Devialet Chat

During recent experiments with my system it became very obvious to me just how much HQPlayer contributes to the sound quality of my system when compared to Roon RAAT or Roon integrated AIR.

I also found that CI Board RAAT was actually not that far away from running RAAT via an external network attached end point and my Mutec MC3+USB.

Taking all of the above into consideration, this makes me suspect that if HQPlayer NAA was included as a feature on the CI Board, this could offer a very elegant and high performance solution with respect to sound quality.

HQPlayer also has something to offer in terms of functionality.

You can use it on it's own

You can set it as a Roon zone, you then get all the functionality of Roon with the sound quality and streaming stability offered by HQPlayer.

It also has a "loop back" function. So by using a "virtual cable", HQPlayer can become a virtual soundcard for either a PC or a Mac.

(I use this myself, so I can play YouTube clips, free Spotify, BBC Sounds or anything else I want on the PC, and stream to the Devialet via HQPlayer)

Relating to the above, there were some posts on Audiophile Style a while ago, when the possibility of running HQPlayer NAA on a Devialet was discussed. According to the developer of HQPlayer, the CI Board should be capable of doing this.

I see two problems with the above.

Firstly, I doubt Devialet would ever implement NAA on the CI Board, too much hassle for a relatively niche use case.

Secondly, there would be little user demand for this, which simply backs up the first point.

So the purpose of this poll is simply to gauge if there might actually be any demand for such a feature, or not.

Hi Confused,

Thanks for raising this topic.

I have been considering adding HQPlayer to my set up for some time. I'll look into this once again following your post. :-)

Cheers,
Bernard

First of all, and speaking not just for me, thank you for sharing that concern.
If this type of upgrade doesn't require any hardware changes to the system, like adding a computer or any other device, I think it's fantastic because it will be a real upgrade.

That would have been such an elegant and high performing solution.
Also digital room correction / convolution filter can be done via HQPlayer.
A shame to see the potential of the CI board unused for years now.

Can you run HQPlayer on a Roon ROCK configured server (I use an Intel NUC) or does it run an a separate device?

(06-Mar-2024, 09:14)wiresandmore Wrote: [ -> ]Can you run HQPlayer on a Roon ROCK configured server (I use an Intel NUC) or does it run an a separate device?

I think you would like to run Roon and HQPlayer at the same time. Which is possible in general but don't know about your sever configuration.
You can exchange directly with the developer and the community at https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...hq-player/ to get the best suggestion.

My 2 cents worth...

1) The odds of getting Devialet to do anything further on the Expert Pro series is slim indeed. Can't imagine this would ever happen. But running HQPlayer elsewhere is a good idea.

2) a NUC running ROCK is a closed environment. You could not run HQPlayer there. But if the Roon server was running on Windows or elsewhere, I would think HQPlayer could be added.

I'll be honest, I've never looked into HQPlayer although it certainly sounds intriquing. It would be interesting to hear from others that have worked out the implementation details.

Using HQPlayer is really a remarkable improvement - no matter if using just a device with a HQPlayer OS (like the Holo Audio Red) or running HQPlayer desktop on a computer (also along with Roon) and then just streaming to an end-device via HQPlayer NAA.
It's amazing to see what improvements there are still possible in the digital enviroment.