Signalyst HQPlayer - Is it worth the upgrade?


I have been reading high praises in audio forums about HQPlayer rendering the best sound quality from Qobuz or Tidal. I realize best is subjective in the context of one’s system and end user’s personal preferences driven by choice of gear and budget. 

I have been a long time Aurender user and also been using Roon now for past 3 years. Those who have read my posts knows my take on Roon as not the best sounding renderer when directly compared with Aurender’s Conductor app. Others may disagree with my position on Roon but those are my findings within the context of my system. I do enjoy Roon interface for obvious reasons but not so much the sound. 

The purpose of my post is to explore the possibility of elevating the sound of my existing Roon player (Merging Technologies + player) by integrating HQPlayer as the final renderer. By doing so, Roon will pass along a stream of bits from my local stored files on SSD and stream from Qobuz. This configuration allows me to enjoy the benefits of HQPlayer SQ and the fabulous library management capabilities of Roon at the same time.

I am seeking opinions from those who have actually compared Roon vs HQPlayer or using HQPlayer exclusively. Did you find HQPlayer worth the upgrade? What hardware or device you’re using to enjoy HQPlayer in your system. 

Thank you! 

PS: Please refrain from posting if you’re in bits are bits, 1’s and 0’s camp or believe high end streamer/servers are over priced and waste of money. 

128x128lalitk

HQP is fantastic - particularly the new version. I use the M1 Mac Studio to host HQP (with an Intel NUC hosting Roon) and usually upsample to either DSD256 / Sinc-MGa / AMSDM7Ec 512+fs or to PCM 768 / LNS15 / Sinc Long. Best to use a Network Audio Adapter (NAA) with it. I have two: a SoTM Trifecta + SBooster and also a Sonore opticalRendu setup.

There is a trial version of HQP available. The barrier to entry is the relatively unfriendly GUI / manual for the newcomers.

 

 

I run HQPlayer and Roon on an M1 Mac Air laptop to an Innuos Zenith as NAA.  The sound quality of Innuos Sense is better than Roon (most seem to agree with this), and HQPlayer from Roon is a step up again.  I do find HQPlayer sound quality is even better without running from Roon, but with what Roon brings to the table I usually use both together outside of very critical listening,  With the M1 Air I oversample to DSD256 and the sound quality improvement is well worth it for me but will be system dependent.  

@sworksone, Will HQPlayer player run on an M1 Mac Air laptop especially if you are upsampling to DSD 256? I thought HQ Player requires lots of CPU POWER for DSD upsampling? Thanks.

If you use HQ Player, without Roon, how is the user interface work?  Is it easy to use? 

 

@reg19, @sworksone 

Thank you both for chiming in! Inspired by your feedback, I ordered a mini PC computer equipped with 11th generation Intel Celeron Jasper Lake quad-core N5105 processor (up to 2.9 GHz), Intel UHD Graphics and Windows 11 Pro 64-bit. It will be here tomorrow and I am going to spend next couple of days setting everything up.