Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[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.

[rickca]

18 minutes ago, BrokeLinuxPhile said:

Some of the tracks are labeled "MQS" on the album and some aren't.

I've never seen MQS before.  I hope it doesn't mean MQA.

[Hugo9000]

16 minutes ago, rickca said:

I've never seen MQS before.  I hope it doesn't mean MQA.

MQS--Mastering Quality Sound (predates MQA--and MQS is lossless, unlike MQA)

 

https://obsoletemedia.org/mqs/

 

 

 

 

[rickca]

@David Craff is there no way to search Qobuz by label?  How can I determine which labels you have/don't have.  For example, I can't search on Hyperion and see all albums on that label.

[The Computer Audiophile]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

@David Craff is there no way to search Qobuz by label?  How can I determine which labels you have/don't have.  For example, I can't search on Hyperion and see all albums on that label.

You have to find an album from the label, then click the label in the album information. It's better than Tidal and Roon.

[rickca]

Just now, The Computer Audiophile said:

You have to find an album from the label, then click the label in the album information. It's better than Tidal and Roon.

What if Qobuz doesn't have that label?  I just went looking for a particular album on the Hyperion label and didn't find it.

[goon525]

Just now, rickca said:

What if Qobuz doesn't have that label?  I just went looking for a particular album on the Hyperion label and didn't find it.

 

That would be because Hyperion refuse to allow any streaming company access to their releases.

[Hugo9000]

Hyperion isn't allowing their music on any streaming service.

 

 

Edited to add:  what's even more annoying about them, is that they have allowed huge numbers of their albums to go out of print.  Nearly all of my Hyperion CDs are no longer available, such as the majority of Howard Shelley's incredible recordings of Rachmaninov's solo piano music.  I hope my discs don't ever suffer from "CD rot," which was an issue for a number of their releases from the early 90s.  haha!  You can buy downloads directly from Hyperion's website, otherwise you're pretty much SOL with them.

 

CD rot:  https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/pages/bronzed.asp

[KenG]

On 2/14/2019 at 8:25 AM, dmackta said:

 

Are there specific labels you are not seeing available for streaming right now? We are in the process of ingesting over 14 million more independent label tracks but it could take a few months to get them all live on the service. 

 

So far I like the service and appreciate all the hard work you and your teams put into the Beta and 2/14 launch.  I am still noticing quite a few holes major Independent artist like Elliott Smith, Spoon, Husker Du and Radiohead but presume these are coming. I noticed that a lot of the major Matador Records and XL catalog was added over the past few days.

[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.

[Jud]

On the iOS app, in "News" I'm offered the chance to win tickets to the 2015 and 2017 Gramophone Awards celebrations.

[AudioDoctor]

40 minutes ago, Jud said:

On the iOS app, in "News" I'm offered the chance to win tickets to the 2015 and 2017 Gramophone Awards celebrations.

 

Did you enter to win? Sounds like a great deal...

 

😉

[spin33]

55 minutes ago, Jud said:

On the iOS app, in "News" I'm offered the chance to win tickets to the 2015 and 2017 Gramophone Awards celebrations.

 

If it were me, I’d choose 2015. 

[mav52]

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

Try clicking on the artist result from the search. It at least brings up where Paul H. performed with Change and Direct Drive. 

 

It has to be some teething issues with getting international material available to US customers. At least I hope so.

 

Paul 

 

 

Ya .   But the real issue is it shows 55. When its actually one and that one is a collaboration.  And if you click on the two below that show two releases, you get NO releases available for that artist.

 

[abvolt]

Well I'm also very new to Qobuz and have to say it is simply amazing, absolutely nothing like my old Spotify..

[Paul R]

7 hours ago, BrokeLinuxPhile said:

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.

 

Gosh, I hate to say it, but it actually sounds right to me, same as I remember it always being.  I just pulled the half speed mastered LP, and it sounds pretty much exactly the same so I think my memory is pretty good. It always amazed us back in the late 70's how clean and forceful that bass was when played by on the album, vs. how it sounded on FM radio.

 

I wonder if someone turned down the bass on the CD release?

[bobbmd]

@Bob Stern & @Paul R apple time capsule is just one of my 3 backups

what i did is go back and restored my ROON(from ROON's backup) to feb 13th and it sort of worked -my ZONES came back(ie ME2 and Gungnir but strangely Apple TV 3rd gen which i hardly ever listen came back but the pathway was only 'high quality' and didn't sound too bad) the ME2 and Gungnir now play everything in ROON but Qobuz music is not sometime or is playing sometimes-for example the TIDAL version in MQA of Joe Lovano's trio tapestry the tidal version of MQA is only 16/44(even in DSP) and after a lengthy wait the Qobuz version in24/96 suddenly IS playing( as advertised 24/96!) maybe ROON is just SLOW overall and i am just overreacting-but the desktop apps for both and A+3 are instantaneous and i don't understand why ROON doesn't play at what the album says the bit rate is supposed to but IT IS 'working' again somewhat

BTW I also changed the 'settings'  for both ME2 and Gungnir to DSP and they play per pathway as enhanced with all music being at least 24bit at the end of the pathway

I am just not going to touch anything more on ROON and see if THEY can sort this out- so am sort of happy again but not completely

[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.

[AudioDoctor]

@bobbmd Roon has been having some sort of issues today with Qobuz, I'd give it a day or two and see if they can figure out what may be happening before getting too upset.

[Paul R]

3 hours ago, bobbmd said:

@Bob Stern & @Paul R apple time capsule is just one of my 3 backups

what i did is go back and restored my ROON(from ROON's backup) to feb 13th and it sort of worked -my ZONES came back(ie ME2 and Gungnir but strangely Apple TV 3rd gen which i hardly ever listen came back but the pathway was only 'high quality' and didn't sound too bad) the ME2 and Gungnir now play everything in ROON but Qobuz music is not sometime or is playing sometimes-for example the TIDAL version in MQA of Joe Lovano's trio tapestry the tidal version of MQA is only 16/44(even in DSP) and after a lengthy wait the Qobuz version in24/96 suddenly IS playing( as advertised 24/96!) maybe ROON is just SLOW overall and i am just overreacting-but the desktop apps for both and A+3 are instantaneous and i don't understand why ROON doesn't play at what the album says the bit rate is supposed to but IT IS 'working' again somewhat

BTW I also changed the 'settings'  for both ME2 and Gungnir to DSP and they play per pathway as enhanced with all music being at least 24bit at the end of the pathway

I am just not going to touch anything more on ROON and see if THEY can sort this out- so am sort of happy again but not completely

 

Roon is not normally slow by any measure, so I would suggest that something else is definitely wrong if Roon is still being slow. 

 

I roughly duplicated your setup with about 16K track, served from an i5 Mac Mini w/ 8gb of RAM and connected to the network wirelessly. The local music is stored on a portable USB drive. 

 

I did a short screen capture to show the speed. The quality of the screen capture has been greatly reduced to make the file size reasonable. 

 

It is a little slow to me when it starts playing, but that is probably the local network. A 4K Movie is streaming to the TV as well as music to here. 

 

Is this at all close to the speed you are seeing, and I did I duplicate the kind of activity you are doing? 

 

[Edit - I have no idea how the blank video got in there... and I can't seem to edit it out. -Paul ] 

 

 -Paul

[Musicophile]

8 hours ago, Jud said:

On the iOS app, in "News" I'm offered the chance to win tickets to the 2015 and 2017 Gramophone Awards celebrations.

Cool. Including time travel?

[firedog]

11 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.  I just pulled the half speed mastered LP, and it sounds pretty much exactly the same so I think my memory is pretty good. It always amazed us back in the late 70's how clean and forceful that bass was when played by on the album, vs. how it sounded on FM radio.

 

I wonder if someone turned down the bass on the CD release?

I have the DVD-A version ripped, it sounds really good. Maybe the 24/96 download is a different mastering.

[bobbmd]

@Paul R & @AudioDoctor thanks -this am ROON is relatively fast and EVERYTHING now plays including Qobuz(slow to start  some music/albums) but RADIO is instantaneous as are most other things ie playlists genres etc and @Paul R thanks for that video pretty much what I have now

have no idea what happened but seems most of ROON is back to 'normal' let's hope it stays that way- for now I am not going to monkey with any new settings or  change 'device setups' etc

thanks for yours and everybody else's suggestions! I even heard back from ROON support yesterday!

I think the trick was restoring ROON back to feb 13th

[MAK1975]

I signed up for a Qobuz USA "Studio" subscription late last week and my overall impressions are very positive. I'm very impressed with the sound quality and integration with my home devices. Its very nice to be able to stream full HiRes FLAC files without MQA.  

 

Integration with Roon has worked very well for me, although I have a small library. (just over 1000 albums)  Currently running a new self installed Rock (Intel NUC i5) with Synology NAS storage.  Thanks Chris for the great tutorial!! I tested the Roon iOS and Android app and both can stream music to my different endpoints without any issues.

 

I have tested the native Qobuz iOS and Android App on my phone and both have work very well.  On my LGV30, I can stream all resolution formats without any issues.  I can also cast to my Google Home devices (Home Hub, Chromecasts, etc.) and all work very well. I assume the 24bit/192KHz are downsampled to 24bit/96KHz on all Google cast devices which is fine for whole house audio.

 

The only app where I have had issues is with my 64-bit Windows 7 PC client. I initially installed the Quboz desktop app it had a lot of freezing issues.  Basically not navigable.  So I contacted Qobuz support and sent them my info so they can look into it further.  They gave me some suggestions.  They told me to run the app as Administrator. When I did that the interface slow downs and freezing went away. 

 

Over the weekend, I had issues streaming any 24 bit HiRes files.  When I play any 24bit file it will sound muddy and muffled.  This morning I tried again and am still having issues.  I am able to play 24-bit 48Khz files without any issues, but anything above that (88.2, 96, & 192KHz) all have the muffled sound.  16-bit CD has no issues at all. The desktop app has no problems loading the stream, it appears to be a decoding issue.

 

So I am wondering if anyone else is experiencing any of these 24 bit playback issues with the Windows 64-bit desktop?  I really don't need to use the native desktop app as Roon is my primary app anyway and the Android mobile app works very well when I am on the go.  However, I love the desktop interface and in certain cases it will be nice to use.  I especially like all of the nice published/written content that goes along with the native app which hopefully Roon can integrate someday.  

 

My guess is Quboz USA is working through these issues in their current public beta and I will see an improvement over the next few weeks. 

 

All in all a very good first impression.  Love the design layout of their apps!

[bobbmd]

@Bob Stern my post #1423 above should gone out to you also-thanks for your suggestions-ROON seems to be working just fine- like I said above the trick was restoring ROON to Feb 13th and/or ROON 'fixed' something but don't want to admit it-I'll see when they email me back

thanks again

bobbmd