Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[mansr]

11 minutes ago, left channel said:

I'm experiencing dropouts, clicks, static, and stuttering while trying to play this album from the Windows Qobuz app to an MQA DAC, with both ASIO and WASAPI Exclusive. I can play it OK with a non-MQA DAC, but with an MQA-capable DAC I can find no way around the problem.

 

The Tidal app plays same album fine, with my DAC displaying 192k and a blue dot. The Qobuz app gives me 176k and a green dot, plus constant glitches. My Pro-Ject S2D is perhaps more sensitive than most DACs to imperfections in an MQA stream, but Qobuz should not be hosting MQA albums without an optimized bit-perfect pass through option, as MQA-capable DACs will try to decode these every time.

Can you capture a minute or so of that track? Then we can check it for MQA errors.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, left channel said:

I would hope most people will be able to play it. But is it unfolding to 192 kHz? If not, I suspect it still isn't unfolding correctly.

As I mentioned above, my DAC — which was advertised prominently right next to the Qobuz banner on this site for weeks — is quite sensitive to non-bit-perfect MQA signals, which is what we have here. But even those without dropouts are reporting that it unfolds to the equivalent of green dot 176 kHz or worse, while on Tidal it unfolds to blue dot 192 kHz to me sounds better. Does your Lumin display this information?

Tidal probably has the MQA-48/24 version while Qobuz has been given MQA-44/16.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

@mansr do you still need a digital capture of this stuff?

If you have one, sure. If you can get a sample from both Qobuz and Tidal, even better.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, left channel said:

Looking into this further I've found the Tidal plugin for LMS, which is not MQA-enabled in any way, gives me 176k and a green dot. Normally MQA albums play at 44.1 via that plug-in. This one is an odd duck. Also providing 176k and a green dot are the Qobuz plugin for LMS, and the Qobuz app for Windows (with glitches on my S2D DAC).

That likely means the Tidal Hifi version is MQA-44/16 whereas Tidal Master is MQA-48/24.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Here are some captures. Some serious DSP going on though I have a feeling.

 

I had the internal sound card of my iMac outputting audio, even though I captured it before it got to that card, the apps may have DSP'd the output because that card is maxed out at 32/96

Thanks for trying, but the something in your process has messed with the files. One is 96 kHz, the others 44.1 kHz, all 16-bit. I suspect the OS mixer has got in the way here.

[mansr]

8 hours ago, PAR said:

No, it is the Dragonfly  that is downsampling. Its "ceiling" ( to use AQ's own wording) is 24/96.  The colour represents the  resolution it is playing rather then receiving ( as with the Red).

None of the Dragonfly devices are capable of receiving anything above 96 kHz. If you play a higher-rate file, the player or OS drivers will downsample. The limitation is due to the "full-speed" (12 Mbps) USB interface. Higher rates require a "high-speed" (480 Mbps) connection.

[mansr]

49 minutes ago, spin33 said:

Hmm... unless I'm missing something here, that's a peculiar decision on AQ's part. Most (all?) other MQA capable DACs use a blue light to indicate authenticated MQA file/stream in use, per MQA's desire I always thought. I wonder why Audioquest chose to do it the other way around?

DACs with full MQA decoding generally use a blue/green indicator. Render-only devices, such as the Dragonfly, tend to use red or purple.

[mansr]

10 minutes ago, PAR said:

One rare time when  RTFM doesn't work!

 

I am surprised though that such an unprofessional error could be made by a long established company like AQ.

I'm not.

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Does Qobuz actually embed album art into the files? 

Yes, at least all my purchases did.