would compare.
For my serious listening I always drag local files into the HQP desktop player. But I do enjoy auditioning different albums on Qobuz and then buy them if I really want to hear the best quality.

 

[catastrofe]

For JPlay iOS users...even though the App store shows that it's for iOS only, it runs great on OS X. Running it on my MacBook right now...much better (larger) interface.

 

[dericchan1]

For JPlay iOS users...even though the App store shows that it's for iOS only, it runs great on OS X. Running it on my MacBook right now...much better (larger) interface.

Thanks for this. My preference tho would be the ability to control hqplayer at the comfort of my couch 10’ away from the speakers and able to change convolution, filter, modulator settings on the fly with an iPhone…

 

[catastrofe]

Thanks for this. My preference tho would be the ability to control hqplayer at the comfort of my couch 10’ away from the speakers…

Yep...
QNAP NAS/MinimServer > Ethernet > HQP on MacBook Pro in office > Ethernet > HQP NAA in living Room > DAC
JPlay on MacBook Air on couch.

 

[dericchan1]

Yep...
QNAP NAS/MinimServer > Ethernet > HQP on MacBook Pro in office > Ethernet > HQP NAA in living Room > DAC
JPlay on MacBook Air on couch.

Great. I do really enjoy using my iPhone 15 for jplay tho. It’s just so slick using the iPhone volume buttons to control hqplayer digital volume. I do have a benchmark LA4 preamp but prefer setting it to more or less a fixed volume and use my iPhone now for hqp volume.

 

[TedB]

Have you ever tried HQ Player Client with local files and with Qobuz? I would be curious how that sound quality would compare.
For my serious listening I always drag local files into the HQP desktop player. But I do enjoy auditioning different albums on Qobuz and then buy them if I really want to hear the best quality.

I use HQP Client for streaming Qobuz but I find it somewhat awkward to use with the local library. There seems to be no difference in sound quality. My only complaint about HQP Desktop is not being able to change the sorting of a directory, which makes sense for albums only. I did complain to Jussi about this.

Great. I do really enjoy using my iPhone 15 for jplay tho. It’s just so slick using the iPhone volume buttons to control hqplayer digital volume. I do have a benchmark LA4 preamp but prefer setting it to more or less a fixed volume and use my iPhone now for hqp volume.

Just don't reduce the volume too much that way, or we'll have to call the dynamic range police.

 

[dericchan1]

I use HQP Client for streaming Qobuz but I find it somewhat awkward to use with the local library. There seems to be no difference in sound quality. My only complaint about HQP Desktop is not being able to change the sorting of a directory, which makes sense for albums only. I did complain to Jussi about this.




Just don't reduce the volume too much that way, or we'll have to call the dynamic range police.

Actually on the audiophile style thread, I just had a discussion with Miska that for most dacs anyway, optimal hqp volume for lowest noise floor would be around-10db without impacting dynamic range. It will also allow you to crank up the preamp more which increases SNR.

 

[sendler2112]

Actually on the audiophile style thread, I just had a discussion with Miska that for most dacs anyway, optimal hqp volume for lowest noise floor would be around-10db without impacting dynamic range. It will also allow you to crank up the preamp more which increases SNR.

What mechanism is at work to make -10 better than -3db?

 

[TedB]

What mechanism is at work to make -10 better than -3db?

I wondered the same, but I'm interpreting this as suggesting up to around -10dB before it becomes impactful.

 

[dericchan1]

I wondered the same, but I'm interpreting this as suggesting up to around -10dB before it becomes impactful.

Nope -10 is optimal in distortion without impacting dynamic range. My dsc2 and dsc3 dacs have transformers at the analog stage and it’s been measured distortion at lowest when hqp volume set to -10db. Here’s Miska’s comments

“Quite many chip based have lowest distortion at -10 dB while the DNR is still the same. This may also allow you to turn analog volume control in amplifier higher, meaning that there is less attenuation in the pre-amp stage and thus less back and forth attenuation and amplification, giving improved analog performance.

This is related to the gain optimization instructions I've been giving, for hybrid volume control model.”

 

[dericchan1]

This is Miska’s comment re: dac chip based and r2r dacs - very rarely there is any gain in pushing max volume higher than -10db

“It depends on the DAC, in some cases it may be applicable to R2R as well. But it depends on the particular DAC. Sometimes the curve just flattens out around -10 dB (IOW, increasing level above it doesn't win or lose anything), sometimes the curve is at it's lowest around -10 dB. There is very rarely any benefit in pushing levels for the last 10 dB's.”

 

[sendler2112]

The question of volume control inside the DAC has come up in the Gustard X30 thread. Many people connect their DACs directly to their power amps in a speaker set up to eliminate a preamp. The X30 designers chose to (waste money) implement a switched passive resistive with no (to save money) buffer. So the output impedance presumably is much higher as soon as you engage the volume control at useful levels of -20db ,40db, whatever gets the signal down to a normal listening level with the gain in the amps. which explains why the reviewers recommend not using the internal volume control in this DAC since it doesn't sound as good.

This prompted me to listen to the internal volume control in my X26III, which is digital, versus the volume control in HQ Player desktop, versus sending -3db of HQ Player through the fixed volume setting in the DAC to the excellent sounding dual mono/ dual balanced Muses volume control in my loaded Burson Soloist GT3 headphone amp. I had to set the amp gain to high and max volume to try -37db in the DAC and -39db in HQ Player with a setting of 30 or so in the amp with the HQP and DAC at normal fixed use. Roughly level matched by ear.

The volume control in HQ Player sounds excellent even at this amount of attenuation. Much better than the digital control inside the X26III. Which will be way better than the passive volume control in the X30. The sound with HQ Player at -39db is so good that the differences from the amp come down to plusses and minuses. The full scale signal with the amp controlling the volume has slightly more fine detail in the trailing edges and better depth, but the -39db in HQ Player has fuller images and is "easier". if not quite as see through detailed. The -37db in the DAC is slightly flatter and less detailed and hazier than the other two.

It is quite possible that eliminating any preamp and controlling the listening level with HQ Player will sound better. And be definitely better than the passive resistive control in the X30.