[Allanmarcus]

I'd actually like to try HQPlayer, but for some unknown reason they only support my DAC, the Sony UDA-1, under Windows, even through it works fine under Mac.

 

[Allanmarcus]

Anyone using HQPlayer with the iDSD Micro and the Mac? 
 
Or using with anything on the Mac?

 

[Lucser]

Yes. Imac mid2010 (i5 cpu) HQP :
a) USB -> iDSD micro 
b) Ethernet -> NAA on Cubox -> iDSD micro
Working well but UI is annoyingly less than minimal. (If I really want to enjoy my speaker system remotely located I look for the albums in Audirvana and played through HQP. If listening to HP I used directly Audirvana).

 

[Sherwood]

I've been head over heels for HQPlayer for a few months now.  I previously used JRiver for its tagging, file handling, "good-enough" UI, and tweakability, but I'm a full convert now.  I'm not an EE, but I'm an enthusiast and I think I have a philosophical grasp on why it's as excellent as it is.
 
Mine is set up to upsample everything to DSD256, PCM or DSD.  This is the way to use this software, but it takes some grunt.  I need to offload processing to my GTX970 card.  At DSD256, my DAC does nothing except the barest filtering.  It doesn't have to negotiate its own filters, or use any of its own processing, as it would if I fed it a standard PCM signal.  I do all that myself, and set all my own parameters.  Whether your software does it, or your DAC does it, D/A conversion involves filtering and modulation.  Your choice of filter and modulator influence the sound, and seem to be responsible for a lot of the differences folks cite between different DACs.  
 
I can't imagine giving up control of my filter choice again.  If you can spend the coin, pair it up with Roon for the best UI and metadata and a seamless experience.  It's the ultimate headphone setup, and it's sure to get the best of your DAC.
 
My setup:
Win 10 PC -> Roon -> HQPlayer (poly-sinc-shrt-mp/ASDM7/DSD256) -> Mytek Brooklyn -> ECP Audio L2 amp -> Grado HP2i / Sennheiser HD800

 

[514077]

  I've been head over heels for HQPlayer for a few months now.  I previously used JRiver for its tagging, file handling, "good-enough" UI, and tweakability, but I'm a full convert now.  I'm not an EE, but I'm an enthusiast and I think I have a philosophical grasp on why it's as excellent as it is.
 
Mine is set up to upsample everything to DSD256, PCM or DSD.  This is the way to use this software, but it takes some grunt.  I need to offload processing to my GTX970 card.  At DSD256, my DAC does nothing except the barest filtering.  It doesn't have to negotiate its own filters, or use any of its own processing, as it would if I fed it a standard PCM signal.  I do all that myself, and set all my own parameters.  Whether your software does it, or your DAC does it, D/A conversion involves filtering and modulation.  Your choice of filter and modulator influence the sound, and seem to be responsible for a lot of the differences folks cite between different DACs.  
 
I can't imagine giving up control of my filter choice again.  If you can spend the coin, pair it up with Roon for the best UI and metadata and a seamless experience.  It's the ultimate headphone setup, and it's sure to get the best of your DAC.
 
My setup:
Win 10 PC -> Roon -> HQPlayer (poly-sinc-shrt-mp/ASDM7/DSD256) -> Mytek Brooklyn -> ECP Audio L2 amp -> Grado HP2i / Sennheiser HD800

I'm currently running W7 with 4G RAM.  How much does it take to run HQ properly?

 

[jcn3]

  I'm currently running W7 with 4G RAM.  How much does it take to run HQ properly?

 
i'm sure sherwood can give you a better answer, but based on what i've read hqplayer seems to need an i7 processor and at least 16g of ram to upconvert to dsd256.

 

[Sherwood]

There are too many variables to give you a good answer.  I have an old i5, and it works fine, but as I noted above I also offload processing to a separate video card.  
 
The best thing you can do is download a demo and try to run it at the settings you want.  If you get delays, pops, or dropouts you'll know you can't quite manage to run your current setting smoothly.  At that point, you decide whether to turn down the settings or turn up the hardware.
 
Generally speaking, though, any machine that can run a modern game on "high" settings should be capable of running any DSD 256 filter combination in HQPlayer.

 

[514077]

  There are too many variables to give you a good answer.  I have an old i5, and it works fine, but as I noted above I also offload processing to a separate video card.  
 
The best thing you can do is download a demo and try to run it at the settings you want.  If you get delays, pops, or dropouts you'll know you can't quite manage to run your current setting smoothly.  At that point, you decide whether to turn down the settings or turn up the hardware.
 
Generally speaking, though, any machine that can run a modern game on "high" settings should be capable of running any DSD 256 filter combination in HQPlayer.

Thank you.  How about the UI:  Must it be run by mouse clicks, or are there keyboard shortcut keys one can use?  I only ask because JRiver isn't usable to blind users at all.  I  just wondered if you could tab to various controls and activate them with the enter key.

 

[Sherwood]

  Thank you.  How about the UI:  Must it be run by mouse clicks, or are there keyboard shortcut keys one can use?  I only ask because JRiver isn't usable to blind users at all.  I  just wondered if you could tab to various controls and activate them with the enter key.

 
I'm going to be honest with you, I'd never considered the accessibility of the UI.  I use it as a "back end" player with Roon handling the actual UI, which is how I really enjoy it.  That said, I'm curious, so I'll give it a go and report back.

 

[514077]

 

  Thank you.  How about the UI:  Must it be run by mouse clicks, or are there keyboard shortcut keys one can use?  I only ask because JRiver isn't usable to blind users at all.  I  just wondered if you could tab to various controls and activate them with the enter key.

 
I'm going to be honest with you, I'd never considered the accessibility of the UI.  I use it as a "back end" player with Roon handling the actual UI, which is how I really enjoy it.  That said, I'm curious, so I'll give it a go and report back.

Thanks.  Looking forward to any results you come up with.
Kevin

 

[Sherwood]

So you'll have to forgive my no doubt inept poking around, I've not previously reviewed software from this frame of reference.  I think HQPlayer is an alright option, from the perspective of a blind user.  
 
Here's my methodology: on windows 10, there exists a screen reader called "narrator".  I'd not used it before, but I set it up and got a quick feel for how it works. There was a bit of a learning curve, but it was an illustrative experience.  
 
My HQPlayer takes full control of my DAC, so while I'm using it I don't hear any system sounds, and the system mixer is bypassed.  It might be possible to run system sounds through speakers, for instance, but i was not able to get that up and running.
 
HQPlayer itself has menus, and those menus can be accessed by "Alt+" hotkeys.  Once in the menus, you can navigate between options solely with Tab, arrow keys, and enter.  Once out of the menus, you can use the file tree to select and play songs.  File tree works in the same way explorer does, and subfolders and songs are easily accessed with arrow keys, while enter plays a track.  Likewise, arrow keys back you out of folders to the main file directory.  At any point, you can go back to menus with Alt+ hotkeys.
 
The menu options aren't really presented in order when you're tabbing through them, and I can imagine they're even more tedious to set up for a blind user than they are for a sighted user, but that's nothing you'll not have experienced before.
 
All in all, with the benefit of being able to see menus as well as hear options by narrator, I was able to modify settings, find a song, and start playback.  That said, once playback is started I couldn't figure out a way to back out without closing out of the program entirely.  
 
When using the HQPlayer GUI, you add tracks to a playlist, and then start that playlist.  Once you've done that, I think you need a mouse click to get yourself back to a place where you can continue to add tracks. 

 

[514077]

  So you'll have to forgive my no doubt inept poking around, I've not previously reviewed software from this frame of reference.  I think HQPlayer is an alright option, from the perspective of a blind user.  
 
Here's my methodology: on windows 10, there exists a screen reader called "narrator".  I'd not used it before, but I set it up and got a quick feel for how it works. There was a bit of a learning curve, but it was an illustrative experience.  
 
My HQPlayer takes full control of my DAC, so while I'm using it I don't hear any system sounds, and the system mixer is bypassed.  It might be possible to run system sounds through speakers, for instance, but i was not able to get that up and running.
 
HQPlayer itself has menus, and those menus can be accessed by "Alt+" hotkeys.  Once in the menus, you can navigate between options solely with Tab, arrow keys, and enter.  Once out of the menus, you can use the file tree to select and play songs.  File tree works in the same way explorer does, and subfolders and songs are easily accessed with arrow keys, while enter plays a track.  Likewise, arrow keys back you out of folders to the main file directory.  At any point, you can go back to menus with Alt+ hotkeys.
 
The menu options aren't really presented in order when you're tabbing through them, and I can imagine they're even more tedious to set up for a blind user than they are for a sighted user, but that's nothing you'll not have experienced before.
 
All in all, with the benefit of being able to see menus as well as hear options by narrator, I was able to modify settings, find a song, and start playback.  That said, once playback is started I couldn't figure out a way to back out without closing out of the program entirely.  
 
When using the HQPlayer GUI, you add tracks to a playlist, and then start that playlist.  Once you've done that, I think you need a mouse click to get yourself back to a place where you can continue to add tracks. 

That's excellent.  You sure went to the extremes to provide a clear and competant answer.  You sure went out on a limb for me.
Thanks!  And I'm going to give it a good try when I add a bit more memory.
Kevin

 

[bluesaint]

I been using hqplayer for a year now and as everyone mentioned the GUI blows, but the audio prowess is totl. I listen exclusively to the DSD512 upsampling using the newer dsd512 exclusive filter. Look is not going to make crappy audio sounds better, but for most audio the smoothing of the audio is quite audible. Makes everything sound butter smooth. Since that's what the dsd upsampling really does in the end, smooths out the audio curve using CPU intensive algorithms.

 

[rkt31]

if you simply output bit perfect data to the dac, there will not be any change to sq. however hq player has some in built upsampling algorithm which is supposedly better than many dac's inbuilt processing. almost each and every dac depends upon upsampling to reduce the "steps width" of 44.1khz sample rate. if this steps width is not reduced , one will need heavy analog filtering which affects the frequency response and even then the noise beyond audible frequencies will affect the frequencies in audible band. there are NOS dacs which don't do any kind of upsampling and depend on heavy analog filtering. now upsampling quality depends on many factors, like numbers of sample points for averaging, bit depth accuracy of calculations, sharpness of roll off filter etc. there are some free upsampling plugin in foobar like v resampler, sox etc . you can tweak the upsampling settings and listen to the difference between no upsampling or upsampling . i found hq player to be best among all players,  still it can't beat the inbuilt algorithm of some dacs.