With HQPlayer it's not really like normal players. It still makes a big improvement to most DACs though imo. Many DACs you can use HQPlayer's excellent noise shaping but then your DAC's own dithering will effectively bury/ruin it. HQPlayer benefits some DACs more than others, and NOS DACs benefit more because you can guarantee that there is no further DSP, dithering or other alteration going on and therefore the benefits of HQP's noise shaping and filtering can work to the fullest extent. Other stuff like filtering to the level of quality HQPlayer offers isn't done simply because the compute power required is too much to have it be done in a DAC internally without great expense and added challenge of noise/power consumption. Not all DACs have galvanic isolation for example. Sometimes improvements come because the DAC just doesn't have it as part of the design even though it perhaps should. Convenience has value.īut the best 'plug and play' DAC will also not be the best possible result you can get if you DO look into what could be done to improve things, and so it's worth looking into. There will be plenty of people that simply want the answer to 'What is the best DAC that I can plug and play'.
#Hqplayer filter settings upgrade
So whilst yes, each DAC will react differently to different source tweaks, the same can be said for anything.ĭifferent DACs will react differently to different digital sources, different DACs will rely more or less on dithering, different DACs will have DSP incorporated to various degrees.ĭifferent DACs will improve more or less from a PSU upgrade or external galvanic isolation.
![hqplayer filter settings hqplayer filter settings](https://roon-community-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/original/3X/4/0/407300c9d18d604a03ffb01022b4868bcc639333.png)
The combination of high performance oversampling AND high performance dithering/noise shaping can have quite an impact on sound (and is measurable).
![hqplayer filter settings hqplayer filter settings](https://roon-community-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/optimized/3X/1/a/1a03afa232e7a0ef87dab5fa35cff9ee5bc62c8e_2_422x500.png)
HQPlayer though is different as it is an oversampling player. And the DAC itself certainly sees no difference so any bitperfect player can reasonably be used to compare DACs. I understand some people disagree and that's fine but personally I have never found a difference with bitperfect players. Personally I do not find that regular players make any difference so long as they are bit-perfect. Click to expand.With HQPlayer it's not really like normal players.