Hi @ubdu -- I am currently running HQP on a 2012 Mac Mini (part of evaluating whether I like HQP). What I have determined experimentally is:
- You can upsample PCM safely to about 384-768 k. If you go higher, you will get occasional clicks/pops due to the CPU not being able to keep up. For example, my Mac Mini is an i7 8-core, and if I upsample to 1536 k, I get these clicks.
- At 384 k upsample, you can use pretty much all the PCM noise shaping options (maybe or maybe not with the i5; you'll have to experiment)
- You really can't run DSD; there's just too much compute power required, and the Mac Mini does not have a GPU that HQP can make use of.
Caveats: I have the i7, as mentioned, but I also wiped MacOS off it and installed Ubuntu linux, so YMMV.
If I decide I'm keeping HQP, then I will need to get some other hardware. PC hardware makes it easy to run linux, which is IMO much more stable than Windows. The GPU is where you would want to put most of the money, as HPQ is optimized for it... I would try to stick with Intel and nVIDIA, as those are known to work well with HPQ.
Hope that helps.