Qobuz into Hugo

Posted by: Hugh Craig on 27 January 2015

Hi

I have a Qobuz lossless subscription and am streaming from the Qobuz Desktop on a MacBook Pro into my Hugo. I think the SQ is great and, to my ears, seems to have improved in the past couple of months - consequently I am using it more and more.

My question relates to the connection from MBP to Hugo. I have tried optical and usb and can't tell any significant difference. The odd thing is that the sample frequency light is red with optical - which is what I would expect - but purple with usb which I believe should be for DXD streams.

Any thoughts?

Hugh

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by GraemeH

Is it a hires 24:352 file perhaps?

 

G

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Hugh Craig

It's coming from Qobuz so should be 16/44.1 and if I switch to optical out it changes to red as it should be.

I doesn't seem to be a problem - just odd!

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Aleg
Originally Posted by Hugh Craig:

It's coming from Qobuz so should be 16/44.1 and if I switch to optical out it changes to red as it should be.

I doesn't seem to be a problem - just odd!

Re-/Upsampling by your MBP perhaps?

Don't think the Hugo would indicate wrongly.

 

cheers

 

aleg

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Hugh Craig

Think I have a possible reason - though it still doesn't make sense.

I also run  Audirvana on MBP. It now looks as though whatever sample rate colour was last activated before switching to Qobuz, sticks - again usb only, optical is fine.

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Steve J

I run a microUSB from my MacMini to the Hugo and the sample rate colour indicator registers as it should whether I'm using iTunes, with or without Audirvana, or Qobuz.

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Hugh Craig

Just gone through the sequence again:

1. Closed Qobuz

2. Opened Audirvana and played DSD file (blue on Hugo)

3. Closed Audirvana

4. Opened Qobuz - Hugo sample rate light still blue but clearly not a DSD file

Oh well, just a bit of an anomaly - hopefully nothing to worry about as the sound is great.

Hugh

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi light blue on my Hugo is a 192/24 PCM encoding rate.

Simon

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Aleg
Originally Posted by Hugh Craig:

Just gone through the sequence again:

1. Closed Qobuz

2. Opened Audirvana and played DSD file (blue on Hugo)

3. Closed Audirvana

4. Opened Qobuz - Hugo sample rate light still blue but clearly not a DSD file

Oh well, just a bit of an anomaly - hopefully nothing to worry about as the sound is great.

Hugh

 

Apparently Audirvana sets a specific sample rate on your Mac (I don't do apple so don't know where it does so) and your Mac start upsampling signals to that sample rate.

 

The Qobuz app then seems just to offer the output to the Mac sound engine (without adjusting its sample rate) and the Mac sound engine which still has the fixed sample rate set by Audirvana starts to upsample.

 

Looks like you have to manually reset whatever Audirvana is leaving behind.

 

Isn't there some kind of setting inside MacOSX which defines the default sample rate (like in Windows the sound device option for non-exclusive wasapi) ?

 

Cheers

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Aleg
Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:

Hi light blue on my Hugo is a 192/24 PCM encoding rate.

Simon

DSD is offered as DoP (dsd-over-pcm) which uses a 176kHz PCM sample rate signal and shows as pale blue.

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Huwge

Check settings on A+, mine had somehow entered forced up-sampling mode. I manually changed and then Hugo lights matched the original sample rate. 

Posted on: 27 January 2015 by Hugh Craig

Thanks everyone - looks like the problem lies with A+, I will have a look at the settings later.

To be honest, I find A+ a bit of a nuisance and only use it for DSD. When I open it and try to play a track I get an audio error message. I have to go into settings, change output to internal, play a few seconds of music then go back in and change back to Hugo.