HQ Player

[crwilli]

Does anyone use ROON & HQ Player with a Bricasti Network connection?

[crwilli]

In researching the potential use of HQ Player with ROON, it appears HQ Player must see the M21 as an NAA (Network Attached Audio device) in order to send music to it via Ethernet. If not, then the PC running HQ Player must be connected to the M21 via USB.

Is the M21 a NAA?

[indranilsen]

Hello,
I use Audirvana, similar to Roon, which runs on a Mac Mini to stream music to my Bricasti M12 using ethernet connection. In this set up my Mac mini which is a dedicated music server and the of host of the Audirvana software is connected to the network using a ethernet cable. My Bricasti M12 which is placed in a different room is also connected to the same network with an ethernet cable. I have also installed Audirvana client software on my iPad which works as a remote to the Audirvana server that runs on the Mac Mini.

The connection roadmap is pretty simple.

• Power up Bricasti M12 connected to the network with a ethernet cable

• Power up Mac Mini connected to the network with a ethernet cable

• Start Audirvana on Mac Mini

• Go To Audirvana settings

• It would already detect and display M12 as the network player in its settings

• Select M12 as the target player

• Add Music library to Audirvana in its settings

• Use Audirvana remote to browse and start streaming music to M12

Roon server software works in a similar way and the connection set up should be very similar. Hope that helps.

[bricastibrian]

I might point out that what ever app is being used, that when you are using the network " streamer " in the M21 the rendering is done in the M21 in our Linux core ARM processor, not in the app. What the app is doing is sending the file data to the M21 to be rendered and played out as a realtime audio data stream to the DACs, so with that way of working the app is more about how you want the information presented and not how its processed to become realtime audio. It is not a audio data stream that is send over the network, its packets of data like reading data off a disk drive, it all happens in non realtime ( faster than real time ), the data arrives is buffered, and then a reatime data stream is created in the M21 thus the word "steamer" is used.

A reason to use an app like HQ is to use it to upsample to DSD, which can also be done by other apps, so if it were to use the network it needs to pre process to upsample data then sends a new file to the the M21 to be then rendered . The primary way of using that app is with USB then the PC renders the file data to realtime audio and sends it out the USB. I can go into why there is no need to do this kind of pre processing, but that might be for another discussion.

[crwilli]

Very interesting Brian. You just saved me from chasing a rabbit hole. Thank you!

[crwilli]

Brian,

I recently heard a demonstration between ROON and Taiko Audio Beta software in a system that used a Taiko Audio Extreme (bespoke Windows 10 based audio PC $30k) USB to a MSB Select II DAC ($100K).

In this direct comparison, the ROON test clearly had a veil over it as compared to the same file played via the beta software player.

The explanation I was given was that ROON is noisier because it is a peer to peer software that is constantly calling for and processing meta data through the PC (ROON Core).

Given the way the M21 works, would this same test show similar results? Eg, Since the rendering is being done by the M21, would this test show differences between the upstream data sending software?