Mike48 Posted May 9, 2019 Share Posted May 9, 2019 Something I would like very much . . . the ability to make folders of favorite albums. If the idea is that a streaming service is to replace, to some degree, one's own library, there is a definite need to be able to add some organization to albums one would like to listen to again. I imagine that after using Qobuz for years I will have hundreds, if not thousands of them. Mark Dirac 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Mike48 Posted May 9, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted May 9, 2019 9 hours ago, mourip said: In the stand-alone Qobuz app your Playlists can basically do what you are talking about. That's an interesting point. My view is that playlists can help categorize albums, but they do it in a very peculiar and unsatisfactory way. The reason is, the tracks on the album -- not the album itself -- gets put onto the playlist. That makes searching even more awkward than ever. I am thinking, for example, of what happens when you add an opera to a playlist -- hundreds of tracks are added. Or a couple of versions of the Goldberg variations -- 64 tracks. So playlists are not helpful when you want to put a label onto a group of albums. What I concluded is, an album is a different creature from a track, and Qobuz needs a way for users to categorize favorite ALBUMS in groups. mourip and Mark Dirac 1 1 Link to comment
Mike48 Posted June 5, 2019 Share Posted June 5, 2019 David, I was hoping for an answer to -- even better, action on -- my request that one be provided some way to catalog the haystack of "favorite" releases (albums). An ideal way would be to allow virtual folders or subfolders. I can see making folders for "To listen" as well as various genres that I enjoy. I find the current system quite user-unfriendly. Mike Mark Dirac 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Mike48 Posted June 20, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted June 20, 2019 Qobuz has many usability issues reducing the enjoyment of using it. I've raised some before, either here or in emails to tech support, but nothing ever seems to get better. This is discouraging and makes me wonder if Qobuz staff use the product themselves, and if so, do they ever listen to classical music in any depth? I heard the happy talk at AXPONA, but no one was able to ask or get answered any tough questions. An example of the idiocy of the interface is linked, a play queue in which one can't tell one track from another, because of a combination of extremely poor tagging, specification of a too-large font, and the decision not to include track numbers in track descriptions. It still seems impossible to, say, add a block of tracks to, or remove them from, the play queue without doing it one-by-one. Simple DLNA clients have been able to do this forever. And why can't the Android app send music to a DLNA or OpenHome renderer without using the slow, cumbersome "Share" mechanism, again track-by-track? I appreciate the somewhat better cataloging and usability than Tidal -- which must hold a Guinness record for incompetence -- but I'm beginning to find Qobuz nipping at Tidal's heels in this regard. Is streaming really so unprofitable that a decent and flexible interface is impossible to come up with? jhwalker, Polyglot and Mark Dirac 2 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Mike48 Posted June 21, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted June 21, 2019 On 6/20/2019 at 1:48 AM, David Craff said: We are unmasked, indeed we never use our applications and listen only to RAP it's so much better:) My point wasn't what you listen to. It was that the interface and tagging flaws seem obvious to me, and I'd think them obvious to anyone using Qobuz (or Tidal, to be fair) for serious classical listening. Since they don't seem obvious to Qobuz, my conclusion was that no one on the development team uses Q. for classical listening. Perhaps my assumption was wrong, and that people who develop software just tend to minimize its shortcomings. Quote Can you give me a screenshot of your issue about "can't tell one track from another". There was a link to a screenshot in the original post. Please take a look. Quote This [multi-selection] is possible on desktop & web player if you used Shift or Control key. This work on every track list, to add, remove... Oh, either this is new or I just missed it. Thanks for pointing it out. Quote Our mobile app can't play on DLNA output, but you can use Bubble UPNP to do this with Qobuz. Yes, I am aware of that. Yes, I have done that, it is better than nothing. Quote Regards What is most nettlesome is that both Q and T have chosen to assemble huge libraries of music, which has unique cataloging requirements, without the thought to hire a professional cataloging specialist (librarian) to devise a workable metadata system and a method for applying it. This hardly affects pop music, but in classical music, it is a real drag. "Artist" might refer in your database to the composer, ensemble, conductor, soloist (or something else), with no rhyme or reason. Some discs are searchable by composer, some are not. Some are searchable only by title (good luck!). Tracks on multi-work discs often are tagged simply "I. Allegro; II. Andante; III. Presto; I. Allegro; II. Adagio; III. Scherzo; IV. Allegro molto" and so on. If one has some knowledge of what's on the disk, one can sometimes figure out what is what, but often not. I suppose I just have to accept that Q and T have outsourced their cataloging to Roon, and that the services are not meant to be useful for classical music without a $500 Roon subscription and a $2500 NUC to run it on. Polyglot and Mark Dirac 1 1 Link to comment
Mike48 Posted June 22, 2019 Share Posted June 22, 2019 13 minutes ago, Miska said: Problem with "information architect", or something one could call "designed by a committee" is something that is in fact unworkable in practice because the ones who designed never had to implement or apply it to harsh reality. That has been seen in some IETF and other standards before. Exactly why it needs to be done by a professional cataloger, a specialty of library science. Cataloging is, for the most part, a solved problem! But the solution was not by Apple (who decided to identify each track by an "Artist"), but by professional librarians. Librarians apply established principles to new problems to solve the basic issue of cataloging: How can I label this thing so that it can be found again? Of course, there is significant cost to do cataloging optimally, and it might be too much for outfits like Q and T. I suspect, though, that since cataloging is being done anyway, it could be done way better with a little more thought applied to the problem. Link to comment
Mike48 Posted July 8, 2019 Share Posted July 8, 2019 38 minutes ago, Polyglot said: First page search results for the term 'Schobert'. Not a single relevant hit on Qobuz. I was going to suggest you search on "Johann Schobert", until I tried it. Not good. Is there repertoire there that is not being found, to you think, or does Qobuz just not have the material? Link to comment
Popular Post Mike48 Posted July 8, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted July 8, 2019 I think what I would like, please, is a search model that, if I typed "Schobert" (or another valid name), would ask "Did you mean Schubert?" before assuming I was wrong, and provide "Yes" or "No" choices. That would, in my opinion, be a little more respectful of the user. It appears to me that many search problems come from not indexing "composer" (e.g.) as a full-fledged part of the metadata. Lumping bandleaders, pop singers, composers, conductors, and orchestras together as "artists" makes for poor search results. Doing so inconsistently makes for even worse ones. Mark Dirac and Polyglot 1 1 Link to comment
Mike48 Posted July 9, 2019 Share Posted July 9, 2019 12 hours ago, Jud said: This (assuming I was searching for Schubert) didn't happen with my search when I typed Schobert. Are you sure it wasn't just an auto-complete function? It wasn't auto-complete. One or two of the items shown had pieces by various composers including Schobert, most were Schubert. Link to comment
Mike48 Posted July 11, 2019 Share Posted July 11, 2019 On 7/9/2019 at 8:42 AM, David Craff said: Artist, composer and performer are all index in the search engine. So then, is it possible to search for something like Composer = Beethoven, "simon rattle" ? Link to comment
Popular Post Mike48 Posted July 13, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted July 13, 2019 On 7/12/2019 at 8:33 AM, David Craff said: It will be soon... If that's referring to my request for advanced (compound) search, you'll get a warm "Bravo!" from me when it's available. Musicophile and Guidof 1 1 Link to comment
Mike48 Posted October 18, 2019 Share Posted October 18, 2019 I was quite enthusiastic about Qobuz at first. It's nice to have HR files without dealing with MQA. Yet, the US catalog still is far behind other services. Time and time again, I look for something out of the mainstream and find it's not there. Each time, I've found it on Amazon HD. This is discouraging, given the promises made by Qobuz that its US catalog was going to expand rapidly to become competitive with other services. Link to comment
Mike48 Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 Is there still no way to group favorite albums into subcategories or folders? Any intention to implement this? It's a big usability problem to have all "favorites" dumped together in one heap and not even separable by genre. Link to comment
Mike48 Posted November 14, 2019 Share Posted November 14, 2019 On 11/12/2019 at 4:47 PM, Polyglot said: The complete Haydn string quartets by the Festetics Quartet on Arcana─my favorite rendering of these masterpieces─is missing from Qobuz U.S. but available on both Tidal and Spotify U.S., and of course Qobuz France. Yes, I would like to see this, too. Only 6 (of Haydn's 84) are available, unless I've missed something. An issue with cataloging is that some of their recordings are under "Festetics Quartet" and others under "Quatuor Festetics." This is a general issue I've noticed for ensembles with non-English names, such as quartets and orchestras. Polyglot 1 Link to comment
Mike48 Posted January 20, 2020 Share Posted January 20, 2020 My issue is that I still have not received the promised refund for the unused part of my high-priced subscription to Qobuz (after I re-subscribed at the lower price), despite several emails to customer service. Has any user received the promised refund? The lack of any reasonable answer to my questions is beginning to feel like a scam. Link to comment
Popular Post Mike48 Posted June 13, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted June 13, 2020 I confess to not having read all 118 pages of comments here. Is it Qobuz's intention to get DLNA working? I tried it from the Windows Quobuz application to two different DLNA renderers that work perfectly with other devices on my home network. In neither case was Qobuz able to play music through the renderers. P.S. Readers, please do not tell me to get Roon. I know that works, but right now, it's not my choice to add it to my system. Ran and Mark Dirac 1 1 Link to comment
Mike48 Posted June 13, 2020 Share Posted June 13, 2020 So, people are thinking the answer is "no"? Maybe we'll hear from Qobuz themselves. Link to comment
Mike48 Posted June 15, 2020 Share Posted June 15, 2020 23 hours ago, vortecjr said: I can't say it's been that wild or that hard to get DLNA/UPnP to work. It's always been very easy and very reliable. Our new Sonore endPoint is DLNA/UPnP and I have zero concern about it and know it will have minimal support. I appreciate your saying that. I use products at price points ranging from an Auralic Aries G1 to a Raspberry Pi, and they all work reliably with DLNA. None of the software I use is expensive; from free apps such as Volumio to JRiver at about $60. All handle it fine. JRiver has done that since before I started using it, about 8 years ago. MinimServer (which was free for many years), also. @The Computer Audiophile, I understand that companies complain, but companies that have had trouble with something new might just blame it on on someone else. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / but in ourselves...." It is clear, as @Ran pointed out, that some firms try to get into streaming with neither a real understanding of it nor a willingness to commit adequate resources. They wind up using DBD (defective by design) chipsets like those chosen by brands "P" and "C", not testing them adequately, and selling expensive products that don't work right. I am not sure that implementing streaming need be terribly costly, but I am sure it demands attention to detail. If companies can do listening tests on each resistor (as some claim to do), surely they can accomplish working DLNA. How the hell can a high-end company sell a product that doesn't do gapless playback and call it "state of the art" (as company "P" did)? The only answer is sloppiness and ignorance of the real issues involved. Thanks to @Cebolla among others for pointing out that the delay by Qobuz may relate to security, rather than audio technology. Ran 1 Link to comment
Mike48 Posted June 15, 2020 Share Posted June 15, 2020 7 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said: All your stuff works well because JRiver has a software team that has worked on DLNA for 17 years. I call it "concern for quality" and "knowing what you're doing." Not just JRiver, but the majority of other firms have been able to do it right. Only a few have been doing audio streaming as long as JRiver. Selling something that doesn't work, I call "sloppiness" and "hiding your head in the sand." Would you excuse a bad power amp by saying design is difficult? I don't think there is anything in life that is easy to do right. I thought high-end audio was about doing it right, not taking the easy path and then complaining it was too hard. Honestly, Chris, I have a LOT of respect for your contributions, and I am surprised to see you taking this tack. Link to comment
Mike48 Posted June 16, 2020 Share Posted June 16, 2020 6 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said: I think we agree on all of that. The discussion started by me saying DLNA is hard because it's a nonstandard standard and hardware manufacturers don't all follow the rules. I'm not giving them a pass. I'm saying it will be a huge uphill battle for the tiny Qobuz team to do it right and to maintain it. Maybe the approach could be to support the devices that do follow the rules. Others can come later, if ever. Cebolla 1 Link to comment
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