Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

1 hour ago, left channel said:

I believe the official launch has begun!  I've been on the beta for three weeks, but just received another "Welcome" message inviting me to sign up with 1 month free.

This message does not mention the beta and bug reporting, but the rest of the content is the same, including the warning that the catalog is not yet complete. It adds that many customers have requested a Family Plan, and they hope to develop one soon.

Good luck Qobuz!

 

I got my beta invite last week, but haven't been asked to do anything beta testing related.  When i got my confirmation e-mail after signing up, it sounds like the same message you just got.  So far they've been treating me like a normal customer.  Seems we entered "soft open" territory perhaps.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

28 minutes ago, David Craff said:

 

Like Spotify, our dev team take some time to build an linux version of our APP. This does not mean that it is an official version.

We have not yet tested this version and cannot guarantee its correct functioning.

We have lot's of think to do on our Desktop for Windows and Mac. Improve performance and stability, among other things.

After that we can look for a Linux build version.

 

 

Offical tweet from Qobuz 2 YEARS ago.....

 

 

 

Just don't string us along.  If it's not coming it's not coming.  Just let us know one way or the other.  If it's not coming there are plenty of alternatives out there and it really isn't a big deal, we'll manage.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

2 hours ago, David Craff said:

 

Keep calm and listen https://open.qobuz.com/track/3116472

 

The tweeter announcement is dated and since then many things have changed. A Linux version is not and will not be a priority at this time. However, this does not mean that we will never do it. This request is in our backlog and when it is possible to do so we will do it. In the meantime, if you have an alternative to our web player, I invite you to use it.

 

Regards

 

Plenty calm here, no worries like I said.  Happily using via LMS/squeeezlite, this setup works extremely well. 

 

If you search google that's all you see mentioned with no updates since original tweet so I thought I'd point it out.  Good to put these discussions out in the open so google starts picking threads like this up and people get better/more up to date info. 

 

Great work overall so far.  LMS is pretty quick responding to the remote servers.  Sound quality especially at 16/44.1 noticeably better than rivals.  In the genres I like i'm finding more hi-res albums than on Tidal.  A sincere thank you for having a good metal/prog selection out of the gate.  Finding a lot of 192khz remasters in those genres which is awesome.  A lot of remasters in metal just don't sound very good, but now I have a way of auditioning it before going for a paid download, without investing in MQA hardware.   This is going to save me a lot of money.

 

Keep up the good work.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Love the download pricing too, even without a sublime acct.  Most 24/192 albums i like are below $17.99.  Debating the latest Tedeschi Trucks Band album right now for only $14.99 in 24/192.

 

Being able to audition and just buy on the spot is the handiest thing ever.  To me that's the real "killer app" part of the service.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

This one is making my head hurt...

 

So i'm listening to the 24/96 version of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" last night off of this link:

 

https://play.qobuz.com/album/0603497941032

 

The second track "Dreams" starts.  As soon as McVie's first bass note hits right in the beginning, i'm diving for my volume knob.  WAY too boomy. 

 

Some of the tracks are labeled "MQS" on the album and some aren't.   The ones labeled MQS sound WAAAAY better IMO, doesn't sound like compression was too high during mastering.  My understanding is that MQS stands for master quality sound.

 

So my question is...If you now buy this album from Qobuz....what EXACTLY are you buying?  It's labeled as hi-res, info shows 24/96, SOME individual tracks are labelled true master quality and others aren't, and at times sounds like you are listening to 2 different albums.  If i'm buying that i want it to be crystal clear what I'm getting in return for my money.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

@Hugo9000

 

Thanks for the clarification on what MQS is.  Unfortunately that just confuses me even more about Rumours actually is if you buy it from Qobuz right now.  There should be better truth in labelling if you are going to buy something outright IMO.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

3 hours ago, Paul R said:

Gosh, I hate to say it, but it actually sounds right to me, same as I remember it always being. 

 

If it's the way it's supposed to be, that's reassuring.  I'm not at all familiar with any vinyl masters that have been done  of that album.  Mix just seemed off with regards to the rest of the tracks, but it could just be in my head.  I was wearing phones at the time and it surprised me pretty good.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

I'd like to see an easier way to filter "rock" sub-genres, there's a ton of them.  The generic one for pop/rock is too inclusive.  It makes things harder to find if you just want to browse through metal new releases only, for example.  If you search #metal, there are a ton of matches, but aren't in order of release, artist, anything really.  Import order into the Qobuz database maybe? 

 

I also only see hi-res matches when i search #metal.  Is that because I'm a hi-res subscriber?  I'd like to be able to see 16/44.1 new releases/suggestions as well.  I'm finding what I want if i dig hard enough, but other metal/prog/etc fans signing up for a trial might turn and run thinking the content isn't there.  Which would be a shame because you have an excellent selection for metal in particular, you should do a better job of highlighting these sub-genres.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

1 hour ago, thyname said:

Not having Metal as a genre is really bad decision

 

It's also strange to me considering how popular the genre is in Europe and Qobuz has been available there for quite some time.  Metal fans are big on buying media to support bands, so it makes since to lure them in for downloads.  It's there, just needs visibility.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

A discussion about whether or not a musical sounding source is truly hi-res is almost pointless.  Artist and producer work together with the engineer to produce an artistic vision, right?  Is analog synth lo-fi noise captured on 2" tape hi-res?  Or how about captured digitally 24-bit or higher, does that change the classification somehow?  A digital file called "hi-res" should come close to resembling the source, whatever it is and however it was captured, with minimal degradation in sound quality.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

 

4 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

to simply try this is not sufficient and usually without consequences. It is the job of Qobuz and other download stores or streaming provider to sell their customers the promised contend in the quality they've paid for. It should not be the job of your customers to verify the quality!

 

I'm not so sure that this falls on Qobuz, and more on the label supplying the files.  The labels are the ones committing fraud if they aren't providing product as labelled to a distributor.  If someone sold fake budweiser to your liquor store, it's not the liquor store's fault. 

 

Qobuz will be at fault here, IMO, if they don't refund money after you complain of mislabelled downloads.  If they refund the your money, but leave the album available mislabelled for others to be duped, that's when they have a problem on their hands.

 

What is the policy?  If I buy a mislabelled album do i get my money back?

 

 

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

4 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

In the special case that I indicated yesterday "J.S. Odara - Tales Of America", I abstained from complaining officially at the customer service because it is a very nice album, the audible differences from 96kHz to 192kHz are in general very slight and I've purchased the album with the Sublime discount to a very fair price, cheaper than CD quality download.

 

There is one clue that can be used to find what you describe.

 

Some player applications allow deeper inspection into a stream's metadata than others.  The Qobuz web player doesn't really show much information about the stream, just telling you simple things like "cd quality" or "24/96khz", etc.

 

LMS shows decompressed flac codec bitrate while the file is playing, that's a metric that doesn't hide anything.  If the bitrate appears low there,  files will show the analysis behaviour you are describing.

 

For "J.S. Odara - Tales Of America"....I played this via the Qobuz web player, and the app showed an audio stream of 24/192, just like the album is tagged.  I then then played it via LMS.  First track "American Dream"  is showing the stream playing back at a codec data rate of 4632kbps.  That's low for 24/192.  For 24/96 I should see 3200-3400ish kbps, for 24/192 I should see around 5500-6000ish kbps.   "American Dream" falls right in the middle of the two.  If this is a new release, and it was recorded 24/192, flac compression was high during mastering.  Or it was upsampled from a lower resolution source.

 

This is not limited to hi-res files.  Take the Doobie Brother's album "Toulouse Street".  If played back from the web player, it shows the album playing back at cd quality, 16/44.1.  If played back via LMS, track one "Listen to the Music" is showing a codec data rate of only 863kbps.  For TRUE cd quality, I'd expect to see at least 1000-1100kbps there.  But considering when this album was originally recorded, you won't see a high data rate, media was 'data rate' limited back then.  Album sounds really good when streamed BTW.

 

So sampling rate is one metric, but it's really just a container.  How much stuff is inside the container is the codec data rate.   That should be right next to each individual track file in the Qobuz app/web player IMO.  A new release showing 24/192 and a low data rate is a red flag for data compression in use or upsampling.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Bit depth the same as resolution, right?  You increase bit depth, and you increase bit rate and file size.  So there should be correlation between resolution and bit rate.

 

Keeping this tied to Qobuz, I'd like to see the bit rates specified for each track and/or individual file sizes when browsing the catalog. 

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Hit my first micro service outage here tonight, only lasted for about 10 minutes though, started a little after 1 am EST.  No hard outage,  just buffers wouldn't fill and playback kept pausing and starting.  Was convinced we were going to lose power again while the audio stutters happened, extremely high winds in new england today, lost power twice.  And a tree.  I checked Tidal and it was still streaming cleanly when Qobuz stuttered.

 

Whatever it was it cleared fast, unlike my near daily problems with Tidal.  Qobuz way more reliable for me overall so far, keep up the good work.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

I must have just started seeing some of this attack last night at 1am.  Classic symptoms of attack underway or system too busy.  CD quality streams were working just fine, but if you went to higher bitrates, no go.  I finally crashed out at around 2am and was seeing this behaviour right up until then, the botnet was just starting to get rolling.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

It will happen from time to me with LMS as well.  No where near as much as with Tidal though.  Tidal skipped using both LMS and Volumio a few times a night.  Qobuz only once every few days.

 

Linux issue perhaps?  I've seen it using both the latest versions of Mint and Ubuntu Studio w/ LMS 7.9.2.  It does not seem like any buffers are overflowing or it would happen to me more often.   Seems to me more like random memory corruption or loss of a handshake w/ remote server.