[Ghoostknight]

once you start converting high quality FLAC to DSD with HQ Player, it is hard to go back! Enjoy.

so true, im probably reconfiguring my setup next, tho hqplayer has some massive drawbacks... power consumption and you cant easily use it for everything on a desktop pc

tho there seems to be some way to input audio so it gets processed but im unclear what happens if hqplayer desktop runs on a homeserver instead of your desktop pc, did someone dive into this? ultimatily i would like to route all audio of my pc trough hqplayer (without too much latency... tho im ok with 50-200ms), kinda silly for browser stuff with lossy formats but atleast i would like to try how much difference it makes with day to day stuff since starting listening to flacs i kinda abondoned my speakers for youtube and such.. because it sound crappy in comparison the difference is way less on headphones in my setup

 

[plumpudding2]

so true, im probably reconfiguring my setup next, tho hqplayer has some massive drawbacks... power consumption and you cant easily use it for everything on a desktop pc

tho there seems to be some way to input audio so it gets processed but im unclear what happens if hqplayer desktop runs on a homeserver instead of your desktop pc, did someone dive into this? ultimatily i would like to route all audio of my pc trough hqplayer (without too much latency... tho im ok with 50-200ms), kinda silly for browser stuff with lossy formats but atleast i would like to try how much difference it makes with day to day stuff since starting listening to flacs i kinda abondoned my speakers for youtube and such.. because it sound crappy in comparison the difference is way less on headphones in my setup

I've tried it but the delay is too much for anything that requires audio video synchronisation like games or movies.

 

[Ghoostknight]

I've tried it but the delay is too much for anything that requires audio video synchronisation like games or movies.

how you routed your audio?

it should be possible under Linux with a simple Alsa Loopback ... unfortunaly under my debian testing system the loopback device doesnt seeem to work... i have todo some troubleshooting

 

[Erick Muller]

That is my exact experience...once you start converting high quality FLAC to DSD with HQ Player, it is hard to go back! Enjoy.

I generally go between DSD and PCM upsampling on HQP, usually stay on a whole week with one and the next week to the other to see what I do like better... I'm still making up my mind on that.

Latter today I hope to share my settings here and get recommendations from you to see what I can do to optimize my settings.

 

[plumpudding2]

how you routed your audio?

it should be possible under Linux with a simple Alsa Loopback ... unfortunaly under my debian testing system the loopback device doesnt seeem to work... i have todo some troubleshooting

On Windows I used virtual audio cable but it's been a while so I don't remember the details

 

[Ghoostknight]

I generally go between DSD and PCM upsampling on HQP, usually stay on a whole week with one and the next week to the other to see what I do like better... I'm still making up my mind on that.

Latter today I hope to share my settings here and get recommendations from you to see what I can do to optimize my settings.

the thing for me is... im since 1 or 2 months on the hunt on getting rid of these muddy "irritating" sounding highs that change in "character" for example if i switch oversampling filters on my dac .... it doesnt sound "really" right with either filter
i never tried a nos dac but now trying DSD sounds like a revelation in terms of these irratating "not right sounding" highs (im talking 10khz and up here, my hearing goes to 15khz, it still makes a huge difference) the first time the highs sound really "smoother" (WITHOUT EQing them down!) and more accurate also symbals etc come better/cleaner trough
since some people say dsd sounds better than pcm i had to try and i think they are kinda right... the most logical explanation seems to be these oversampling/reconstruction filters and how the dac or hqplayer handels them different with either DSD or PCM

one thing i noticed immediatly and which was quite obvious.... i could turn the volume higher with DSD without getting the feeling the speakers "crap out" apparently its PCM "nastys" coming trough and not the speakers crapping out, atleast to some degree, it was really obvious with my studio monitor speakers

i kinda get that people say pcm gets more details or sound maybe more true to the original recording or how the sound engineer heared it themself but DSD sounds so much better on a pure technical standpoint to "true music" its still strange but i will probably build my next dac DIY and will try a AK4317 hardware resampler to resample the i2s stream to DSD before the DAC pcb
PS audio does this too (maybe not with the AK4137) in some similar way i think in some of their dacs as far i understood

 

[Erick Muller]

I generally go between DSD and PCM upsampling on HQP, usually stay on a whole week with one and the next week to the other to see what I do like better... I'm still making up my mind on that.

Latter today I hope to share my settings here and get recommendations from you to see what I can do to optimize my settings.

Okay, about a day and a half late, but here are the settings I'm using for HQP. your recommendations are welcome.

 

[Daiyama]

For PCM you can/should lower your Bits from 24 to 18 or 20 bits depending on your DAC you are using.
This value has to do with the linearity range of your DAC and not with your bit depth of your played content.
So maybe @jlaako can advise you on the optimal setting for your specific DAC.

 

[Erick Muller]

For PCM you can/should lower your Bits from 24 to 18 or 20 bits depending on your DAC you are using.
This value has to do with the linearity range of your DAC and not with your bit depth of your played content.
So maybe @jlaako can advise you on the optimal setting for your specific DAC.

Ok thx, I'll try it out today and see what changes it brings.

 

[bogi]

For PCM you can/should lower your Bits from 24 to 18 or 20 bits depending on your DAC you are using.

No, lowering DAC bits is relevant only for R2R DACs in NOS mode.

SU-8s is ESS based delta sigma DAC. Leave DAC bits on default (32 bits). ESS chips perform 2nd oversampling stage and delta sigma modulation with PCM input signal, so huge amount of digital processing is performed before D/A conversion stage. Lowering input signal resolution would not help anything.

DAC bits setting is relevant only for PCM output from HQPlayer. For SDM output it is not used (DSD is a bit stream, it doesn't have defined word length).

 

[Daiyama]

Thx, I know I missed an important detail.

 

[bogi]

your recommendations are welcome

I preferred DSD input with my previous ESS based DAC.
I don't see any issue in your filter/modulator settings, if that's the sound you like most with your chain. Both filter and modulator belong to high quality ones.
There are plenty of other filters you could try, maybe you already did it, for example sinc-Lm, poly-sinc-gauss-halfband, poly-sinc-hb-m, poly-sinc-gauss, xtr variants of poly-sinc filters, ...
You can try also the 'light' version of modulator with darker sounding filters, or AMSDM7EC 512+ fs.
Listening experiences are not easily transferable between people because of differences between listeners and their chains. But If you would describe how you perceive current sound and what would you like to reach, I could try to give you some more specific recommendations - with no guarantee that you would like them.

 

[ra990]

No, lowering DAC bits is relevant only for R2R DACs in NOS mode.

SU-8s is ESS based delta sigma DAC. Leave DAC bits on default (32 bits). ESS chips perform 2nd oversampling stage and delta sigma modulation with PCM input signal, so huge amount of digital processing is performed before D/A conversion stage. Lowering input signal resolution would not help anything.

DAC bits setting is relevant only for PCM output from HQPlayer. For SDM output it is not used (DSD is a bit stream, it doesn't have defined word length).

Bogi, I see you providing tons of support for HQPlayer on the Audiophile Style Forum as well. You've helped me there in the past. Do you work with Signalyst or are you just an expert user? Thanks for your help

 

[Erick Muller]

I preferred DSD input with my previous ESS based DAC.
I don't see any issue in your filter/modulator settings, if that's the sound you like most with your chain. Both filter and modulator belong to high quality ones.
There are plenty of other filters you could try, maybe you already did it, for example sinc-Lm, poly-sinc-gauss-halfband, poly-sinc-hb-m, poly-sinc-gauss, xtr variants of poly-sinc filters, ...
You can try also the 'light' version of modulator with darker sounding filters, or AMSDM7EC 512+ fs.
Listening experiences are not easily transferable between people because of differences between listeners and their chains. But If you would describe how you perceive current sound and what would you like to reach, I could try to give you some more specific recommendations - with no guarantee that you would like them.

My amp, the Aune S17 already leans a little bit into the warmish side of things, not overly so, but somewhat and tastefully so. Most people would describe it as either lush or "musical", it does colored the sound a little bit.

Given this, what filters would yo recommend that I use or try out?

 

[bogi]

Bogi, I see you providing tons of support for HQPlayer on the Audiophile Style Forum as well. You've helped me there in the past. Do you work with Signalyst or are you just an expert user? Thanks for your help

I am working in software development, but that's not in audio area, that's only my hobby. But being a computer guy makes me easier to understand digital audio software and hardware related topics.

Jussi is amazing person who explained much about digital audio in his many thousands of posts. I learned much about digital audio from him. Of course, combined with other sources. Digital signal processing is not my professional area, to understand it fully is about math, which I don't need for my daily work, so in this area my knowledge is rather on popular-scientific level.

Digital audio is still a fascinating topic for me, with all it's bizzare and not yet well explained things like computer generated noise influence to digital audio or corelation between heard and measured.

Of course, I like to listen to music. Many genres and decades but progressive rock from 70's is the genre my heart is beating for.