Signalyst HQPlayer - Is it worth the upgrade?
I have been reading high praises in audio forums about HQPlayer rendering the best sound quality from Qobuz or Tidal. I realize best is subjective in the context of one’s system and end user’s personal preferences driven by choice of gear and budget.
I have been a long time Aurender user and also been using Roon now for past 3 years. Those who have read my posts knows my take on Roon as not the best sounding renderer when directly compared with Aurender’s Conductor app. Others may disagree with my position on Roon but those are my findings within the context of my system. I do enjoy Roon interface for obvious reasons but not so much the sound.
The purpose of my post is to explore the possibility of elevating the sound of my existing Roon player (Merging Technologies + player) by integrating HQPlayer as the final renderer. By doing so, Roon will pass along a stream of bits from my local stored files on SSD and stream from Qobuz. This configuration allows me to enjoy the benefits of HQPlayer SQ and the fabulous library management capabilities of Roon at the same time.
I am seeking opinions from those who have actually compared Roon vs HQPlayer or using HQPlayer exclusively. Did you find HQPlayer worth the upgrade? What hardware or device you’re using to enjoy HQPlayer in your system.
Thank you!
PS: Please refrain from posting if you’re in bits are bits, 1’s and 0’s camp or believe high end streamer/servers are over priced and waste of money.
One thing I will mention is that "not all the bits are the same". So when I got the T+A new, I used Foobar to send DSD 512 and DSD 1024 to the DAC and noticed a difference over the previous DAC. But it was not a "game changing" experience that folks talking about. So I decided to give the HQ Player a try. All I will say is that with 30 seconds of 512 DSD with HQ Player to this DAC, I simply purchased the HQ Player. Hence I hope that you are able to try out the HQ Player with the new DAC. |
I have found, and now addicted to, HQPlayer desktop running on Mac Mini M4, upsampling Roons files natively, installed and playing on the same Mac mini, over Ethernet to my Holo Audio Red transport, over i2s to a Gustard R26, was the largest leap in sound quality since buying an SFP network switch, galvanically isolating my system, and externally clocking my DAC and switch. Truly incredible depth and width in soundstage, and the texture transformed into something completely different, and favorable. Like liquid honey in the mids, the voices had more definition and authority but somehow floated to your ears on a stream of liquid instead of beaming to them. Bass became velvety! I am now on the hunt for any and all accessible, upsampling DSD DACs. PS audio DirectStream perfect wave mkii and Meitner audio MA3 are in my sights. So to answer your question yes, it is WELL WORTH the 2 or 3 evening tearing your hair out with Mac OS and HQplayer preferences. I’d be happy to lend an hand or advise, but Grok Ai app got me through the whole process in a few evenings. Then if you’re able to separate the Roon program and Hqplayer on separate components. Say a Silent Angel Rhein Z1C with 10mhz clock input running Roon, Roon operates much much better on Linux, hands down less glitches and dropouts. The engineer at AfterDark told me this ‘seperatizing’ is the best next leap in sound quality. |
Hi @jbuddha882 - your post is great! Liquid Honey!! My experience with HQplayer upsampling to DSD has been great as well - so far I have been very budget limited and have been using the trial version on a laptop that's not very powerful, so I'm limited to low bit rates. I have also preferred using Jplay as opposed to Roon. You can try Jplay on a free trial and can control bit rate, modulator and filters from Jplay. My plan is to find a mini pc with a Core i7 or similar and use HQplayer embedded and hopefully get this done for well under $1000. I am puzzled by your comment that you are looking for upsampling DACs. I believe one of the great benefits of HQplayer is that it does the upsampling work so the DAC doesn't have to. So I think you should be looking for a DAC with "NOS Mode". I too I have found that using AI (Chat GPT, Google Gemini, etc.) has made understanding the various HQplayer settings and their effect much easier to navigate. |
HQPlayer's UI is less than desirable especially on Mac. I bought it for the filters, integrators, modulators and PEQ. I agree a DAC that takes HQPlayer's upsampled output and then does its own upsampling seems counter productive. I'm using a one bit DSD stream with Direct DSD mode turned on bypassing all the digital processing of my DAC. Would be the same for PCM using NOS. So finding a DAC that supports that is key. Some DACs don't allow that. I believe the Meitner DACs fall in that category. It is hard to summarize all the best practices because the developer posts on forums. I used Gemini to summarize his recommendations since I did not have time to read through all those posts. The filters, modulator and other configurations can impact the sound significantly so finding ones that work with my system and align with my preferences took some time. Very happy with what I have now. I have 3 preset configurations. One for DSD sources and 2 for PCM sources all based on recommendations from the developer and my listening comparisons. |
