Billfort
Addicted Member
There has been a lot of conversation here about this upsampling audio player for Windows, Linux and OS X (Apple), and since I’ve been a very happy user for a while now, I thought I’d start a dedicated thread for it.
HQPlayer is the work of Jussi Laako and in my opinion, might just be the best player software available from a purely sonic perspective – it really is something special in this regard. From a usability, convenience and pretty GUI perspective however, some feel it leaves a lot to be desired.
There certainly are some negatives which might quickly rule it out for many (and it’s not free) but if musical playback performance is your number-1 priority, it may be worth working through the ‘challenges’ and hopefully, this thread can help in those areas.
There is a free trial available for this (draw your own conclusions!) but I’d suggest digging a little into what is needed from a system and setup perspective to get it working first – it’s only a 1 month trial and it’s easy to get frustrated and give up on it before you hear what it can do. I mention this as it happened to me; teething problems had me shelving it but a second try with more perseverance has me enjoying digital like I never thought possible and I believe that is mostly down to HQplayer and in my case, what it does with a good DSD capable DAC.
I’m going to ramble on about the DSD side of this player but I should note that most of my digital listening is actually PCM source (all converted to DSD128 on-the-fly) and this player does have extensive PCM upscaling capabilities too – it’s just not something I use so I have little experience with it.
And please; if you have a problem with this approach, feel it doesn’t matter, it’s all 1s and 0s, nothing matters beyond 16/44.1, etc. great, start another thread and leave this one to those who are interested.
HQPlayer is the work of Jussi Laako and in my opinion, might just be the best player software available from a purely sonic perspective – it really is something special in this regard. From a usability, convenience and pretty GUI perspective however, some feel it leaves a lot to be desired.
There certainly are some negatives which might quickly rule it out for many (and it’s not free) but if musical playback performance is your number-1 priority, it may be worth working through the ‘challenges’ and hopefully, this thread can help in those areas.
There is a free trial available for this (draw your own conclusions!) but I’d suggest digging a little into what is needed from a system and setup perspective to get it working first – it’s only a 1 month trial and it’s easy to get frustrated and give up on it before you hear what it can do. I mention this as it happened to me; teething problems had me shelving it but a second try with more perseverance has me enjoying digital like I never thought possible and I believe that is mostly down to HQplayer and in my case, what it does with a good DSD capable DAC.
I’m going to ramble on about the DSD side of this player but I should note that most of my digital listening is actually PCM source (all converted to DSD128 on-the-fly) and this player does have extensive PCM upscaling capabilities too – it’s just not something I use so I have little experience with it.
And please; if you have a problem with this approach, feel it doesn’t matter, it’s all 1s and 0s, nothing matters beyond 16/44.1, etc. great, start another thread and leave this one to those who are interested.