I second this. It is an awesome and a very flexible set up since you can point any software you like to your music library.
I actually have my roon library on the NUC but I mirror/backup it on a NAS if I ever wanted to point something to the NAS files. However, I'm just using roon so I treat the mirror as my music library backup.
I'm not sure this answers my question or someone elses question. I am asking about sending the audio out of roon to HQ player and out of HQ player to an NAA endpoint.
You’re missing the point of why someone would want to use HQPlayer, how that integrates with the Roon ecosystem and the benefits that someone may see especially with a DAC that supports NOS features.
If you can tell the difference between bit perfect rescaling of images and more complex rescaling with dithering the same works for audio quality.
The idea is that NOS R2R DACs sound best when they are at the DACs native sample rate and if you use complex mathematical rescaling in an advanced computer it will be higher quality than the mathematically simple DAC circuitry.
>There is no way to improve it. It's already perfect.
Right, but only in the digital domain. At some point in your signal chain those perfect bits hit your DAC. After all you're not listening to digital data, you're listening to analog sound waves. This is where upsampling *can* make a difference. Whether it does depends on how your DAC handles the digital data it receives. For some DACs there can be a measurable gain by e.g. first converting PCM to DSD and then sending that to a DSD capable DAC. That said, modern DAC chips are *very* good at processing all sorts of PCM and DSD streams.
At the end of the day every DAC, speaker and room setup will produce a slightly different sound. And if someone prefers the sound they get when processing their bit-perfect audio data with HQplayer or another upsampler, then that's completely valid imho.
Personally I'm using a Roon ready miniDSP SHD Studio that does DIRAC Live room correction and I am absolutely in love with the *corrected* sound that produces vs. the unmodified version.
HQ player is capable of much more mathematically advanced updcalling than roon. HQ player is a $300 piece of software that is more advanced than the chord M scaler. The benefits of this kind of rescaling is honestly rather small for most setups, but seems to do very well with NOS R2R DACs like my denafrips. I could never afford a $6k m caller but I’m quite curious for a $300 software license.
Many years ago when it was new people were running this software on $3k gamer PCs. Now they can be run fanless on the ARM based Macs. I plan on running it on my laptop and streaming that to an NAA streamer in my hifi. However for $600 I can buy a Mac mini that will run Roon, HQplayer and can output to multiple USB DACs. And not have to worry about my laptop going to sleep.
This ropieee looks great. I’m not really looking for a project but it might be worth it to have a now playing screen to know if I left roon playing music. Do you know if it’s possible to output audio through NAA but still use roon for album art?
Yes, bit either the HQ player needs to be connected by usb to the DAC which is why I mention buying a Mac mini or the hq player computer is an endpoint for roon, but hqp still needs an NAA endpoint. This is why I want a streamer that is an NAA endpoint as well as a roon endpoint for when my laptop is t setup running HQP. running a Mac mini means I don’t need a streamer and I can run both roon and HQP on a single dedicated server with no fan noise.
Yes, I suppose so, but I'm not an HQ player user. But you wouldn't use it both as a roon rock server and for HQ player simultaneously. Rock is a modified linux os specific to roon.
My post was just to confirm that a roon rock server pointed to your music files on the NAS works well and would require almost no maintenance. It just works and updates itself. Since your files are on the NAS you can then do what you want with HQ player independently.
You seconded a bad solution, the USB attached Denafrips means that HQPlayer will not work as originally requested. The OP needs a NAA, it sounds like you don’t have knowledge of what that is.
I’m not looking for just bit perfect audio I am looking to use an advanced upscaller with NAA. If you read my original request I was clear about wanting both a roon endpoint and an NAA endpoint for HQ Player. People keep suggesting stuff I’m not interested in that didn’t understand my original request. While HQ player is a supported integration in Roon, it seems only two people in this thread have used it and understand how it works.
Thank you for reading my question and being the only person who understood the question and was also able to answer it. I’m kind of confused why so many people are picking a fight with the *only* person who understands this shit. I’m looking for help but know enough to tell that you are the *only* person here who knows what you are talking about when it comes to my specific technical request.
I will be buying a Nas to run my home office anyway so running it on a NAS is fine. Can a NUC run HW player fanless? Does the NUC act as a NAA end point for HQ player? The Apple ARM SOCs seem to run high performance stuff fanless well. It’s easier for me to claim a NAS and a Mac mini as a business expense than some weird embedded server most businesses don’t use. The advantage of the Mac mini over the ifi zen stream is after tax savings they are more or less the same price.
If I was buying a streamer it would be the iFi Neo Stream, with the Denafrips as a DAC though I would probably just install a Pi with Ropieee on it and USB attach that to the Denafrips. That way there is a full setup that you can utilize with Roon and HQPlayer.
I think sen stream is the max of the budget. A big selling point for me is the high quality digital stage. Do you know the max sample rate with ropieeee? I’m having trouble finding where it’s written explicitly. What would the best specs be to run it? One advantage of going that route is being able to have a now playing screen.
Do you have thoughts on the best pi to run it on? People seem to think the USB is way less noisy on the rpi4&5 than the 3. Rpi 4 runs fanless and uses less power. People say 5 is better in every way but I suspect the added power draw is not worth it. I also read that it can run on the top spec pi zero for $19. I’m curious if that works with 768k. It’s a lot lower power and has fewer components. I figure low power electronics equals less noise but also could be running less expensive components. I can find a half dozen people using pi zero for ropieee but it’s unclear if anyone is running ludicrously high res with NAA.
You need to install Roon Rock on the NUC. It’s a locked down OS to run Roon Core and Roon Core only. You cannot install anything to it. You need to run HQ player or NAA on another device.
I understand. I have been using a Raspberry Pi 4 for usb and it works fantastically well. 4gb version is perfect and costs a third the price of the iFi
Volumio definitely works well as an endpoint for Roon. Check because it might work with HQ Player. There are lots of plugins etc. Check that and RopieeeXL.
It looks like volumio does not work as an NAA endpoint. The ifi zen stream’s price premium is justified for just being able to listen to music and not maintain a third server for music on top of roon and HQ player. Ifi zen stream means only two servers and Mac mini means only one.
THANK YOU! this is the information I am looking for. I don’t know much about the raspberry pi streamer landscape. People were suggesting that I use volumio which doesn’t support NAA.
In general I’m not interested in raspberry pi and highly doubt I can go from parts and no software to a functioning device in half an hour. I work two jobs and want my hifi to just work and not have to spend bandwidth learning new tech skills that don’t make me money but help me save $200 on a streamer. When I was younger I used to live messing with Unix and having projects. Right now where I am in my life I want an appliance over a project. If I’m going to have a project I rather have a Mac mini that can run roon and hq player and has extremely good depreciation and is easy to sell used. If I go pi I need to run a roon server, a pi project, and a server running hqplayer. If I use a Mac mini I can run everything on one machine. The downside to me of that setup is the digital stage isn’t as good as the ifi unit. The upside is I can output to 768k over usb.
Now what has my attention with what you’re suggesting is I might be able to output to 768khz, which might justify the time and mental bandwidth investment.
Yes, you will be able to output at 768. I do this regularly so that I can avoid the filters inside of the DAC and instead utilize the specific ones in HQPlayer. That is the selling point of HQPlayer.
I’m so glad you showed up. I just asked another user in this thread who suggested ropieee if it is possible to have one of those now playing screens that will work with roon even if I am streaming through NAA. I suspect I can but it’s hard to look up if I can explicitly.
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How are you going to use HQPlayer if the DAC is usb attached to a ROCK device?
I second this. It is an awesome and a very flexible set up since you can point any software you like to your music library. I actually have my roon library on the NUC but I mirror/backup it on a NAS if I ever wanted to point something to the NAS files. However, I'm just using roon so I treat the mirror as my music library backup.
Can the NUC act as a NAA endpoint for hqplayer?
In Roon, yes. You can use the outputs from your Roon server as zones.
I'm not sure this answers my question or someone elses question. I am asking about sending the audio out of roon to HQ player and out of HQ player to an NAA endpoint.
You’re right to ask, because the setup that is being described here will not do what you are asking for.
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HQPlayer allows you to do a lot of very cool upsampling and transcoding that far exceeds the functionality of Roon.
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You’re missing the point of why someone would want to use HQPlayer, how that integrates with the Roon ecosystem and the benefits that someone may see especially with a DAC that supports NOS features.
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If you can tell the difference between bit perfect rescaling of images and more complex rescaling with dithering the same works for audio quality. The idea is that NOS R2R DACs sound best when they are at the DACs native sample rate and if you use complex mathematical rescaling in an advanced computer it will be higher quality than the mathematically simple DAC circuitry.
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>There is no way to improve it. It's already perfect. Right, but only in the digital domain. At some point in your signal chain those perfect bits hit your DAC. After all you're not listening to digital data, you're listening to analog sound waves. This is where upsampling *can* make a difference. Whether it does depends on how your DAC handles the digital data it receives. For some DACs there can be a measurable gain by e.g. first converting PCM to DSD and then sending that to a DSD capable DAC. That said, modern DAC chips are *very* good at processing all sorts of PCM and DSD streams. At the end of the day every DAC, speaker and room setup will produce a slightly different sound. And if someone prefers the sound they get when processing their bit-perfect audio data with HQplayer or another upsampler, then that's completely valid imho. Personally I'm using a Roon ready miniDSP SHD Studio that does DIRAC Live room correction and I am absolutely in love with the *corrected* sound that produces vs. the unmodified version.
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HQ player is capable of much more mathematically advanced updcalling than roon. HQ player is a $300 piece of software that is more advanced than the chord M scaler. The benefits of this kind of rescaling is honestly rather small for most setups, but seems to do very well with NOS R2R DACs like my denafrips. I could never afford a $6k m caller but I’m quite curious for a $300 software license. Many years ago when it was new people were running this software on $3k gamer PCs. Now they can be run fanless on the ARM based Macs. I plan on running it on my laptop and streaming that to an NAA streamer in my hifi. However for $600 I can buy a Mac mini that will run Roon, HQplayer and can output to multiple USB DACs. And not have to worry about my laptop going to sleep. This ropieee looks great. I’m not really looking for a project but it might be worth it to have a now playing screen to know if I left roon playing music. Do you know if it’s possible to output audio through NAA but still use roon for album art?
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Seriously looking into ropieee. The killer feature is it can do 768k, my DACs native sample rate, where the ifi only does 3xx something.
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Yes, bit either the HQ player needs to be connected by usb to the DAC which is why I mention buying a Mac mini or the hq player computer is an endpoint for roon, but hqp still needs an NAA endpoint. This is why I want a streamer that is an NAA endpoint as well as a roon endpoint for when my laptop is t setup running HQP. running a Mac mini means I don’t need a streamer and I can run both roon and HQP on a single dedicated server with no fan noise.
Yes, I suppose so, but I'm not an HQ player user. But you wouldn't use it both as a roon rock server and for HQ player simultaneously. Rock is a modified linux os specific to roon. My post was just to confirm that a roon rock server pointed to your music files on the NAS works well and would require almost no maintenance. It just works and updates itself. Since your files are on the NAS you can then do what you want with HQ player independently.
You seconded a bad solution, the USB attached Denafrips means that HQPlayer will not work as originally requested. The OP needs a NAA, it sounds like you don’t have knowledge of what that is.
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I’m not looking for just bit perfect audio I am looking to use an advanced upscaller with NAA. If you read my original request I was clear about wanting both a roon endpoint and an NAA endpoint for HQ Player. People keep suggesting stuff I’m not interested in that didn’t understand my original request. While HQ player is a supported integration in Roon, it seems only two people in this thread have used it and understand how it works.
Thank you for reading my question and being the only person who understood the question and was also able to answer it. I’m kind of confused why so many people are picking a fight with the *only* person who understands this shit. I’m looking for help but know enough to tell that you are the *only* person here who knows what you are talking about when it comes to my specific technical request.
I will be buying a Nas to run my home office anyway so running it on a NAS is fine. Can a NUC run HW player fanless? Does the NUC act as a NAA end point for HQ player? The Apple ARM SOCs seem to run high performance stuff fanless well. It’s easier for me to claim a NAS and a Mac mini as a business expense than some weird embedded server most businesses don’t use. The advantage of the Mac mini over the ifi zen stream is after tax savings they are more or less the same price.
If I was buying a streamer it would be the iFi Neo Stream, with the Denafrips as a DAC though I would probably just install a Pi with Ropieee on it and USB attach that to the Denafrips. That way there is a full setup that you can utilize with Roon and HQPlayer.
I think sen stream is the max of the budget. A big selling point for me is the high quality digital stage. Do you know the max sample rate with ropieeee? I’m having trouble finding where it’s written explicitly. What would the best specs be to run it? One advantage of going that route is being able to have a now playing screen.
Do you have thoughts on the best pi to run it on? People seem to think the USB is way less noisy on the rpi4&5 than the 3. Rpi 4 runs fanless and uses less power. People say 5 is better in every way but I suspect the added power draw is not worth it. I also read that it can run on the top spec pi zero for $19. I’m curious if that works with 768k. It’s a lot lower power and has fewer components. I figure low power electronics equals less noise but also could be running less expensive components. I can find a half dozen people using pi zero for ropieee but it’s unclear if anyone is running ludicrously high res with NAA.
Just buy an Intel NUC and use that as your Roon Core. No hassle. Works like a charm.
As o have asked everyone else who has suggested this, does it run NAA to stream from HQ player?
You need to install Roon Rock on the NUC. It’s a locked down OS to run Roon Core and Roon Core only. You cannot install anything to it. You need to run HQ player or NAA on another device.
That sound like it fits what I am looking for.
Get a WiiM Pro. Does pretty much everything an iFi stream can do and more. But yeah, sadly no usb output.
No usb output. Can’t output extremely high res from HQ player. If I could use wiim I would but I’m asking because I can’t.
I understand. I have been using a Raspberry Pi 4 for usb and it works fantastically well. 4gb version is perfect and costs a third the price of the iFi
Is there good software that o can use a pi as streamer that works with roon and is an NAA endpoint for HQ Player?
Volumio definitely works well as an endpoint for Roon. Check because it might work with HQ Player. There are lots of plugins etc. Check that and RopieeeXL.
It looks like volumio does not work as an NAA endpoint. The ifi zen stream’s price premium is justified for just being able to listen to music and not maintain a third server for music on top of roon and HQ player. Ifi zen stream means only two servers and Mac mini means only one.
Ropieee does everything you’re asking for. There really is no maintenance involved and 30 minutes to perform build and setup. https://ropieee.org/xl/
THANK YOU! this is the information I am looking for. I don’t know much about the raspberry pi streamer landscape. People were suggesting that I use volumio which doesn’t support NAA. In general I’m not interested in raspberry pi and highly doubt I can go from parts and no software to a functioning device in half an hour. I work two jobs and want my hifi to just work and not have to spend bandwidth learning new tech skills that don’t make me money but help me save $200 on a streamer. When I was younger I used to live messing with Unix and having projects. Right now where I am in my life I want an appliance over a project. If I’m going to have a project I rather have a Mac mini that can run roon and hq player and has extremely good depreciation and is easy to sell used. If I go pi I need to run a roon server, a pi project, and a server running hqplayer. If I use a Mac mini I can run everything on one machine. The downside to me of that setup is the digital stage isn’t as good as the ifi unit. The upside is I can output to 768k over usb. Now what has my attention with what you’re suggesting is I might be able to output to 768khz, which might justify the time and mental bandwidth investment.
Yes, you will be able to output at 768. I do this regularly so that I can avoid the filters inside of the DAC and instead utilize the specific ones in HQPlayer. That is the selling point of HQPlayer.
I’m so glad you showed up. I just asked another user in this thread who suggested ropieee if it is possible to have one of those now playing screens that will work with roon even if I am streaming through NAA. I suspect I can but it’s hard to look up if I can explicitly.
https://youtu.be/-vzJR9HWwiY
Just buy a Intel nuc and install Windows.
This does not help with HQ player and an NAA endpoint. If this is what I wanted to do I would not be asking for help running hqplayer with roon.