Optimal HQPlayer Settings
Contents
In proper Audio Bacon fashion, I spent quite a bit of time testing out all 30 filters and 9 dithers HQPlayer had to offer. If you’re looking for measurements and technical details, there are awesome nerds out there that might have more information.
These were my subjective impressions. YMMV.
| IIR | Clean but not very organic |
| FIR | More analog and textured than IIR. Subdued top end with imaging being softer. A relaxed sound. |
| asymFIR | Better than IIR and FIR. A lot more tonal variations and better separation. The dynamics aren’t bad but the soundstage is pretty flat. |
| minPhaseFIR | Poor separation but smooth sounding. Music just is mushed together. |
| FFT | Good tonal balance. Good focus and detail. More gloomy than vibrant. |
| poly-sinc-lp | Clean but some smearing in the low end. Poor layering. |
| poly-sinc-mp | Much more organic in comparison to poly-sinc-lp. Better than all the filters above. |
| poly-sinc-short-lp | Not very colorful but smooth. |
| poly-sinc-short-mp | Warmer than poly-sinc-short-lp but not quite natural yet. |
| poly-sinc-long-lp | HQPlayer would keep crashing when I selected this filter. |
| poly-sinc-long-ip | There’s something jarring about this filter. It feels like the soundstage is stretched both vertically and horizontally around the axis. Focus is good though. |
| poly-sinc-long-mp | Articulate, textured, and tone isn’t too bad. Richer than most of these filters but closed-form-M and sinc-M are probably better choices. Good material and presence. One of the better filters. |
| poly-sinc-hb | Cruncy1 Piano is a bit too bright. Overall a very cold sound. |
| poly-sinc-ext | Elegant and smooth. Softer top end but very liquid sounding. |
| poly-sinc-ext2 | Fantastic grip, instrument separation, gradations, and quiet. Better than the poly-sinc-exts. Decent amount of textural cues as well. Not very warm but not cold either. |
| poly-sinc-mqa-lp | This filter sound very different from the rest. There’s a crisp and heightened quality to it. Reverbs sound a little contrived. |
| poly-sinc-mqa-mp | Tonal balance isn’t bad. The highs and lows coexist wonderfully here. Might still be a bit too “smoothed over”? |
| poly-sinc-xtr-lp | Tonally variant and smooth but flat and unfocused. |
| poly-sinc-xtr-mp | One of the warmer filters. Delineation isn’t great and the soundstage sounds a little hollow. |
| ASRC | Clean, crisp, and light-footed. It’s more elevated and thin. Laidback but not mellow. Fast and quiet. I feel like it’s missing that connective tissue though. |
| polynomial-1 | I heard a few glitches with this filter. Overall more soft and neutral. |
| polynomial-2 | Wide soundstage. Tonally neutral but shapeless. I had a few dropouts here as well. |
| minringFIR-lp | A bit colder than neutral but the metallic shine off cymbals is nice. |
| minringFIR-mp | Not bad. Soundstage is pushed further back. Good tactility on the top end. Precise and weighty. |
| closed-form | Too neutral for my tastes…but overall not a bad filter. |
| closed-form-fast | Tight and punchy low end. You could hear more of the music without being analytical. Still not warm enough for my tastes, but great grip and imaging. |
| closed-form-fast-M | Ok, now we’re in the big leagues. This filter has all the best qualities of the other filters along with beautiful gradations, texture, and visceral expression. |
| sinc-S | Incredible articulation compared to the rest of the filters above. Treble is accurate. More laid back and leaner than sinc-M and sinc-L. Super clean cut sound. But not very inviting as far as tone. Layers out dense tracks with ease. |
| sinc-M | Denser than sinc-S. A soft and grey tone but very full and contoured sound. I feel sinc-S has plenty more textures and air though. it’s a more forward and thick sound. |
| sinc-L | By far the most resolving filter on this list. It digs DEEP but remains very analog sounding. I could start to hear the individual members of the audience. Cymbals and hi-hats have more “clang” and material to them. There’s an organic weight and presence to all instruments and performers. Very transparent and separation is uncanny. Amazing filter if you enjoy an uncolored sound. Personally, I prefer a more warm-blooded tone. |
Dither & Shapers
| NS1 | Pancake flat. Terrible. |
| NS4 | Soft and not a lot of sparkle. Smoother and denser than NS9 but not as textured or tonally true. |
| NS5 | A bit flat…and there’s something off about the transients here. |
| NS9 | Quiet, snappy, and very articulate. It’s not the punchiest, but the tone is very good. LNS15 is fuller and more granular but NS9 has more texture and faithful tone. |
| RPDF | Boring. |
| TPDF | Good crunch and heft. Softer and fuller than NS9 but melodic and smooth. |
| Gauss1 | Nothing tonally overpowering. Great focus and imaging. Dynamics are a bit dull. |
| Shaped | Good energy and very resolving. A little light and thin on tone though. |
| LNS15 | Meaty and engaging. Reverbs are clearly heard. Sounds like an unfuzzy and more solid version of TPDF. LNS15 is more grounded and outlined though. This is the most analog-sounding dither on this list. NS9 has more color and fiber but sounds thinner. |
My Favorite HQPlayer Settings
So obviously I wasn’t a huge fan of most of the linear-phase filters. I suspect those who enjoy those filters are listening to large-scale live performances with minimal vocals. There were definitely a few combinations of filters that caught my ears:
| closed-form-M with NS9 | Tone snobs would prefer this combo. This sounded particularly good with the DAVE – which tends to have a more neutral color across all settings. You’ll be trading a more fleshed-out sound for a more colorful one. |
| closed-form-M with LNS15 | Smoother and darker than with then NS9. It’s a heavier sound. |
| sinc-M with NS9 | This combo is very nice. Good nuance, control, and great depth and layering. A good tradeoff between tone and body. This itself is probably worth the asking price for HQPlayer. Tonality is pretty good too (relative to the other filters). |
| sinc-M with LNS15 | Great shaping and delineation of the music. There’s no sign of digital harshness at all. In comparison to the NS9 variant, it does come off a bit “smoothed over” and untextured. It’s also more of a greyish tone above neutral. It’s not a golden brown, warm color – which is better for vocal recordings IMO. |
One thing to keep in mind is that there’s a huge delay when playing these files with upscaling. It’s about 5+ seconds. And this is on one of the fastest PCs on the planet. So if you’re a reviewer like me, we probably don’t have the patience to wait this long to switch tracks. It’s probably fine if you’re just listening to an entire album all the way through, though. There are also some funky problems with Roon where it wouldn’t play the correct track displayed on the remote. I just had to keep clicking.
So at this point, we haven’t involved Hugo M Scaler at all. These combos will be the “upsampling soldiers” for HQPlayer. At a minimum, these filters first have to sound better than the un-upscaled Roon direct ASIO output to DAVE and TT 2.
Upscaled HQPlayer vs. Roon Direct TT 2 & DAVE
As mentioned, the pass-through feature of the HMS isn’t reliable for testing because it actually sounds better than a direct connection. This is presumably due to better noise isolation. USB direct to the DAVE is a larger sound, but the image loosens up and diffuses. Tone and density also diminish. It’s more subtle on the TT 2 (slightly cooler, thinner, more diffused). From what I gather, the TT 2 was developed later and was designed with better isolation.
If you don’t plan to upscale with HQPlayer, direct Roon via ASIO sounds better to my ears. Although there’s more bloom, you’ll get more cohesion, color, and nuance with direct ASIO to TT 2 and DAVE. Music is snappier and more dynamic. Strangely, HQPlayer was a bit more sibilant. Anyway, you’re not buying HQPlayer without using its upscaling feature right?
Finding the best filters…
So against the un-upscaled TT 2, I found that the sinc-M and NS9 combination provided a better tone plus all the benefits you’d expect from a good upscaler. These include much better shaping of the music, quieter background, more tangibility, depth, and spectral separation. It’s tighter, more nuanced, deeper, and layers beautifully. Overall, it sounds better with the HQPlayer upscaled output in comparison to the Roon direct output to the TT 2. Mission accomplished.
With the DAVE, it’s a little different. At a baseline, a direct connection via USB to the DAVE is a sound that is a bit cooler and contains more bloom. It’s not as consolidated or full as a BNC connection from the HMS. In any case, the NS9 dither with either the sinc-M or closed-form-M filters sounded pretty good. In both cases, you’ll get better sound from your DAVE versus Roon direct. Also, LNS15 is smoother and will have higher transient performance and clarity.
Interestingly, the one thing the direct DAC configuration consistently did better was the reproduction of textural cues. The HQPlayer has a “silky” overlay that seems to encompass all filters and shapers.
So can HQPlayer help elevate your sound for only $260? Hell yeah. But up until now, it wasn’t really a fair fight. Let’s connect the Hugo M Scaler.
Did you try Sinc-L with LNS15, DSD256 with ASDM7EC and DSD512 with Poly-Sinc-MP ?
I’ll have to load in some DSD files (as mentioned, I rarely listen to them). But after a quick listen on the TT 2 with sync-L and LNS15 (Cannonball’s Spontaneous Combustion), HQPlayer sounds a bit stretched horizontally and vertically (the snaps are further off to the left and the ceiling seems lower). It sounds a bit off. In addition, HMS is far more tonally variant and layers out the performers better. You could actually hear the organics of the finger snap and the finger plucking the bass. There are more reverb and resonance overall to give you an idea of the acoustic space. The dips, curves, and flair of each instrument are clearly in view. But not so much on HQPlayer. It’s more bundled together and “gel-ed.” Everything has the same tone.
Hi Jay. First, thanks for the time and effort here- great review, especially your perceived differences across the wide range of PCM settings. In response to this specific comment, it looks like you have not tried the DSD settings because you rarely used DSD / have DSD native files? If that is the case, you and your readers might be missing out on a great feature of HQP – which is playing PCM files via the DSD settings, which is how I use it, either redbook rips or my own rips from vinyl at 96/24. In all cases, this was better than any PCM setting (and anecdotally, my preferred settings were the same as yours for PCM). The ‘EC’ shapers that were added only recently to HQP are a big step, in my opinion, over any PCM setting, and definitely worth trying. Whether this narrows the gap to M-Scaler (or exceeds it) i dont know, but as a chord DAC user myself, I no longer feel a need to add the M-Scaler to my system, and am looking instead at upgrading my AMD PC to a chip that will manage the DSD settings at a higher bitrate than my current limit of 128k
VERY intriguing. I’ll give it a shot. Which filter are you using? Seems like most people are using sinc-L? If this PC can’t do EC 512…I’d be surprised. lol
I am restricted to the more straightforward filters if I want to use the more CPU-Hungry shapers, and as I think the 7EC is the best for my taste I use poly-sinc-mp for DSD, and Sinc-m for PCM (although I never really use PCM these days). Like you, the linear filters were not so much to my taste. Yes, that’s one powerful machine you have there, so 256 would be a breeze and I hope you get 512 as well – very interested in what you think one you get a chance to try it out (set aside a while day- 2 mins to change the filters and the rest to just listen and enjoy 🙂
Agree 1000%. far too often people review HQPlayer based on THEIR abilities to play filters. IF you have a full blown gaming rig (I use RYZEN 5950x, GeForce 4080, 64gb ram on m.2 drives), PCM vs DSD is not even close. Knowing that, this review is good for PCM only. Yes, you need the horsepower for DSD, but if you got it there really no contest. Not sure how as a reviewer, you aren’t aware of this and just discount it so easily. You owe it to yourself to use the CUDA cores and do DSD 1024, as someone mentioned ASDM7EC, you definitely don’t know what you are missing good sir. Below is a fantastic write up on the filters, from both angles. Best info on HQPlayer out there, it is in German. Translate it, you’ll instantly be better at HQPlayer.
https://griggaudio.de/audio-pc-grundlagen/audio-pc-hqplayer-modulatoren/
Thanks for the detailed review, Jay. Very useful. Comments: (1) IMHO, the biggest gain of HQP is upscaling to DSD256 using EC Modulators on Delta Sigma DACs (I highly recommend the inexpensive RME ADI-2 DAC FS (Version 2) as that is the one that Jussi, the HQP developer, uses. Don’t forget to enable DSD direct on the DAC (2) There have been quite a few posts online of sellers of MScaler / Dave because they found optimally used HQP to be better (3) A $800 M1 Mac Mini is fantastic host for HQP desktop as with that, I can upscale to DSD256 with ASDM7EC modulator with poly-sinc-ext2 filter without any issues at all on my RME ADI-2 DAC FS. Try it – it might save you a whole lot of money in the long run.
And yes: with the M1 Mac Mini, I don’t get the latency you mentioned before playing tracks.
Great write-up. Would love to see this type of thoughtful assessment of HQ player applied to a “regular”
non-Chord DAC. Since Chord uses a highly unique method of DA conversion its not that surprising that a computer specifically optimized for this process (M-scaler) will beat a non-optimized computer.
Agreed. I’ll do more testing once these listening rooms are done.
Fantastic comparative review, and as an HQ Player user I really enjoyed you assessment of the various filters and op[tions, These were incredibly concordant with my impressions as well after months of use, well-done!. I do think you may be a bit unfairly off putting potential HQ Player users with the statement “If I can’t be convinced of what I’m listening to is a piano or saxophone…” as it relates to HQ Player’s articulation of instruments. Surely that is hyperbolic and whatever smoothing of tonal variation the software produces is far more subtle and discriminating then would hinder that distinction.
In any case, thank you for this excellent read!
The sound of a hammer hitting a string on a piano and the “brassy” sound of a trumpet or saxophone just wasn’t there for me. I don’t hear the fiber or the inherent resonances of the bass plucks or drum skin flex. It just sounds like HQPlayer is more heavy-handed. You don’t hear how the sound comes out of the instrument with HQPlayer (IMO) – which leaves me unconvinced. But you could feel the mass and strength of that voice or instrument. That’s what I meant.
The value proposition laid out in detail that so many of us have been waiting for…
Very nicely done.
You’re connecting the PC running Roon Core (ROCK) directly to your DAC with one of the standard USB ports on the PC?
I’m connecting one of the USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports to the Innuos Phoenix USB reclocker (FTA usb cable), then from reclocker to DAC (Danacable TruStream USB). As you probably know, the chosen USB port on a motherboard does matter.
At first, great review!
You said:
sinc-L: By far the most resolving filter on this list. It digs DEEP but remains very analog sounding. I could start to hear the individual members of the audience. Cymbals and hi-hats have more “clang” and material to them. There’s an organic weight and presence to all instruments and performers. Very transparent and separation is uncanny. Amazing filter if you enjoy an uncolored sound. Personally, I prefer a more warm-blooded tone.
Why didn’t you test sinc-L with LNS15?
And about DSD options, what is your opinion?
Keep in mind those filter impressions are BEFORE comparison to HMS. Everything is relative.
“I prefer a warm-blooded tone.” Just did another test (Alicia Key’s Falling and Woman’s Worth from Unplugged album) at 4x upscale. The tone on the HMS is far more accurate IMO. You hear more definitions from low-end as well. Cymbals have more metal to it and vocal overlays are sweeter. I still think the HMS performs better overall vs sinc-L and LNS15. The HQPlayer is smoother, zero grain…but doesn’t color the voices and instruments properly. It also doesn’t breathe into the room like the HMS. Also, the background of the HMS is quieter which helps with separation. I’ve stood 4 ft away while she was performing a few years back…the HMS reminds me of her stage presence…the HQPlayer does not.
I’ve replied to your earlier comment. I’ll have to test DSD files later.
Thank you so much!
I’m waiting your DSD tests…
There is a lot to unpack and a lot of value in this review. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that HQPlayer has the least to add to the Chord set of DACs because they effectively limit upscaling to PCM input and the TT Scaler is optimized for that. For those with ESS ES9038PRO or AKM AK4490 chipset-based DACs or R-2-R ladder Dacs (Holo Audio or Denafrips) using HQPlayer to upsample to DSD256 or DSD512 seems to offer a greater level of improvement than is possible using it to upsample PCM for Chord. That then begs the question: Is there a HQPlayer/DSD512 non Chord DAC combo that sounds as good or better tban the TTScaler/Dave combination at a similar price?
Which DACs would be good candidates for such an experiment? I’m curious and willing to hear them out.
A Chord TT Scaler/Dave versus Denafrips Terminator II + Gaia + HQPlayer comparison would be pretty interesting. My guess is that the Gaia might add some of the timbre accuracy you noticed in your Terminator review and the right HQP filter at DSD512 would add even more delicacy.
Hi – just saw this as I was writing an earlier post – I suspect you are right about Chord DAC’s not being the best fit, as I believe any DSD inut is turned to PCM and then back into DSD (no idea how that is done, but I’m think that is broadly right?). however, with my Chord Qutest I definitely get some benefit of using HQP in DSD mode, and so while its certainly possible that some DACS respond better to this, Chrid still seems to get some of the effect, and as a user who was considering adding an M-Scaler, a review looking at comparing DSD via HQP to the M-Scaler is very much of interest to me (as is whether other DAC’s respind better :-))
Can someone confirm whether HQP converts DSD to PCM first? I’ll try DSD via HQP the Chord DACs in the meantime.
I’ve added more info in “The Battle” section. TLDR the HMS is still better to my ears but that specific mode is better than PCM output.
Hi I realize this was a while ago but how are you connecting to your qutest? USB? I find with USB I can’t go above 2 or 4X upsampling without getting popping. Are you using the dual bnc inputs?
I no longer have the Denafrips but yeah, that would be interesting. I have not heard the Gaia DDC.
I think you should do a full review of HQPlayer and mscaler with the Schiit Yggdrasil DAC. As many have that DAC and would love to see how it performs under these conditions.
Great write up—really nicely done. Question: did you have the Phoenix USB reclocker in your chain for these tests? If you did, I assume it was before the M Scaler, and for HQ Player, right before the DAVE?
It was between the PC and DAC. FTA Callisto USB from PC to Phoenix and Danacable TruStream from Phoenix to DAC. I love this USB reclocker.
Great review Jay! I was considering using HQP but now not so much, you answered that question quite well… I have an HMS and Dave used via Roon and a couple of questions come to mind: How does the Phoenix USB reclocker with the HMS/Dave combo compare to using something like a Sonore opticalRendu (that’s what I use – fed via a SonicTransporter i9 server) which then sources the MScaler going to the Dave with Black Cat Tron BNC cables and a few ferrites. The optical Rendu is way better sounding than USB direct from the server to the HMS. Also, have you experimented with an LPS for Dave? I just got a Sean Jacobs DC4 LPS (it’s a kit so easy to install, but not cheap). Not a subtle change to say the least! Hopefully this LPS can be a potential future review by you. Again thanks for your great review!
I’m sure HQP will sell well regardless. For a non-hardware solution, it’s pretty nice. I honestly can’t tell you because I don’t have the opticalRendu or SonicTransporter. Black Cat also didn’t want to send in a BNC cable lol. I have not experimented with an LPS with the DAVE but I’ve heard one (A bespoke by Sean Jacobs). Crazy improvements in transparency, depth, and texture…but I felt like (the one I heard at least) it took away too much warmth. I don’t think it’s the DC4 LPS but I’ll have to check. $7,400 is quite hefty! lol. Maybe he’ll send one in for review………..
As for the Innuos Phoenix, once I heard it…it was difficult not to buy it. It wasn’t a planned purchase – but damn…it sounds good.
I agree with Nick’s comment below that the LPS (in our cases the Sean Jacobs DC4) is a huge improvement and doesn’t take way warmth but it doesn’t add any either, but in all other respects is crazy good. Perhaps you heard a DC3 Sean Jacobs or some other variant.
I agree with your comment in the review that it would be great if Dave could have a “warm” filter like the TT2 does.
I’ll likely be trying Nick’s Wave cables soon, perhaps that’s the added touch of warmth I’d like.
It would be great if at some point you could review the opticalRendu. It was a 100% positive improvement in my system (and I source the data to the opticalRendu directly from my SonicTransporter i9 server via optical fiber – it never goes out to the ethernet switch at all). Always something to try!
As Mr. Dolezalek notes “For those with ESS ES9038PRO or AKM AK4490 chipset-based DACs or R-2-R ladder Dacs (Holo Audio or Denafrips) using HQPlayer to upsample to DSD256 or DSD512 seems to offer a greater level of improvement”. I output HQ Player almost exclusively to DSD with HQPlayer. My modest Win10 PC comfortably runs HQPlayer with FLAC files output to DSD128 9or DSD256 with ASDMEC modulator, Sinc-L filter into a Singxer DDC, then I2S to an ESS-9038 based Matrrix X-Sabre DAC. The sound quality for my preference is far superior to HQ Player’s PCM to PCM upsampling, and I agree it would be terrific to hear your impressions of HQPlayer DSD output versus HMS with Chord DAC. Thanks again, Audi Bacon, for helping those of us without HMS to gain insight into it’s performance versus HQP Player. Great stuff!
Superior in what way? OK, I’ll start doing some DSD output tests. Also, are there any specific top-tier DACs that are popular with HQPlayer’s DSD upsampling?
Why not try this newest iFi Diablo DAC/Amp with so many great reviews?
I read a review comparing this $900 ancient Burr-Brown DAC chipset with $8,500 Sony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t5sO246_Ko and you can test with it PCM768 and DSD512 with HQPlayer!
So far, I’m getting a ton of dropouts with the EC modes. And it takes FOREVER to load lol
sinc-L and EC modulators are PC killers!
There is no capable PC to run sinc-L with EC modes DSD512!
{Think my previous comment did not show up, so I’ll try again here}. First: thanks for the detailed review. (1) Online reports indicate that HQP used OPTIMALLY beats Dave + MScaler. (2) A recommended optimal combo: the inexpensive RME ADI-2 DAC FS (version 2) (Jussi, the HQP developer, uses this too) connected via USB to the $800 M1 Mac Mini (8GB RAM is sufficient) hosting HQP desktop. Upsample to DSD256 using ASDM7EC modulator and poly-sinc-ext2 filter. You should get little to no latency with the M1 Mac Mini. This might save you a bunch of money in the long run and we might find your MScaler / Dave / TT2 in a ‘for sale’ listing online. Performance improves a bit when you use a good NAA in between the HQP and the DAC (like the ultraRendu or the SoTM SMS-200Ultra).
Sorry, meant to specify ASDM5EC modulator above.
Given that the use of wave BNC cables is considered to be mandatory for connecting the M-scalar; the value proposition is more like $260 Vs $7,000
True true…but if it’s not what you’re looking for…
Great review Nick! I’ve been using hqplayer for many years now and agree with most things.
I like 768khz upsampling the most which is 16x since but since LCD4 are so thick to begin with it doesn’t end up sounding too thin. I also cheat and use – 1dbfs which to me sounds much better than – 3dbfs, much less constriction and as long as my limiter doesn’t hit, I know I’m not clipping. It also helps the LCD4 soundstage a lot, combined with no dither and poly sinc LP, gives me the best balance.
Sinc L is incredible, it also takes me 6 seconds to run so I don’t think the processing time varies much.
The r2r dacs I have, have reacted much better to upsampling than DS ones. I prefer to not turn on multi core dsp as it smears highs and removes lower fundamentals a bit at the cost of soundtsage, but I’m using an old i5 cpu. Also in your asio manager you can turn off (safe mode) which elevates the fidelity even higher, changing the buffer there changes the energy in the highs.
You can also use parametric eq on hqplayer through the matrix pipeline. The manual also states some dithers are better suited to different levels of upsampling.
Yeah, if I had an LCD-4, I would go 16x as well lol. No shortage of warmth there. Good info. Hm, how do you disable safe mode with a Chord DAC?
Addendum regarding DSD posted in “The Battle” section.
Fantastic that you tried the DSD option – I actually agree with you in respect of the ADMS7 shaper you used – I personally found it not so much different to the PCM settings, and seeing as my Chord DAC is DoP I left it in PCM mode – until i tried the EC shapers – these were, for me, a big step up, even though I had to reduce from 256 to 128 – despite the power of your rig, you might need to step back from 512 and try it in 256, but that should still be much more to your tastes than 512 using a non-EC shaper . I do have 5 secs or so wait at the start of an LP, and that’s about my limit. Might also be of interest that I am using a small piece of cmd line SW to use Jriver as a frontend on my collection, and clicking on any track from an LP in jriver pushes the whole album to HQP and starts playing from your selected track – really nice functionality
Hi Jay, hope you are well.
On HQP I broadly agree with with your conclusions in all respects and for me it is not viable replacement for the Mscaler, especially with my WAVE cables on the Mscaler if I may be so bold! HQP is rather like listening to a TT2, it sounds good in isolation but if one hears a Dave after the TT2 then the TT2 deficiencies become obvious and so it is with HQP when one listens to a ‘sorted’ Mscaler compared to HQP. By ‘sorted’ I mean using a different power supply and of course sorting the BNC cables.
The DC4 has been mentioned. I have the Sean Jacobs DC4 power supply with my Dave and prior to that I had the DC3. As you say, there are crazy improvements in transparency, depth and texture by adding the DC4 but I heard no loss of warmth. In fact to my ears I hear less harshness. I would never have described Dave as being harsh until I swopped back to the stock Dave after using the DC4 powered Dave. When I was assessing the DC4 effectiveness with the Dave I was lucky at that time because I had a second stock Dave so I could do more or less instant switching between them. The price was steep when I bought my DC4 (I had the first production DC4 that Sean made) and it is steeper now but everyone who has bought a DC4 even at the current price has come back to me and thanked me for suggesting the stunning upgrade to Dave.
Just back on the subject of HQP, I do sometimes use it with all upscaling turned off (ie set to ‘none’ for Filter and Noise Shaper) and then I find the HQPD app + HQP + HQP NAA player to be a well executed player to rival Squeezelite etc. Note that I do not use Roon + HQP because to my ears Roon erodes the sound quality to a point where it means that I do not enjoy listening to my system.
Finaly, there have not been any product announcements from Chord for a long time, probably due to Covid. To my eyes there is a glaring gap in the line up previously occupied by the Blu Mk2. It would not surprise me to see a Choral range Mscaler to compliment the Dave. If so I am guessing that will far outstrip the current Hugo Mscaler and set the bar even higher for rival upscaling products.
Keep up the good work. Nick.
Loving your STREAM cable! It has my highest recommendation. OK…I really need to hear the DC4. I’ve only heard great things.
Sorry, I’m not on the forums much. How exactly do you go about setting up that trio of HQP? Have you tried the latest Roon?
Hi Nick, Your experience with the Sean Jacobs DC4 matches mine. I was actually hoping that it would give me some added warmth (it didn’t) but it didn’t take any warmth away – and it did add a very large improvement in virtually every other respect, I can’t go back to not using the DC4 at this point!
I find it interesting that Jay prefers Roon and you prefer not-Roon. I use Roon with my SonicTransporter i9 (and optical Rendu and MScaler also with LPS) but I haven’t done much exploring of non-Roon sourcing. I know folks vary on this issue, but the small group of folks at AudiophileStyle who are really going to the extreme with Dave mods, servers etc. (they all seem to prefer the Taiki Extreme) agree with you in not preferring Roon. I do wonder though if Roon v1.8 improved things (and might Roon v2.0 not too distant)? Tradeoffs…
I really should try your Wave Storm Reference cables soon and compare to my Black Cat Tron (as we’ve discussed before). I have a strong feeling that I’ll like the weight and tonal balance of your cables better than my Trons even if the Trons may (not sure) provide better detail and space. I tend to align with Jay in that the tonal color is super important to me and I need more warmth. It would be great if the new Dave (if there is one or maybe a FW update) could have a “warm” filter to use like the TT2 does. Rob Watts is working on a 16M tap “MScaler” and I hope it comes out soon! Then again, a new Dave v2 with a great LPS would likely be even better but per Rob is not in the cards anytime soon…
Please give xxhighend a try. It has a custom interpolator which he calls “arc prediction” and it sounds fantastic. (Have tried hqplayer and wasn’t quite impressed, but I expected it considering the linear structure of the filters). Xxhe is a bit hard to set up but worth the effort imo.
Also, make sure you set windows/dac volume to 100% and use xxhe to control the volume.
I’ve been comparing the M Scaler with HQPlayer recently. Enjoyed your write up and the settings explanations etc.
Connected directly to the DAC, I prefer the M Scaler… for mostly all the reasons you give.
However, using HQPlayer with OpticalRendu with the PC connected to the network via optical as well as the OpticalRendu it was a far closer battle. I found I stayed on NS9 with Sinc-M at full upscaling. Imaging and tonal detail was superb with a lot of body. Via OR, I found the LNS15 to be too heavy, thick.
System. Roon NUC – Optical Rendu – MScaler – TT2 – Etude with TQ Ultra Silver XLR – PMC 25.22 + LPS’s for OR and network gear.
Would you try also DSD512 with sinc-M, sinc-L & poly-sinc-ext2 also with OpticalRendu?
I would but I don’t have any DSD content and I haven’t been able to find any links to any.
Would be high-res FLAC files upsampled to DSD512!
Not sure if you mean upsample the file beforehand or use HQPlayer.. I don’t have any software to convert the file itself so…
I set HQPlayer bit rate to 48k 512 with all the oversampling options requested plus Closed Form 16m and the DSD256 file I was using worked fine on all of them.
Computer used for ref is a Mac min 2018, 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7, 32gb ram and Vega 56 eGPU.
Jay, Great review but any idea how it compares to the Directstream? I currently have a Directstream and heard a friends Qutest. Really liked it and was thinking about trading my Directstream in on a TT2. Looking for a little more “Bite” in my listening. Thoughts? Thanks.
I think you’d be pretty happy with a Qutest…unless you hear the TT 2 lol. I’ll be comparing them to the RME soon.
I really liked this review. I look forward to the best DSD settings!
SRC-DX dual BNC into a TT2/ Dave gets you M-Scaler level (or arguably better) performance as you bypass the relatively noisier Amanero USB connection and take advantage of the ideal dual BNC connection. Suddenly the M-Scaler no longer has monopoly on the use of dual BNC in Chord DACs.
Can you play dsd512 with sinc-l and 7ec? No one knows if this setting will actually work with 3090.
Interesting review and to read the numerous opinions among the comments. Thanks to my work as an electrical engineer, my rig has been overhauled to be as dead silent as I guess possible in a domestic environment. The vast majority of gear, even high-end, break the rules of good engineering and cannot suppress the noise from the invironment the gear is normally working, the audiophile’s home. We had a battle with the Hugo and the MScaler at a friends place just a couple of weeks ago. The rig subject for testing was not of the fanciest level, but well the Rotel Michi pre and poweramp.
The conclusion from the test was that the Chord digital devices sounded harsch, overemphasising the high mid and top, with clear resonces ringing and listening to some highly processed gothic metal it was just to shut down and choose something simpler to play. At my home, I use a Roon ROCK -> HQPlayer Embedded. I output oversampling from any format/depth or speed to DSD256 DoP -> USB -> RME ADI-2 fs DAC for about USD 1.000. Poweramp is Benchmark ABH-2 and speakers Marten Parker Trio. Using the HQPe via ALSA backend, I listen to numerous genres and I have not been able to balance the insanly poor post process of today, also when remastering old albums … until now. HQPe sort this out. It is able to in almost all cases playback the music I like, irrespective of genre. The ability to penetrate all tiny details in a classical arrangement as well as contemporary music is again making me interersted in my album collection. Not to mention how easy it is to detect the differences between streaming services. I can agree that the fight to get into the HQP world is a painstacking investment, but so far, with a lot of help from the very resourceful community of Roon, it is worthwhile. I would never trade my chain of playback to anything else, unless Anti-Pode new server/streamer/player units throw me of the chart. I am anxiously waiting for my turn to borrow one.
Hi Jay, I have a question can you please email me. Thanks Brad
Thank you for this great review! Trying some of your recommended settings already. Maybe worth to not, when you use e.g. in Roon a playlist or so, you do not have this 30 seconds between tracks. Tracks are prepared in the background. Anyway thank you agin 🙂
You’re very welcome!
you guys are hilarious – you should never use FLAC – it sounds worse than Wav…. PCM wave to DSD as high as you can go or 1xDSD to 4X or 8X DSD is where it is at. FLAC IS CRAP
How is FLAC crap? Convert a WAV file to FLAC and then back to WAV and the resulted WAV file will have the same checksum as the original WAV. FLAC is just a container, with the option of lossless compression.
Jay, HQPlayer 4 Embedded PCM setting have 1x filter and Nx Filter with Dither, the combo you given has only one filter and one dither, should the filter be the same for both 1x and Nx? and what about SDM only has 1x oversampling and Nx oversampling without dither, what is your reference for the SDM? thanks.
What about hardware implementation at source level, tonal differences might be due to outputting from the M-Scaler digital outs (most likely very well designed) and whatever digital source component you used with HQPlayer.
Theoretically the math and processing power behind MQP is simply more powerfull. So there might be other reasons.
Have tried them and when the rig is silent enough, there will be no need for long sessions to establish that HQPe have the potential of the utmost silence and correction of todays most torture music worshipping of the limiter and compressor instead of skilled mix and gentle mastering. But the ethernet network, the mains, and each individual device ground must be carefully scrutinized and corrected (a challanging project as there are numerous devices today lacking ground). The sound degrading high frequency multi source interference is by far the most troublesome area, comparing to any re-sampling issues. MScaler does not offer even close to the resample power of a computer like the one in this test (but carefully treated to isolate the pc noise, needed off course), and turbo boosted with Cuda core off-load, the modulator ASDM7ECv2 and filter poly-sinc-gauss-xla, in my case to DSD256 DoP, HQPe is so far unparalleled. Even with my cheap RME DAC. Tonality, real-life resemblance, imaging, transients, phrasing, everything starts to sound as it did while being in the studio, before over-ambitious post-process mastering.