Roon/Hqplayer setup/Q&A

[March Audio]

I've been using Roon and HQP for about a year now and I'm very pleased with the results. There's quite a lot of 'I don't care about DSD because almost no music exists using this as a native format' arguments around the fora however HQPs upsampling is the real reason to use it. From an uneducated and lay perspective, with all the confirmation bias bought on by purchasing the software, the results of upsampling everything to DSD128 sounds much better than not upsampling.
I run Roon server and HQP on an 2012 iMac with quad core i7 and send the output wirelessly to a Mac mini running NAA which feeds my DAC via USB. CPU usage is about 20% on each core (virtual cores ignored) and I see around 2MB/s data transfer over the network.
Not a turnkey solution at all though. Quite frequently Roon and HQP lose their 'friendship' and a restart of one or both is required. If the Mac mini is restarted, setting up of NAA as a target must be redone via HQP.

Biggest 1st world problem for me though is the inability for Roon to serve music outside of the local network it's running on or playback directly on iOS devices. No using Roon in the car, train or plane etc..
Roon says the lack of iOS playback is due to inadequacys in the development tools they use. Remote access is on their roadmap too, it appears a third party cloud service will be used to do this. You can always setup a vpn to acces your local network remotely which works well enough if you have the bandwidth to support it.

Just to say I run Roon core on my NAS and can VPN into it quite happily, I use it in my office and on the train and car over 3g and 4g phone networks

 

[amirm]

Just to say I run Roon core on my NAS and can VPN into it quite happily, I use it in my office and on the train and car over 3g and 4g phone networks

How do you remote the audio with VPN connection?

 

[watchnerd]

How do you remote the audio with VPN connection?

I'd love to know this, too.

 

[astr0b0y]

I think as long as your VPN service connects you to the same subnet as your Roon server you should be able to connect and steam remotely.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/impressive-even-through-a-vpn-roon-is-snappy/1833

Just ensure the Roon client you're using can also be an endpoint, so iOS devices are out.

 

[amirm]

Oh, somehow I thought the roon client on Android/iOS was just for control and not audio output. If it can output audio then sure, VPN or any other tunneling should work.

 

[watchnerd]

Oh, somehow I thought the roon client on Android/iOS was just for control and not audio output. If it can output audio then sure, VPN or any other tunneling should work.

I thought it was just for control, too.

 

[astr0b0y]

iOS is just control, Android client can be used as an endpoint I believe (no experience myself).

On another related the 1.3 update due at the end of Jan apparently includes a plethora of DSP functions like upsampling PCM to DSD, headphone mixer, parametric eq etc.
Maybe HQP will no longer be needed after the update?

 

[watchnerd]

iOS is just control, Android client can be used as an endpoint I believe (no experience myself).

On another related the 1.3 update due at the end of Jan apparently includes a plethora of DSP functions like upsampling PCM to DSD, headphone mixer, parametric eq etc.
Maybe HQP will no longer be needed after the update?

Created a thread about 1.3 here, apparently there are dissenting opinions:

http://audiosciencereview.com/forum...ds-dsp-peq-sonos-multi-channel-and-more.1133/

 

[amirm]

For sure they are going after HQPlayer market. Why string a bunch of stuff and pay extra when you can just do it in Roon.

 

[watchnerd]

For sure they are going after HQPlayer market. Why string a bunch of stuff and pay extra when you can just do it in Roon.

That's certainly my preference -- one-stop shopping for all number crunching. Do it on a computer segregated from the playback system as much as possible.

 

[March Audio]

How do you remote the audio with VPN connection?

Hi

I have a Synology NAS with Roon core running on it. I simply set-up the VPN service on the NAS and can connect via my Android phone and Windows PCs from anywhere. I haven't tried it with ios, but as has been mentioned I don't think it can play the audio.

Nothing to it really, it just worked!

 

[Theodore8]

Thanks. I looked at them when they first came up and had not kept up with them 'till now.

Dear @amirm, we all know your did you ever get to testing HQP?

I thought Intel NUC had pretty low end CPUs. HQPlayer is a CPU hog so what I hear recommended is Core i7.

Testing HQPlayer is my todo list.

Welcome to the forum by the way .

Dear @amirm, we all know your To Do list is ever expanding, but may I ask if you ever got to testing HQP ? Thank you.