HQPlayer Impressions and Settings Rolling Thread

[plumpudding2]

Most people here will also be subscribed to the Roon thread (https://community.roonlabs.com/t/which-hqp-filter-are-you-using-2023/244185/584) but i'm crossposting here anyway in the hopes it will help this thread on Head-Fi gain traction :

I’m always sceptical of my own listening impressions as the placebo effect is strong and I’m not good at articulating differences between sound sources.

Yesterday my girlfriend came over and nowadays I’ve got my listening station set up so that two people can listen at once, and I decided to see if she could perceive modulator/filter differences. It was an A/B test where I announced every change (so there is expectation bias). However I didn’t tell her what I was changing or how it “should” sound. No bias to what she should perceive.

Set up: Holo May dac, Benchmark HPA4 into Focal Utopia, HPA4 also as a preamp into Ferrum Oor + Hypsos in poweramp mode + Hifiman Susvara. She preferred the Susvara so I got the Utopia.
Used Roon’s volume leveling function to listen to exactly 80dB k-weighted average volume.

Songs were an album and artist she knows very well, Pasaka by Jessica Shy (Open Qobuz), not particularly audiophile but also not a bad recording by any stretch.

Differences were very apparent to her untrained ear, and she was actually able to articulate them better than me. Filter used was sinc-MGa.

PCM at 1.536 MHz “sharpest”, most attack, least space/2D sounding
DSD1024 AMSDM7 512+fs, also quite sharp, much more space
DSD256 ASDM7ECv3: softer, but smaller space similar to PCM
DSD512 ASDM7EC-light 512+fs: softest modulator, space similar to 1024 configuration, her clear favourite.

Once I established 512 with EC-light as her favourite I put on the Gauss-long filter to see if she preferred that, she said the balance of vocals to instruments changed and that the instruments were more forward compared to MGa, and that she preferred MGa.

Finally 512 EC-light wasn’t her favourite on every track, if the track was mixed with forward vocals the instruments moved too far back and she then preferred ECv3 at 256 or even PCM.

It has become a long post but I was just excited to share the results of this little experiment with the community

 

[sup27606]

I knew about Hqplayer for quite some time, but recently came across trying it out, especially after I acquired a Hugo2. There is a lot of talk in different forums that Hqplayer, with the right combination of upsampling filter and noise shaper can sound better than Chord's Mscaler. While I have never listened to the Mscaler, I can confidently say that Hqplayer with sinc-long filter and LNS15 dither is the best I have heard so far.

I am upsampling PCM to 768 kHz into USB, the max Hugo2 can take, and this also bypasses its internal upsampler. Most of Hqplayer's upsampling filters that are tailored towards high sampling rate sound smooth with least sibilance and treble harshness. How do I know? because I use HD800 which is very picky in these aspects. However, the speciality that sinc-long brings (IMO) is holographic soundstage, instrument separation and texture in the musical notes, classical ensemble music sounds completely sublime with zero congestion. Comparing sinc-long to the other filters like sinc-L etc, I think the sublime tone of the classical numbers is where this filter excels over all others. I have not even tried dual BNC connection of Hugo2 using SRC-DX, which is supposed to take it to another dimension, according to multiple reports.

One thing I notice with sinc-long, while it excels with classical music, with numbers having punchy bass, it can sound a bit lean through HD800. I found that sinc-Mga and sinc-medium filters brought back the punchiness in the low end, so at present, I would recommend those filters with headphones that are a bit lean on the low end. However, sinc-long works great with cans like Audeze LCD3 when it comes to low ends, and gives all the benefits of treble texture and clean transients.

sinc-long is indeed CPU hungry, but completely feasible to keep running in the background on a MBP with M1-max processor, while doing other things.

 

[plumpudding2]

sinc-long is indeed CPU hungry, but completely feasible to keep running in the background on a MBP with M1-max processor, while doing other things.

Love sinc-long! it's been one of the most exciting additions with HQPlayer v5 My 8086k can't do it on the cpu alone however at 1.536 MHz, have to force Cuda offload and then it eats up 90% of my 2080 Ti, an insanely heavy filter indeed..
Do you prefer it to MGa? I've found that to be a reasonable alternative that doesn't heat my room up as much (we're having a heatwave in NL).

 

[ra990]

I knew about Hqplayer for quite some time, but recently came across trying it out, especially after I acquired a Hugo2. There is a lot of talk in different forums that Hqplayer, with the right combination of upsampling filter and noise shaper can sound better than Chord's Mscaler. While I have never listened to the Mscaler, I can confidently say that Hqplayer with sinc-long filter and LNS15 dither is the best I have heard so far.

I am upsampling PCM to 768 kHz into USB, the max Hugo2 can take, and this also bypasses its internal upsampler. Most of Hqplayer's upsampling filters that are tailored towards high sampling rate sound smooth with least sibilance and treble harshness. How do I know? because I use HD800 which is very picky in these aspects. However, the speciality that sinc-long brings (IMO) is holographic soundstage, instrument separation and texture in the musical notes, classical ensemble music sounds completely sublime with zero congestion. Comparing sinc-long to the other filters like sinc-L etc, I think the sublime tone of the classical numbers is where this filter excels over all others. I have not even tried dual BNC connection of Hugo2 using SRC-DX, which is supposed to take it to another dimension, according to multiple reports.

sinc-long is indeed CPU hungry, but completely feasible to keep running in the background on a MBP with M1-max processor, while doing other things.

You'll likely encounter the dreaded white noise issue over USB on the Hugo 2. The src-dx upgrade will fix that issue and improve the sound even further. I was hesitant about purchasing it for the Mojo 2, but I am really glad I did. Well worth it.

 

[sup27606]

Love sinc-long! it's been one of the most exciting additions with HQPlayer v5 My 8086k can't do it on the cpu alone however at 1.536 MHz, have to force Cuda offload and then it eats up 90% of my 2080 Ti, an insanely heavy filter indeed..
Do you prefer it to MGa? I've found that to be a reasonable alternative that doesn't heat my room up as much (we're having a heatwave in NL).

Yes, MGa is quite close I would say. I think, sinc-long has the most edge in rendering classical ensemble music. In fact, I am setting up a RPI4 server with hqplayer embedded which obviously won't run sinc-long. So, I will try MGa in there since the CPU requirement is less.

 

[sup27606]

You'll likely encounter the dreaded white noise issue over USB on the Hugo 2. The src-dx upgrade will fix that issue and improve the sound even further. I was hesitant about purchasing it for the Mojo 2, but I am really glad I did. Well worth it.

Yes, I agree, the USB implementation in Hugo2 is not that great. I am looking forward to getting a SRC-DX, although used ones are rare to come by.

 

[sup27606]

BTW, I am glad that someone started a dedicated thread on hqplayer (and thank member Rayon for doing it), well deserved!

 

[briantrinh86]

The PDF documentation that comes with the download or help page in HQPlayer OS describes all the filters. I like the SINC-M filter for 1x, and SINC-L or SINC-Ll or the new sinc-long for NX. Play around and find your favorites.

Thanks for the tips bro, sound wonderful with combo sinc m & sinc long. The bass goes deeper and weightier. Instruments separation is excellent.

 

[KrauserX91]

I have been trying SINC-M x1 / SINC-L NX this afternoon. These filters almost convinced me to buy HQP5. The 4090 is around 10% usage with this config

 

[shwnwllms]

Anyone with an M1 Max Studio, can you confirm if it will do DSD512 (Sinc-MGa / ASDM7ECv3) or do you need an Ultra for that?

 

[genefruit]

Anyone with an M1 Max Studio, can you confirm if it will do DSD512 (Sinc-MGa / ASDM7ECv3) or do you need an Ultra for that?

I cannot with my M1 Max Studio. I use DSD512 (Sinc-MGa/ASDM7EC-light) instead.

 

[shwnwllms]

I cannot with my M1 Max Studio. I use DSD512 (Sinc-MGa/ASDM7EC-light) instead.

That’s unfortunate, my M1 Mini (16GB RAM) can do that already.

Thanks!

 

[tdx]

I've been playing with HQP5 all day and I really like what I hear. Two things Im not clear about:

- with the oversampling filters you guys recommend, should both the oversampling 1X and NX be the same filter? Or are you using different filters for one and for the other?

- My DAC (Esoteric N-05XD) takes up to DSD 22.5Mhz over USB. Given that, which Bit rate limit should i select in HQP for DSD? Would rather avoid wasting CPU cycles by choosing a limit that is too high for my DAC.

Thanks!

 

[shwnwllms]

- with the oversampling filters you guys recommend, should both the oversampling 1X and NX be the same filter? Or are you using different filters for one and for the other?

Depends

It’s an option for use cases when you want a different filter for redbook vs hires

This can be due to preference (ie gauss-long 1x / gauss-hires-lp Nx - useful for MQA)

Or processing power (ext3 1x / ext2 Nx, gauss-xla / gauss-long etc)

The option is there if you need it but it’s perfectly acceptable to use the same filter for both. I use Sinc-MGa on both currently.

- My DAC (Esoteric N-05XD) takes up to DSD 22.5Mhz over USB. Given that, which Bit rate limit should i select in HQP for DSD? Would rather avoid wasting CPU cycles by choosing a limit that is too high for my DAC.

You want the highest your DAC will support, so DSD512. Be sure to check the 48k DSD box if your DAC supports it and choose 512x48, otherwise choose 512x44.1

 

[tdx]

Depends

It’s an option for use cases when you want a different filter for redbook vs hires

This can be due to preference (ie gauss-long 1x / gauss-hires-lp Nx - useful for MQA)

Or processing power (ext3 1x / ext2 Nx, gauss-xla / gauss-long etc)

The option is there if you need it but it’s perfectly acceptable to use the same filter for both. I use Sinc-MGa on both currently.


You want the highest your DAC will support, so DSD512. Be sure to check the 48k DSD box if your DAC supports it and choose 512x48, otherwise choose 512x44.1

Thanks so much, very useful info!