Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[Jud]

10 hours ago, David.. Qobuz, Hi-Res Music Evangelist said:

 

 

I just sent that very request.

 

 

Please include DLNA software running on standard computer equipment in that request, for people who are interested in rolling their own.

[Jud]

8 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

Hi David, I’ll be at RMAF, so will look forward to meeting you in person.

 

I was really looking forward to making it this year, but we have out of town guests.  Next year.

[Jud]

Just now, austinpop said:

 

Bummer, Jud! 

 

I will just look forward to seeing you there next year.   

[Jud]

6 hours ago, shadowlight said:

@nbpf, I have a working system with Volumio, MPD, upmpdcli and upmpdcli-qobuz for 16-bit music but with 24-bit music I get white-noise.  I think I am missing some configuration under mpd/upmpdcli, if you know of anything that will help me remove the white-noise let me know what changes needs to be in place for it to make it work.  I can test similar setup as you with Linn Kazoo, mdp/upmpdcli configured as OpenHome renderer.  I only get white noise when I am using Linn Kazoo which uses the upmpdcli-qobuz plugin.  If I use BubbleDS on a Android device which I believe bypasses upmpdcli-qobuz plugin I am able to play 24-bit files just fine.

 

For now, I am going to call it a night and pick it up tomorrow night.

 

You might Google around for discussions between the upmpdcli developer and the Kazoo folks - there was a conversation about this topic, but I thought the problem was resolved (maybe not in Volumio?).

[Jud]

6 hours ago, Sal1950 said:

I'm still trying to figure out what this means???

 

S&V: What differentiates Qobuz from other music providers, especially Tidal?
DS: Qobuz, is more like Apple Music, if it were high-resolution. You can stream and download music. Unlike Apple and Tidal, Qobuz will be the first streaming platform in North America that offers true high-resolution music, up to 24/192. There’s no need for a special DAC or server. Qobuz “unfolds” resolutions from 16/44 to 24/192 on any computer or capable device from FLAC files.

Read more at https://www.soundandvision.com/content/qobuz-coming-america#HwVbWAcRSMqKclvX.99

 

I'm sure the reference to "unfolds" is tongue in cheek.  I've got the service and the resolution numbers are real, the downloads are ordinary everyday FLAC..

[Jud]

On 8/29/2018 at 9:17 PM, austinpop said:

Through the good offices of @The Computer Audiophile and @David.. Qobuz, Hi-Res Music Evangelist, I have been given trial access to Qobuz Sublime+. Having used it for a couple days, I thought I'd post my impressions so far.

 

My focus is classical music, and I have also been focussed on high-resolution content. Not because I don't listen to Redbook, but I want to assess the availability of high-res content in particular, as that is one of the selling points. I'm using the Qobuz app support in LMS that's built in to my Innuos Zenith SE server. While this isn't my preferred experience - I use Roon primarily - this works fine for now. I use a somewhat disjointed approach to finding content using the Qobuz desktop app on MacOS, tagging albums I want to listen to as Favorites, and then locating them during playback using the iPeng app controlling LMS. Not ideal, but tolerable, knowing Roon is coming,

 

One feature I'd urgently suggest to Qobuz is to provide a way to filter and sort search results. Sorting is available in some areas of the app, but not others. I would love to filter results by resolution - i.e. only results that are high-resolution.

 

I sure hope the rumors of Roon integration with Qobuz are true, and there again, my fervent suggestion to Qobuz would be to ensure from day 1 that high-res content was clearly identifiable in Roon. I can't tell you how frustrating it was to not have Tidal MQA content visible in Roon. Not that I'm promoting MQA - just saying that high-resolution results need to be visible from day 1.

 

As regards Qobuz content. I used the Soundiiz service referenced in Chris's excellent article to migrate my Tidal favorites and playlists to Qobuz. I am going to equate MQA content on Tidal with high-res content on Qobuz - again, not because I believe MQA to have inherent value, but because both are value-adds on their respective platforms. I had a lot of MQA albums tagged as favorites in Tidal. I was gratified to find that most of them (I'd say > 90%) had high-resolution counterparts on Qobuz. So to the extent that MQA content on Tidal is a proxy for high-resolution music, Qobuz seems to have that well-covered.

 

But from this point on, Qobuz left Tidal in the dust. Again, speaking from the perspective of a classical music lover, the sheer amount of high-resolution content on Qobuz was far greater than MQA content on Tidal. For example, take symphonies by Mahler. There are exactly 0 MQA versions of Mahler Symphony 3, while on Qobuz, I count 5 or more high-resolution versions. This is just one example. But the pattern is repeated over and over. Take Haydn's The Creation (Die Schöpfung). There is exactly 1 MQA version of this album on Tidal. Just a quick count of Qobuz yields at least 7 high-res versions.

 

I can't comment yet on sound quality. I'm not really expecting the same lossless track on Tidal and Qobuz to sound different, but it wouldn't surprise me. I will defer this kind of testing until Roon integration happens. Until then, I'm focusing on content.

 

And based on that criterion, even after just a couple days of exploration, Qobuz is light years ahead of Tidal.

 

With all that said, Qobuz is far from perfect. I hope to see a continued focus on usability on their app, including the missing features I highlighted.

 

But all in all - bravo, Qobuz!

 

I also have @The Computer Audiophile and @David.. Qobuz, Hi-Res Music Evangelist to thank for a Qobuz Sublime+ trial.

 

I tried Tidal's service twice, once for RedBook resolution music, and once for RedBook and MQA.  Neither impressed me; I didn't ever feel this was something I needed.  (As I've said before, I always felt the MQA versions sounded just a little less good than my local high resolution files.)

 

I really have no idea whether there is anything that Qobuz is doing differently than Tidal.  Maybe it's my current setup with Audirvana+ for Windows (which wasn't available when I tried Tidal) doing DSD512.  But from the first notes of the first track I played - Cassandra Wilson's performance of Strange Fruit - I was completely hooked.  I never got the sense with the Qobuz hi res or RedBook files that I was listening to something different than my local files.  In the space of 10 seconds, my attitude went from "I don't think I'd want to pay for a streaming service" to "OK, this feels very much worth it to me."

 

For anyone using Audirvana+, it's dead simple to play from Qobuz.  You login to your Qobuz account through Audirvana+, and everything Qobuz has appears as an option for playback along with your local files.  The only small complaint I have at this point is there's no advance indication of, or search for, high resolution files as distinct from RedBook in the Audirvana+ GUI, a situation I hope will be remedied soon. 

 

I was also happy with Qobuz's selection.  There are things they're missing, which I expected - some of my tastes run to fairly rare stuff (though they had music I didn't expect, like Spirit's "Spirit of '76" album, a favorite of mine and besides me probably just some close personal friends and family of the band, if sales were any indication).  But they have what seems to me to be a very satisfactory level of coverage of not only classical, but also early music, rock, rap, alternative, folk, blues, jazz, world (there are approximately a zillion Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan albums  ), even country.

 

Hey, did I mention the sound?   

 

So yeah, it appears a real RedBook-and-above high quality streaming service is coming to the USA very soon.  It may be something you want to check out.

[Jud]

23 hours ago, austinpop said:

What I would love to see for sure from Qobuz is streaming of DSD content - like the aforementioned Analogue Production or Mercury Living Presence SACDs.

 

A guy can dream.

 

Perhaps it's apostasy, but I'm enjoying the PCM versions of everything so much (upsampled to DSD512 in A+ for Windows) that I'm not at all sure I'd miss it.  Especially with DSD64 and DSD128 stuff, a PCM version upsampled to DSD512 with quality DSP at both ends has a chance of sounding as good (better?), especially if the SACD versions are upsampled themselves.

 

Listening to The Jayhawks right now - forgot how much I like these guys.

[Jud]

Has Qobuz officially launched in the US? If it has not, and you are in the US, that may be the hangup with the A+ trial. 

[Jud]

17 hours ago, David Craff said:

 

This is not so easy because even you can't listen to this album, you can get information of tracks, description, buy it, add it to favorite etc...

Sometime this album is not available for streaming but if you buy it you can stream it after. So it's better to view the album than hide it.

Maybe we can alert before clicking on album is there no tracks streamable. (lighter cover, tag or other)

 

Yes, you would prefer people thinking "OK, I can buy this if I want it," rather than "What do you mean I can't stream it?"

[Jud]

On 9/17/2018 at 8:27 AM, David Craff said:

 

I have no preference, I try to find the best compromise for users. We may add this feature but we have to do it intelligently.

 

It should not be forgotten that Qobuz is also a platform for buying dematerialized music and that the rights to listen to an album are at the discretion of the rights holders (Label, Major, Artist...). We therefore have to juggle the expectations of our customers (with multiple profiles) and the issues related to this sector. 

 

Hi David - Yes, I think that obviously you want to satisfy people who want to purchase as well as those who want to stream.

 

My apologies that I didn't make clear what I meant, which is that *if* a particular hi res album is available for purchase but not for streaming, I (and I assume you  ) would want the Qobuz UI to indicate that.

[Jud]

5 hours ago, David Craff said:

I'm not sure about "Modification framework closed", sorry for my english.

 

No, that was good, clear English, or at least as good as it gets when discussing "agile" development.  

 

(My company, as well as many, many other companies around the world now use this.)

[Jud]

12 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

Beside this, completely new HiRes music streaming services like Resonate.is with new ideas and formats, based on blockchain technology, will presumably be a game changing element.

 

Blockchain of course isn't magic. I looked at Resonate just very briefly but did not see specifically how they were making use of Blockchain, only a general mention.  Is there a link where they talk about it in some depth? 

 

I didn't find any artists I knew.  Are there any who are fairly widely known?

 

The idea of "stream to own" is intriguing, though I have no idea what the economics look like.

 

Lastly, I didn't explore deeply enough to learn what format(s) are offered. Do you know?

[Jud]

1 hour ago, Cebolla said:

May be continue that conversation in a more relevant thread? Appears to be similar tech, though different startup:

 

 

It is actually a bit different.  What @#Yoda# mentioned is very much more preliminary, really at the demo stage, and unfortunately, in contrast to Dot Blockchain, uses yet another new format.

 

Both of these have to do at least somewhat with artists' rights and payment, to some extent by "disintermediation," cutting out the middlemen.  But the Internet was supposed to do that.  Folks haven't learned that it's not the tech.  Back before the Internet the Grateful Dead were one of the only bands to do this successfully, ironically by doing what most bands do now, making money from touring and putting out studio albums as effectively a marketing expense.  All you have to do is be able to record, distribute and play your music to thousands or millions of people without external support, while remaining a creative artist.  Unsurprisingly, this seldom happens. 

 

Meanwhile, until Utopia arrives, Qobuz has easily been my favorite of the currently viable services I've tried that offer at least most of the music I want to hear.  The presence of Qobuz personnel in this thread is a very good sign, and I hope this level of sensitivity to the community's concerns continues after the US launch. 

[Jud]

Apologies for the OTs, too late to delete myself - happy to have them deleted, @The Computer Audiophile.  Thanks!

[Jud]

1 hour ago, mourip said:

I have recently been experimenting a bit with my playback software. Up to now I have had good results with JRiver running on Win2012 R2. I use ASIO via Dante(DVS) for playback. I run my server as headless and rely on JMRC's excellent remote app running on IOS.

 

That has all changed now for the better but with some limitations. I am now using both Roon and Qobuz running on Win2016 server. The good news is that Roon on 2016 sounds better than JMRC on Win2012 and Qobuz has opened up a wonderful candy jar of new music to try with SQ that is very high. The bad news is that I cannot have both Roon Server and Qobuz running at the same time as ASIO runs in "exclusive mode" and so only wants to service one app at a time. If Roon Server is running then Qobuz will give me an error that the output is "already in use". Add to this that Qobuz has no "server mode" with it's own remote app. This means that I must use RDP on my laptop to control it with Roon Server unloaded.

 

My perfect world is to have the hinted at integration of Qobuz with Roon but so far that seems to be receding beyond the horizon. So my ask is can anyone think of a work-around other than what I am already doing? It looks like Audirvana+ now integrates both Roon and Qobuz in a new Windows version but it only supports Win10, with attempts to use Win2016 having failed.

 

If you have gone to the extent of trying Win2016 Server, perhaps you might want to try a small test installation of Win10 to run A+, though if that's more work than you want I understand.

[Jud]

5 hours ago, shadowlight said:

For me Roon brings the benefit of having my streaming and local music managed by single interface

 

I am probably a fellow with simple needs, as both my streaming and local music are managed by the single A+ interface.

[Jud]

On 11/7/2018 at 2:09 PM, austinpop said:

Listening Impressions of Qobuz vs. Tidal

 

I've now had access to Qobuz for a couple months, but due to travel and other commitments, I'd not yet done a careful head to head with Tidal in regard to sound quality. Well, I have now! For me, it was important to do this in a controlled manner, keeping all else constant. In my setup, this meant:

1. using the exact same hardware chain
2. using the same software player - LMS with Tidal and Qobuz plugins
3. Stick to CD (Redbook 16/44.1) sample rate
4. Pick the exact same recordings on the 2 services

This ensured that the only difference in SQ was the streams provided by the 2 services.

 

I listened to a bunch of albums, but here is a representative sample. I've provided links, so I'd love for people who have the ability to cross-check my findings with their own ears.

 

https://open.qobuz.com/album/0884977446371

https://tidal.com/album/3329114

 

https://open.qobuz.com/album/0709869117040

https://tidal.com/album/65306169

 

https://open.qobuz.com/album/0060255767267

https://tidal.com/album/79640505

 

Across the board, the Qobuz streams sounded better. The common theme was one of more openness and dynamics. The Tidal streams seemed to all suffer from constricted dynamics and a somewhat smaller and flatter soundstage.

 

I honestly did not expect this big a difference. Whatever the reasons, as I heard it, Qobuz delivered better sound quality than Tidal with the same nominal 16/44.1 content. Of course, things get even better in some of the cases where Qobuz has hi-res versions of the albums available.

 

Before you ask, I did not attempt to compare Qobuz hi-res with Tidal MQA. Not because I'm shy and retiring, but because I did not have the same software player that could play both. My preferred player is Roon, but it does not support Qobuz (yet). The LMS Tidal plugin does not support MQA streams (yet?). 

 

Once Roon support for Qobuz arrives, I'll be trying that comparison for myself. Whether or not I post anything about it, in light of the raging MQA debate - I doubt it!

 

Thanks, @austinpop.   

 

I didn’t A/B; my listening to Tidal (RedBook and MQA) occurred IIRC over a year before I heard anything on Qobuz. I simply remember being unimpressed with Tidal, while I was immediately *very* impressed with Qobuz.  Every bit as good as local files.  (Of course this means it’s possible to find not terribly well recorded albums on Qobuz, just as you encounter with rips and downloads).

[Jud]

BTW - The current Audirvana+ UI does call out which Qobuz albums are hi res (as does the Qobuz app itself now), a nice touch.

 

Thanks to Qobuz and @damien78 for responding to requests for this feature.

[Jud]

20 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

At least I am not alone.

 

I assumed Mac was the same UI as the Windows version I am using.  Currently a bad assumption, apparently, but I would imagine it would not be too long in coming (though I have no hard information to that effect).

 

My apologies.

[Jud]

5 hours ago, David Craff said:

 

 

I'm curious to know why Audirvana and not the Qobuz application. If you can tell me more, we could improve the Qobuz application.

 

I would not say that I cringe, but I do like Audirvana. Even without using its upsampling feature, I feel the sound quality is superior. And then there is the upsampling, which I use to send DSD512 to my DAC. In that mode I feel the sound is extraordinary.

 

I would just as a suggestion propose that you might wish to speak with Damien Plisson ( @damien78), the developer of Audirvana+, if you haven't already, about both potential improvements to the Qobuz app (for those who wish a free app) and about featuring Audirvana+ as a player (for those who wish a higher end paid app).

 

I haven't discussed this with Damien, and for all I know there may be good reasons not to do it.  But I like both Qobuz and Audirvana+ very much, so I thought I would mention it.

[Jud]

59 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Yo Mr Qobuz.

How about considering a 5.1 lossless stream for us multich guys?

TIA

 

As a Mennonite furniture maker I spoke to once said with a smile, "More changes get more money."    

[Jud]

18 hours ago, Sal1950 said:

Dang, there will be another Beta release.  😡

I was hoping we'd soon have a full public release. 

Don't understand what takes so long to offer a stream to the US that is already going out to much of the world?

 

Sal, have you ever taken time on a job you were doing to get it really right, only to have them ask what was taking so long?  

 

They've got one shot to make a good enough first impression in the largest streaming market in the world to possibly persuade people to leave what they're familiar with. That takes some doing.

[Jud]

4 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Sal, have you ever taken time on a job you were doing to get it really right, only to have them ask what was taking so long?  

 

They've got one shot to make a good enough first impression in the largest streaming market in the world to possibly persuade people to leave what they're familiar with. That takes some doing.

 

But to be fair: I know this is just because by gosh, you really wanna hear it now!  🙂

[Jud]

2 hours ago, firedog said:

@David Craff

 

I just got accepted to Qobuz Beta USA. I tried to sign up with my email address as instructed but the site insists on redirecting me to the French site. I assume this is because I once had a "French" Qobuz account. I don't want the French account anymore at all.

 

Had a similar experience signing up to be on the mailing list for the US launch some time ago, then thanks to @The Computer Audiophile getting the opportunity to be part of an initial beta test group here. That initial beta had to be run through the UK site, and when I tried to sign in with the same email I'd put on the mailing list, I was invariably directed back to the US  "Coming Soon" site.  I imagine this is a measure to prevent duplicate accounts.

 

For me the solution was relatively simple, as my service level with my email provider allows the use of multiple domain names. For those who don't have this alternative there is of course customer service. I also noticed an option in the Qobuz account settings to forever revoke membership, but I was concerned that would be true of all countries where Qobuz does business.

 

 

[Jud]

5 hours ago, David Craff said:

 

Thanks to all and to Qobuz USA Team

 

Gender redesign has been underway for some time. It is a rather long work because it is necessary to manage well the gender correspondences between those of the suppliers and those of Qobuz.

In addition to that, I need to see if it is possible to offer a more advanced gender navigation, beyond the first level for our applications.

 

Regards

 

Hi David - 

 

Just to avoid any future confusion (or possibly auto-"correct" errors)  :

 

- Gender is male or female.

 

- Genre (no accent on the final e for us English speakers) is classical, blues, rock, etc.