Sense and Sox Plugin or HQPlayer

[IanW]

Hi,

I am able to use the Sox plugin to upsample (including a Chord like Impulse filter, for example) a flac stream in LMS (formerly Logitech Media Server) running on a raspberry Pi3.

I understood that Sense used LMS under the skin, and maybe still does. If that is the case would it be possible / desirable to add the Sox plugin so those of us with DACs that can work with upsampling and sinc filtering done before the DAC can benefit?

I have tried to read around the subject and found that there are some users of HQPlayer (commercial and much more capable solution by the Sox developer) with Innuos hardware. I have seen the following options mentioned:

1. HQPlayer embedded on an external PC supplying the Innuos and hardware and software, with an upsampled stream over the network, or directly into the Innuos hardware (?).
2. HQPlayer OS on an external PC supplying the Innuos and hardware and software, with an upsampled stream over the network.
3. HQPlayer as an embedded image on a USB installed on the Innuos hardware (no access to Sense software). Therefore having to use the HQPlayer software to control the music selection and output.
4. Use Innuos hardware and software as an HQPlayer endpoint or to use HQPlayer through Roon as an end point.

Please could someone correct any mistakes that I have made and if possible, suggest the simplest way to keep all the advantages of the Innuos Hardware and Sense software with an HQPlayer upsampled stream, or if is possible to somehow install and use the Sox plugin directly, somehow?

Looking to get this to work with Chord DAC and Innuos Zenith 3.

 

[Stephen Healy]

I've not a huge amount of experience with HQPlayer, but i believe its only points 2 and 4 that you state that are true since they seem to amount to the same thing; HQPlayer has to run on a separate device as it cannot run on Innuos, but the Innuos devices can be NAA endpoints with or without Roon.

You cannot use Sense to manage the music library and play the music on behalf of HQPlayer, you need to use their own control software for that.

With your ZENith in NAA Endpoint mode, several aspects of Sense are disabled but you would still have access to;
- Rip CDs
- Import files from USB, NAS, PC etc
- Backup file library and settings as they are
- Some settings like software update and language.

As for the plugin; you can try it, though some aspects of LMS like its library management is actually disabled, so I can't promise it will work. We also cannot support it, so if there is any system instability then we won't be able to help. Consequently, I'd advise against it but ultimately its at your discretion.

 

[Lio]

if you use Innuos as an NAA Endpoint for HQP, and HQP on an external PC or Mac
the easiest way to control your music with HQP is to use the HQPDControlv4 app (I use it on iPhone & iPad, also available on Android). this function very well, you just need your tracks are well tagged, it will also require to open a dedicated port on your router.

 

[IanW]

Hi Stephen Healy,

Thanks for clarifying the situation. I want to keep using the Sense software if possible and so will drop trying to get HQPlayer somehow incorporated. Trying to incorporate the Sox plugin could be an option in the longer term, but for now I will just enjoy my current solution.

From what I have seen so far Sense is very stable and just works. I have been trying to get a LMS solution to work on a Pi3 to run Sox to compare with and without see if it is worth trying to go further. But I think that my Pi3 needs some updates as it will connect to the Chord DAC other than to achieve a basic handshake. It does however connect and work with other USB DACS that I have from different manufacturers.

Hi Lio,

Thanks for the suggestion to use HQPDControlv4 app as the control software and use the Innuos hardware as the NAA HQPlayer endpoint. I am just starting to get used to these terms and so will most like just enjoy the music from the Zenith 3 and experiment in the background.

I used DBPowerAmp to rip my CDs and have added metadata where I found it needed it and corrected some mistakes. But it appears that getting it mostly correct for LMS and Lightning DS has left some areas to fix for Sense. Hopefully once that is done then if I go for the endpoint solution, then the tagging is in a good place.

 

[sworksone]

HQPlayer Client is available as of a few months ago on Apple devices to control HQPlayer making HQPDControl largely redundant I believe. It supports Qobuz and Tidal is coming but no timeline announced just yet. I use this with a Zenith acting as NAA and the sound is sublime. Sense is amazing and Client doesn’t touch it in reference to the interface but Client is functional once you take time to get used to it with even better sound quality if you have a DAC to take advantage of what HQPlayer can offer.

You actually can run HQPlayer on an Innuos but it takes a bit of manipulation (there is a thread on audiophilestyle that explains how to do it) but you will get better sound quality running HQPlayer on an external computer and using an Innuos as NAA as an Innuos is not powerful enough to run the more demanding HQPlayer filters and modulators (again DAC dependent - especially one that can handle DSD).

 

[IanW]

Hi sworksone,

Thanks for adding to the discussion.

NAAs are pretty new to me so I will do some research to try to understand how they could work for me.

Am I understanding your comments correctly as follows:

HQPlayer Client will control the Innuos (but I lose the great Sense functionality).

Innuos acts as an NAA. So does that mean the I can access the hard disk on the Zenith with all my flac files on it, through HQPlayer Client, even if it is not as good as Sense?

Process it on the separate computer through HQPlayer to get access to the filters, upsampling etc. Then can the HQPlayer Client then send the processed data back to the Innuos to send out to the DAC? Or does the external HQPlayer computer need to be connected to the DAC to get the benefit of the additional processing?

I have not experimented with DSD yet, but would like to try 705.6 KHz and or 768 KHz upsampled PCM with different sinc filter settings into my Chord DAC.

A logical extension of the above would be to ask Innuos (and HQPlayer) if you would (or have considered) consider the following as a development path:

1. Add capability to Sense to stream data that could be used by HQPlayer on an external computer across a network.
2 Sense to then accept a stream back from HQPlayer (can it even do that or would it need to do that?) over the network so that the data stream benefits from all the Innuos hardware improvements?
3. The Innuos Zenith then outputs the upsampled and filtered and rendered audio stream over USB?

 

[sworksone]

You unfortunately wont be able to access the files on your Innuos when in HQPlayer endpoint / NAA mode. In this mode an external computer (I use an M1 MacBook hooked up directly to the Zenith streamer port) sends the HQPlayer output to the Innuos via ethernet and the Innuos outputs via usb to your DAC. It’s straightforward to move the files from the Innuos to a folder on your computer which is running HQPlayer.

It is possible to run the “embedded” version of HQPlayer on your Innuos which can upsample to 1.5MHz PCM which is more than what you need for a Chord DAC. This as mentioned takes a bit of manipulation but also allows direct access to your files. Here is how to do it:

Run HQPlayer on an Innuos

It’s much easier to try HQPlayer (“desktop” version) on an external computer and switching your Innuos to NAA mode. If not upsampling to DSD this may provide the best sound quality but I haven’t really compared as I run DSD into a Holo May.

It would be amazing if HQPlayer upsampling to PCM and its various filters/modulators was integrated directly into Sense as this (with the exception of being limited to PCM) is essentially a perfect world combo imho. I put in this feature request on the feedback zone but I just saw it was merged with another request to allow an Innuos to act as an HQPlayer NAA. It’s great to now have this latter feature but unfortunately missed the original intent.

Hope this helps.

 

[sworksone]

PS - there is a massive amount of information on HQPlayer on the audiophilestyle forums if interested in trying it out.

 

[IanW]

You unfortunately wont be able to access the files on your Innuos when in HQPlayer endpoint / NAA mode. In this mode an external computer (I use an M1 MacBook hooked up directly to the Zenith streamer port) sends the HQPlayer output to the Innuos via ethernet and the Innuos outputs via usb to your DAC. It’s straightforward to move the files from the Innuos to a folder on your computer which is running HQPlayer.

It is possible to run the “embedded” version of HQPlayer on your Innuos which can upsample to 1.5MHz PCM which is more than what you need for a Chord DAC. This as mentioned takes a bit of manipulation but also allows direct access to your files. Here is how to do it:

Run HQPlayer on an Innuos

It’s much easier to try HQPlayer (“desktop” version) on an external computer and switching your Innuos to NAA mode. If not upsampling to DSD this may provide the best sound quality but I haven’t really compared as I run DSD into a Holo May.

It would be amazing if HQPlayer upsampling to PCM and its various filters/modulators was integrated directly into Sense as this (with the exception of being limited to PCM) is essentially a perfect world combo imho. I put in this feature request on the feedback zone but I just saw it was merged with another request to allow an Innuos to act as an HQPlayer NAA. It’s great to now have this latter feature but unfortunately missed the original intent.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for all the additional information.

Sounds like we both want / wanted the same thing with HQPlayer, even if a bit limited from the capability on a well specced separate PC. I will try adding another development request as what we want would provide a neater solution all round.

I want to try the HQPlayer PCM filter setting that emulate aspects of an MScaler as an experiment and if it works I would probably keep using it.

I am currently going through all the folders on the Innuos disk to tidy up my flac file collection and doing this from a Windows 11 PC so copying all the files should be easy enough if needed.

 

[IanW]

PS - there is a massive amount of information on HQPlayer on the audiophilestyle forums if interested in trying it out.

I have started to read the threads there. Pretty time consuming as not so much is relevant, but there is a lot of useful information there, dotted around the threads.

 

[sworksone]

PM me if there’s anything I can do to help.

 

[Stephen Healy]

Thanks for all the additional information.

Sounds like we both want / wanted the same thing with HQPlayer, even if a bit limited from the capability on a well specced separate PC. I will try adding another development request as what we want would provide a neater solution all round.

I want to try the HQPlayer PCM filter setting that emulate aspects of an MScaler as an experiment and if it works I would probably keep using it.

I am currently going through all the folders on the Innuos disk to tidy up my flac file collection and doing this from a Windows 11 PC so copying all the files should be easy enough if needed.

If looking for Mscaler emulation, an alternative would be to use PGGB for offline remastering, which will basically take your existing files and upsample them in to a new permanent file that would stay on the server. This will take a lot of time to do a whole collection and take up a lot of disc space, but the advantage would be two-fold;
1. You can natively use Sense to play these files
2. A big simplification of system setup, a lot of removal from network latency back-and-forth, and also generally lower noise floor as on-the-fly upsampling is a noisy process.

 

[IanW]

If looking for Mscaler emulation, an alternative would be to use PGGB for offline remastering, which will basically take your existing files and upsample them in to a new permanent file that would stay on the server. This will take a lot of time to do a whole collection and take up a lot of disc space, but the advantage would be two-fold;
1. You can natively use Sense to play these files
2. A big simplification of system setup, a lot of removal from network latency back-and-forth, and also generally lower noise floor as on-the-fly upsampling is a noisy process.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have quite a few things to research now before deciding what to do next.

I am aware of PGGB but had not really looked into it due to concern over the large file sizes. Ideally I want to keep everything on the hard disk in the Zenith. But of course do accept that some form of streaming the data to another computer for it to run HQPlayer on could cause latency problems. I think creating a couple of sample files may be the best way to assess whether PGGB is worth taking any further.