Roon and HQ Player

[nc42acc]

My little Dell Micro machine arrives today. I will be pulling my hair out this weekend trying to push all the right buttons in Roon and HQ Player to hopefully experience glorious DSD512 into the T&A. Updates to follow, wish me luck.

 

[Dr Tone]

That's quite a beefy machine, more of a Workstation. It would be interesting to hear a comparison of your new machine and if you ever decided to go with a Linear PSU and passive cooling how much of a benefit it would make. In my experience the change to a LPSU alone was quite significant.

850W linear power supply?

If doing USB the money would be better spent on a specialized audio USB card to isolate the computer noise from the DAC along with provide clean 5v power if needed.

 

[bibo01]

850W linear power supply?

If doing USB the money would be better spent on a specialized audio USB card to isolate the computer noise from the DAC along with provide clean 5v power if needed.

Astrotoy has a multich NADAC. It uses Ethernet, not USB, therefore is pretty well isolated from PC noise.
I assume that Astrotoy will put his PC in a different room from his audio room.

 

[sbo6]

850W linear power supply?

If doing USB the money would be better spent on a specialized audio USB card to isolate the computer noise from the DAC along with provide clean 5v power if needed.

850W is the rated max output power not what the PC requires. The biggest power consumption is the CPU at TDP of 140W.

 

[ack]

Here are the details:

CPU i7-6950X
MB GA-X99M-Gaming 5 (rev. 1.1)
RAM Savage Memory Black - 32GB Kit*(4x8GB) - DDR4 2400MHz Intel XMP CL12 DIMM
Video ROG STRIX-GTX1080-A8G-GAMING
PSU Seasonic SSR-850TD PRIME 850 W Titanium
Disk SSD 960 PRO NVMe M.2 MZ-V6P1T0BW
Case Fractal Design Define R5
Cooler Noctua NH D15
Fans Phanteks 140mm Cooling Fan (PH-F140SP_BK)

My builder chose all the components in consultation with Jussi - I just told him what I wanted to be able to do.

It's been working great so far. The fan hasn't kicked on once that I know of. I've been mostly operating it headless with my ipad and the Roon app. I have about 50TB of files - over 15,000 albums, mostly my own 192/24 rips of 10,000+ vinyl albums and tapes that I did over close to six years. I have about 800 mch albums (including the entire Channel Classics catalogue that I bought from Native DSD).

Never have used Roon before. Even though my collection is almost all classical, Roon is working quite well for me - particularly with the mch files which it has quite well identified. I have edited some of the titles so they are more uniformly by composer's last name. Roon cannot recognize my vinyl and tape rips, although it does recognize the scans I did for album covers, backs and inserts.

Larry

Hi Larry, he selected all that extreme hardware to serve files???

 

[Dr Tone]

850W is the rated max output power not what the PC requires. The biggest power consumption is the CPU at TDP of 140W.

The 1080 GPU can use over 300W when loaded. 850W is the right supply for that build.

 

[Steve Williams]

In my search for i7 quad core 6700Q as suggested these are not so easy to find.

I did find one with these specs for a laptop. Is this sufficient

7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ Quad Core Processor (6M cache, up to 3.8 GHz)
Windows 10 Home 64-bit English
16GB DDR4-2400MHz; up to 32GB (additional memory sold separately)
15.6" 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) InfinityEdge touch display
512GB PCIe Solid State Drive

all I want is to be able to do quad DSD

 

[Dr Tone]

In my search for i7 quad core 6700Q as suggested these are not so easy to find.

I did find one with these specs for a laptop. Is this sufficient

7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ Quad Core Processor (6M cache, up to 3.8 GHz)
Windows 10 Home 64-bit English
16GB DDR4-2400MHz; up to 32GB (additional memory sold separately)
15.6" 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) InfinityEdge touch display
512GB PCIe Solid State Drive

all I want is to be able to do quad DSD

6700Q? Never heard of one. 6700HQ yes. The 7700HQ is a new generation and slightly better specs.

 

[Steve Williams]

sorry I meant 6700K

 

[Dr Tone]

sorry I meant 6700K

That's a desktop class cpu, you won't find it in anything but the largest most expensive workstation class laptops/desktop replacements.

 

[Steve Williams]

That's a desktop class cpu, you won't find it in anything but the largest most expensive workstation class laptops/desktop replacements.

I just want to be sure that this 6700HQ chip will allow me to play quad DSD

 

[nc42acc]

Steve are you definitely set on a laptop?

I just want to be sure that this 6700HQ chip will allow me to play quad DSD

 

[jtwrace]

Yes, it makes sense if it is not practical to have the cable from the main PC in another room run to the NAA in the audio room.

I highly recommend that anyone doing DSD512 do not do wireless at this time but use a wired connection and I would add DSD256 to that in most cases, when using a NAA.

Ha! I'll disagree since my wireless setup is flawless.

 

[Steve Williams]

Steve are definitely set on a laptop?

Hi Marty. Here is my dilemma. Yes I would prefer a tower and have that tower sitting outside my sound room beside my NAS. However I need to go into my USB Xbox USB and then from the USB Xbox into my dac via optical glass cable. This is why my Mac Book Pro works so well up to DSD128. I take my MB Ultra USB cable from my Mac into the USB X box. Both the Mac and the USB X box are sitting on my CMS Black Diamond racks and I am not bothered by any noise that I'm truly aware of. To use the tower and have it outside the room creates cabling issues.

 

[nc42acc]

Sorry for asking a stupid question but what role does the X Box play in your system?

Hi Marty. Here is my dilemma. Yes I would prefer a tower and have that tower sitting outside my sound room beside my NAS. However I need to go into my USB Xbox USB and then from the USB Xbox into my dac via optical glass cable. This is why my Mac Book Pro works so well up to DSD128. I take my MB Ultra USB cable from my Mac into the USB X box. Both the Mac and the USB X box are sitting on my CMS Black Diamond racks and I am not bothered by any noise that I'm truly aware of. To use the tower and have it outside the room creates cabling issues.

 

[Taiko Audio]

I just want to be sure that this 6700HQ chip will allow me to play quad DSD

It will but not at the highest possible quality settings. For that you will minimally need a 6700K / 7700 / 7700K.

 

[Steve Williams]

Sorry for asking a stupid question but what role does the X Box play in your system?

It takes my existing PD MPS-5 DAC which is DSD 64 and allows up to DSD 256 and 384 Khz

And that's all I am interested in at the present time

http://playbackdesigns.com/#inline_content_Usbx3

 

[Steve Williams]

It will but not at the highest possible quality settings. For that you will minimally need a 6700K / 7700 / 7700K.

Is there such a chip that exists on a lap top that you'd recommend Emil

 

[Taiko Audio]

Is there such a chip that exists on a lap top that you'd recommend Emil

The i7-7920hq is the fastest mobile processor afaik. I havent actually tried but if it can cope it will run pretty hot, which means loud fan noise in a notebook, notebooks have small fans which means it will need to run at high rpm's to provide adequate cooling. A high-end desktop cpu draws an easy 40-50 watts running dsd-256 at the highest possible quality settings. If you look at mobile cpu specs you see TDP mentioned which means Thermal Design Power. Typically the TDP is higher then the actual power usage. Mobile CPU's max out at 45W TDP, you can see the problem right there. If you are set on using a notebook you should probably forget about the highest possible quality filters. I wouldnt make a big deal out of it though, the ones below that are already very very good!

 

[Steve Williams]

The i7-7920hq is the fastest mobile processor afaik. I havent actually tried but if it can cope it will run pretty hot, which means loud fan noise in a notebook, notebooks have small fans which means it will need to run at high rpm's to provide adequate cooling. A high-end desktop cpu draws an easy 40-50 watts running dsd-256 at the highest possible quality settings. If you look at mobile cpu specs you see TDP mentioned which means Thermal Design Power. Typically the TDP is higher then the actual power usage. Mobile CPU's max out at 45W TDP, you can see the problem right there. If you are set on using a notebook you should probably forget about the highest possible quality filters. I wouldnt make a big deal out of it though, the ones below that are already very very good!

So when you say filters is this assuming I will be using HQP