/ 36 HQPlayer Desktop User Manual Version 3.1.0 Copyright © 2008-2013 Jussi Laako / Signalyst. All rights reserved.
/ 36 Table of Contents 1.Introduction.........................................................................................................................4 1.1.DSDIFF and DSF playback.........................................................................................4 1.2.Network Audio..............................................................................................................5 2.Main screen.........................................................................................
/ 36 9.5.Botan..........................................................................................................................35 9.6.Trademarks................................................................................................................35 Copyright © 2008-2013 Jussi Laako / Signalyst. All rights reserved.
/ 36 1. Introduction HQPlayer is a high quality audio player for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Linux and Mac OS X. HQPlayer also features several user selectable high quality resamplers as well as user selectable dither/noise shaping algorithms. Some of the more affordable sound cards and D/A converters have suboptimal digital and analog filters, while still having support for higher sampling rates.
/ 36 1.2. Network Audio Network Audio is a way to have remote audio adapters and DACs integrated seamlessly with the player application. All the audio processing is performed at the player application side, and then streamed asynchronously over the network for reproduction. Network Audio system Copyright © 2008-2013 Jussi Laako / Signalyst. All rights reserved.
/ 36 2. Main screen When the application is first started up, main screen is displayed. Main screen User interface also supports standard multimedia keys and equivalent remote controls. It also features two modes, the traditional desktop application mode shown above, and new touch-optimized full-screen mode available through the right-most button in the toolbar. Tracks, directory trees and playlist files can be added to the current playlist by dragand-drop from outside of the application.
/ 36 Selecting a new transport represents similar action as changing a CD in physical drive. When album node is expanded, tracks of the album are listed. Selecting tracks switches transport into playlist mode, where individual tracks (from same or different album) can be added. 2.2. Transport filters Transport view can be filtered by entering filtering rules. Rules can be in traditional “wildcard” ('*') format, or in Perl-style regular expression format, when prefixed with '#'. 2.3.
/ 36 2.9. Repeat and Random playback Current tracklist/playlist can be repeated and played back in random order. 2.10. Playlist management Clicking the “Clear playlist” -button clears the internal playlist transport. If some other transport (such as album) is active, this doesn't have visible effect until new playlist is created. Playlist can be also loaded and saved using corresponding buttons. When other transport than playlist is selected, playlist is still in memory.
/ 36 Filter Description none No sample rate conversion happens. Only sample depth is changed as needed. IIR This is analog-sounding filter, especially suitable for recordings containing strong transients, long post-echo is a side effect (not usually audible due to masking). A really steep IIR filter is used. This filter type is similar to analog filters and has no pre-echo, but has a long post-echo. Small amount of pass-band ripple is also present. IIR filter is applied in time-domain.
/ 36 Filter Description poly-sinc-hb Linear-phase polyphase half-band filter with steep cut-off and high attenuation. sinc This is a special type of filter, slightly similar to FIR, but with a possibility of asynchronous operation for conversions from any rate to any other rate. Computationally heavy. polynomial-1 Polynomial interpolation. Most natural polynomial interpolation for audio. Only two samples of pre- and post-echo. Frequency response rolls off slowly in the top octave.
/ 36 NS/Dither Description none No noise-shaping or dithering, only rounding. Mostly suitable for 32-bit output hardware where quantization error is buried in thermal noise. Not recommended. NS1 Simple first order noise-shaping. Sample values are rounded and the quantization error is shaped such way that the error energy is pushed to the higher frequencies. Suitable mostly for 176.4/192 kHz upsampling. NS4 Fourth order noise-shaping. Similar in shape as “shaped” dither.
/ 36 2.14. PCM / SDM (DSD) output mode selection In case playback hardware supports both modes, the mode can be changed using this selection. In PCM mode, when source content is DSD it will be converted to PCM for playback. In SDM mode, when source content is PCM it will be converted to SDM for playback. Note! Overloading the delta-sigma modulator in SDM mode will cause audible noises.
/ 36 3. Full-screen mode When full-screen button is clicked in the main window toolbar, following kind of screen is shown either in maximized window or in full-screen, depending on corresponding setting in Settings-dialog. Full-screen mode This display is optimized for touch-screens, but can be also used with a mouse or other suitable pointing device. Cover art of the current track is shown as a background image, when available.
/ 36 keyboard is shown (Windows only). Clicking or tapping an album will select it for playback and return the view back to the normal middle-view. 3.3. Playlist edit view On the right, there is a playlist edit view shown below. Playlist edit view Going from left to right, there's an artist selection column, album selection column and track selection column. The right-most column is the current playlist. Tracks can be added or removed using the + and – keys below.
/ 36 4. Library management To edit library, open the “File” menu and select “Library...”. Following dialog will be shown. Transport editing dialog List shown on the left is the list of album locations available on the transport selector. Each path is intended to represent an album consisting of files of same number of channels. To remove an album from the listing, select the album path and click “Remove” button.
/ 36 Note! Each directory is assumed to contain only one type of supported playback files, the first recognized type will be used and other types of files within the directory will be ignored. To clear the list, select “Remove all”, confirmation dialog will appear before the list is cleared. Copyright © 2008-2013 Jussi Laako / Signalyst. All rights reserved.
/ 36 5. Settings To change program's device settings, open the “File” menu and select “Settings...”. Following dialog will be shown. Settings dialog Content of the device selection depends on the mode application was started in. For WASAPI driver type, used audio endpoint (device) can be selected by using the “Device” selection which lists all the available audio endpoints in addition to the default endpoint, which is the one selected in Windows Control Panel for the default audio output.
/ 36 Default audio processing settings can be changed from the “PCM Defaults” and “SDM Defaults” boxes. Number of channels can be chosen from “Channels” selection, possible choices are “2” for stereo, “5.1” for normal multichannel and “7.1” for extended multichannel. DSD content can be transferred to the audio device by packing it into suitable PCM container, two methods are allowed using the “SDM Pack” selection “uint8” to send a byte stream and “DoP” to use the DoP v1.1 standard.
/ 36 DSDIFF/DSF settings dialog DirectSDM setting disables all processing when source file is DSD content and output format is SDM to a DSD-device. DSDIFF or DSF file should typically have 6 dB of headroom on the signal level. By selecting “6 dB gain” check box, 6 decibels of gain is applied, removing this headroom from the converted signal. This way the normal playback level reaches that of CD, FLAC, WAV or AIFF.
/ 36 When playback rate of DSDIFF or DSF is 88.2/96 kHz, use of extra noise filtering in addition to “standard” is less important, since most of the noise will be cut out. When playback rate of DSDIFF or DSF is 44.1/48 kHz, extra noise filtering in addition to “standard” is not needed and will actually just reduce playback quality. Noise filter Description standard Standard noise filter will be applied. Recommended.
/ 36 Speaker setup dialog In this dialog, distance to each individual speaker can be set in centimeters. Playback of the speaker can be set using the volume slider and unit shown in upper right corner is in dB. Pink noise test tone can be played by selecting the “Test tone” box. When the box is checked, tone will be played in all channels, thus making it easy to adjust all levels in such way that the they sound equal.
/ 36 naming menu selection and following dialog. Network Audio Adapter naming dialog When this dialog is opened, a NAA discovery is run and a list of discovered adapters appears in a few seconds. Selecting an entry from the list displays the selected address and it's associated name on the right. Name can be modified and sent to the device by clicking “Set” button. After each modification a re-discovery is run.
/ 36 ASIO channel mapping dialog In this dialog, left hand side shows the source channel and the channels reported by the ASIO driver can be selected as destination channels from the drop lists on the right hand side. Copyright © 2008-2013 Jussi Laako / Signalyst. All rights reserved.
/ 36 6. Convolution engine Convolution engine can be configured through the “Convolution” menu and selecting “Engine setup...”. Following dialog will be shown. Convolution engine setup dialog When “Engine enabled” option is checked, convolution engine is enabled at the application level and enabled by default at the startup time. Enable this selection only after selecting suitable impulse response files and if you are certain that your files contain intended impulse response data.
/ 36 Convolution engine requires impulse responses to be mono RIFF (WAV) format files. If some of the channels don't need processing, or are not used, clearing the filename will disable convolution engine for those channels. For example popular Room EQ Wizard can export suitable impulse responses after designing for “Generic” equalizer by selecting File → Export → Filters Impulse Response as WAV. Expert users can also use open source DRC tool for designing even suitable full-band correction filters.
/ 36 7. Registering your copy Activation code can be entered by opening “Help” menu and choosing “Register...”. Dialog will appear asking for the code. If your code was shipped with a name, fill also name field, otherwise leave it empty. Code can be also entered after, or close to trial period closing when a dialog asking for the code appears at startup time. Note! Especially on Windows 7 it may be necessary to start the application as Administrator in order to successfully store the registration code.
/ 36 8. Troubleshooting This chapter explains some known workarounds and things which you can try, in case of problems. 8.1. Reporting bugs In case you discover bugs, please enable log file functionality from the settings dialog, try to reproduce the bug and send the log file together with a screen shot (PrtScn button) to our support email address support@signalyst.com . The log file can be typically found from \Users\\AppData\Local\HQPlayer directory of the system drive.
/ 36 Endpoint properties dialog With some buggy drivers it might also be necessary to change default format to match the sample rate you are trying to use with HQPlayer. 8.4. Channel mapping Please note, that depending on sound device, channel mappings may have playbacksoftware independent implications. For example some cards perform internal downmix of multichannel playback depending on speaker layout configured in their respective control panels.
/ 36 Windows Vista Speaker Setup dialog And here is example of Creative Audio Console speaker setup. Copyright © 2008-2013 Jussi Laako / Signalyst. All rights reserved.
/ 36 Creative Audio Console When using ASIO channel mapping with Creative driver, it is advisable to select maximum number of channels (7.1 Speakers) here in order to avoid conflicts between downmixing done by the Creative hardware/drivers and channel mapping / speaker setup processing done by the HQPlayer. 8.5. No rates available In some cases, rate selection may stay empty.
/ 36 E-MU Control Panel Usually selecting 44.1 kHz rate and internal sync source allows rate control by the software. If not, sample rate needs to be changed from this control panel before clicking “Play” in HQPlayer, otherwise starting the device may fail. If this happens anyway, you can click “Stop”, then correct the sampling rate in E-MU control panel and click “Play” again. Copyright © 2008-2013 Jussi Laako / Signalyst. All rights reserved.
/ 36 9. Component licenses and trademarks Following licenses apply for specified components. 9.1. HQPlayer HQPlayer End User License Agreement CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING LICENSE AGREEMENT. BY OPENING THE PACKAGE OR CLICKING ON THE "I AGREE" BUTTON, YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE BOUND BY AND ARE BECOMING A PARTY TO THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ALL OF THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, CLICK THE "CANCEL" BUTTON, AND, IF APPLICABLE, RETURN THIS PRODUCT TO THE PLACE OF PURCHASE FOR A FULL REFUND.
/ 36 to continue using the Software and Documentation. Transfers You may transfer all your rights to use the Software and Documentation to another person or legal entity provided you transfer this Agreement, the Software and Documentation, including all copies, updates and prior versions to such person or entity and that you retain no copies, including copies stored on computer.
/ 36 RIGHTS. General Provisions 1. This written license agreement is the exclusive agreement between you and us concerning the Software and Documentation and supersedes any and all prior oral or written agreements, negotiations or other dealings between us concerning the Software. 2. This license agreement may be modified only by a writing signed by you and us. 3.
/ 36 Qt is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 with Digia Qt LGPL Exception version 1.1. Qt is a trademark of Digia Plc and/or its subsidiary(-ies). 9.5. Botan Botan (http://botan.randombit.
/ 36 BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 9.6. Trademarks Signalyst is a registered trademark of Jussi Laako. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2008-2013 Jussi Laako / Signalyst. All rights reserved.
