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Official Qobuz Issues Thread


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7 hours ago, 111MilesToGo said:

Huge usability issues resulting from the Qobuz way of storing offline contents, at least in the Qobuz Android App

 

I am a Qobuz Studio subsriber for for a number of years now, i.e. a HiRes customer. For a long time, I used it on a Windows PC in stand-alone and in integration within Roon. A while ago, I added an Android DIgital Audio Player to my gear. I do now face the need to address the a.m. topic in public. Please bear with me for writing a long post. I e-mailed the Qobuz support last December and again early January. Answers haven't been entirely satisfactory, in essence "we have forwarded your request to our software engineers, they will follow up on it" and "... they will work on the performance of the app", nothing more as of now. So today I feel a need to "go public" and ask the folks here for your experience, and hopefully get the attention of a Qobuz staff member in order to assist.

 

Qobuz has opted to use the "chunk file method" (similar to YouToube) as one of the methods to provide piracy protection for offline contents ("imported" tracks). Each track is split and stored as a bunch of *.exo chunk files of 2 MB size in the import directory. In fact, these are tiny files as compared to the full size of a track's file, in particular as audo resolution is increasing when going up the HiRes steps.

 

My use case is maybe a bit out of the ordinary, but I do firmly think it is not an abuse: I wanted to follow up on the discography of one artist (Keith Jarrett), so I offlined approx. 100 albums. This resulted in taking up 100 GB of storage as a total of 50,000 (sic!) files, all in the import directory. My audio device is really choking on this, cf. below.

 

Why is offlining of utmost importance to me? I am using a portable Digital Audio Player (DAP), which hooks up to my home WiFi for internet connection. No internet available when out of the house, e.g. in the office. Plus, since it is a battery-powered device, one would like to limit WiFi usage in favor of overall battery life.

 

What are the huge usability issues resulting from this chunk file method? There are several:

  1. My DAP is a Cayin N6ii running Android 8.1
    Sapdragon 425 CPU, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB internal storage
    1 TB SD card SanDisk Extreme Pro (top brand name product) - this storage holds the Qobuz import directory a.o.
    Not exactly the standard of today's smartphones, but still a top product in the niche market of Digital Audio Players.
    Software from Google Play Store, a.o. the Qobuz Android App (latest version 5.15)
  2. At boot-up, it takes Android about 30 minutes (sic!) until it has done the first read of the 50,000 file import directory which resides on the SD card. So I have acquired the habit of switching the N6ii on half an hour before I actually want to start listening.
  3. If I don't do (2), then the Qobuz Android App needs just this amount of time before getting ready for user input. (Wait spinner all the time.)
  4. When I select an album from my offlined contents, the Qobuz Android App takes about 30 seconds to a minute gathering all the file chunks that would make up this album; wait spinner again.
  5. When skipping forward or backwards within one track, or when skipping from one track to another, it takes some 10 seconds or more before replay continues.

I must say that (2), (4) and (5) are huge usability issues which can really spoil the joy of using Qobuz on this Android DAP. I figure this holds for many if not all DAPs, since there are at most a handful of Android DAPs which are closer to top smartphone standards. To my understanding, Qobuz targets demanding listeners, not the general mass audience. Again, my use case of offlining 100 albums is sort of unusual, but no abuse at all.

 

I hope to have explained clearly that there are two types of performance and thus usability issues resulting from the Qobuz way of storing offlined contents: One is due to Android as the OS, the others are due to the Qobuz Android App.

 

I am perfectly aware that the chunk file method is embedded deeply into the app, and that it is needed for piracy protection; thus I reckon it is an element in the licensing contracts with the record companies. But then, Tidal does store its offline contents in an optimum way regarding file system performance, i.e. as one file per one track, most probably encrypted.

 

So my questions and requests are:

  1. What could Qobuz do to improve said performance / usability issues?
  2. Could Qobuz entirely do away with the chunk file method? (Cf. Tidal)
  3. Or could Qobuz reduce the number of chunk files drastically, let's say by a factor of 10 or 5 at least? E.g. by chosing the chunk file size dynamically depending on a track's resolution, instead of the current fixed 2 MB size?
  4. At least, what could Qobuz do to improve their Android App's performance in handling such large numbers of chunk files?

Thank you for patiently reading such a long post, and thanks a lot in advance for feedback, help, and ultimately solutions.

 

PS, not to be omitted: I do absolutely like Qobuz, its repertoire with respect to genres, artists, and albums. And I absolutely cherish their HiRes offerings. Plus, I do appreciate Qobuz supplying pdf booklets - that's the least one can do to recover the old times approach to enjoying music / records and their environment.

 

Hi there,

 

I sent an email to Qobuz about this around an hour ago (before I discovered this forum and post). I have exactly the same issue on my Hiby R5.

 

I really hope they can consider fixing this as it is the only bad thing I have found about the Qobuz service (been on the trial for around a week now). Unfortunately for me it's a bit of a showstopper.

 

I don't know the inner workings of the Android app - but I also suggested that instead of scanning the folder of files that they implement a database to keep track of the files. When a song is requested to be played, it is looked up in the database (which should be quite fast) which points to the correct files to play. I don't know if this is a workable solution or not (does the filesystem in Android need to scan the folder in question to be able to find the files?)- but maybe something worth investigating.

 

Segregating each album (or even artist) into separate folders instead of lumping all of the files into a single folder may also help (assuming they can get around the need to scan the entire card at startup).

 

I'm crossing my fingers for an improvement so I can ditch the *other* service I'm currently using that doesn't appear to have this issue.

 

Regards,

Paul

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To add: (I don't think I can edit my posts)

 

The issue will not only affect 'imported' albums, but also the 'cache' which works in the same way.

 

I've set the cache to use 200GB. Over time this will fill up with the albums I listen to. At 2MB per chunk this will end up at around 100,000 files for the application to scan every time the DAP is restarted. Add that to any 'imported' albums and after a while the system will be scanning upwards of a quarter of a million files.

 

 

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