Signalyst HQPlayer

Price: EUR 141/US$ 211

 

HQPlayer is basically about excellent resampling.
Find the sample rate that yields optimal sound quality from your DAC.
Slowly it is becoming the audiophile media player of choice.

 

HQPlayer is a high quality audio player for Windows and Linux, capable of bypassing the operating system's software mixer and resampler. HQPlayer also features several selectable high quality upsampling and downsampling algorithms as well as selectable dither, noise shaping and modulator algorithms.

 

All modern DACs employ oversampling and delta-sigma modulation, however the hardware implementations are more or less resource constrained. Higher quality oversampling and delta-sigma modulation can be done by utilizing vast mount of processing power available in modern PCs. Many AVRs also resample internally to 48, 96 or 192 kHz, with the HQPlayer, these can be fed at the native rate.

 

Want to buy 192/24 files for future but currently own only 96/24 capable hardware? Or want to buy DSD128 files but currently own only DSD64 or 192/24 PCM capable hardware? Resampling and dither/noise shaper can be used to playback high resolution files on a lower resolution hardware, allowing future-proof investment on high resolution files.

 

For digital room correction and other equalization purposes, selectable convolution algorithms are included. Convolution engine supports RIFF (WAV) format FIR impulse responses, which can be produced with suitable software, such as Room EQ Wizard or DRC.

Source: Signalyst website

 

Signalist also has a NAA, Network Audio Adapter.


The player does all the processing on the PC. The output is send over the network to a small computer running Linux. Today the deamon also runs on ARM-based hardware platforms like the BeagleBoard/BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi , Acme Systems FOX G20 and SolidRun CuBox.

 

SolidRun CuBox 2 × 2 × 2 inches