Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[The Computer Audiophile]

UPnP/DLNA is the most nonstandard standard. Qobuz will be fighting problems with the protocol’s implementation on an hourly basis if it decides to fully support it. I wish this wasn’t the case, but it is. 
 

JRiver, Audirvana, etc... have years of experience applying patches to make things work with different hardware. The Qobuz team has a ton if work ahead it to make this work. 

[Mike48]

So, people are thinking the answer is "no"? Maybe we'll hear from Qobuz themselves.

[Richter Di]

On 6/12/2020 at 9:47 AM, David Craff said:

 

You must see this warning from instabug

 

On 6/12/2020 at 9:47 AM, David Craff said:

 

Fun fact.After todays update on the FiiO M11 and the Hiby R6 Pro there is dedicated screen and I can choose what kind of feeback I like to give.

Now there is differentiation between UI Bug and Functional Bug.

No idea when to use what?
All since today, not before.

 

[Richter Di]

I just learnt that in the US there is wonderful section called Hi-Fi Audio Partners with cool playlists from Bowers & Wilkins, Cambridge Audio etc. Any chance @David Craff to have these playlists also here in Germany?

[Cebolla]

14 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

UPnP/DLNA is the most nonstandard standard. Qobuz will be fighting problems with the protocol’s implementation on an hourly basis if it decides to fully support it. I wish this wasn’t the case, but it is. 
 

JRiver, Audirvana, etc... have years of experience applying patches to make things work with different hardware. The Qobuz team has a ton if work ahead it to make this work. 

 

Qobuz themselves appear to be confident that they are more than capable of properly implementing UPnP/DLNA itself and the reason for the delay is due to a security issue with the way the audio is being streamed by their own applications that they need to sort out first:

 

[Cebolla]

13 hours ago, Mike48 said:

So, people are thinking the answer is "no"? Maybe we'll hear from Qobuz themselves.

 

Perhaps what you should be asking is if Qobuz are anywhere near implementing a solution to the 'secure audio flow' issue of their applications, rather than if they intend to get DLNA working.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, Cebolla said:

 

Qobuz themselves appear to be confident that they are more than capable of properly implementing UPnP/DLNA itself and the reason for the delay is due to a security issue with the way the audio is being streamed by their own applications that they need to sort out first:

 

I’d love to see it happen, but my comments are based on a decade of talking to people who’ve developed apps to work with DLNA renderers. I’m also not trying to be a downer. I just know what it takes to get it done and to constantly fix the issues. I’ve personally delivered hardware to the JRiver office so they could work on an issue. The JRiver team releases nightly updates. Contrast this with the resources of the Qobuz team. I wish it wasn’t the case. Honestly. 
 

It also will be hard because we as a group are difficult to please. We want everything to work perfectly. Gapless isn’t an issue for the general population, but for us it’s a must on all our devices. 

[vortecjr]

17 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

UPnP/DLNA is the most nonstandard standard. Qobuz will be fighting problems with the protocol’s implementation on an hourly basis if it decides to fully support it. I wish this wasn’t the case, but it is. 
 

JRiver, Audirvana, etc... have years of experience applying patches to make things work with different hardware. The Qobuz team has a ton if work ahead it to make this work. 

Every player software including Roon goes though this process. In fact, Roon has a massive collection of gear in house for this very reason.

 

JRiver, Audirvana, etc should handle the streaming because this is what they do best. Qobuz user can use their app on mobile devices.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, vortecjr said:

Every player software including Roon goes though this process. In fact, Roon has a massive collection of gear in house for this very reason.

 

JRiver, Audirvana, etc should handle the streaming because this is what they do best. Qobuz user can use their app on mobile devices.

The thing with Roon is they get to certify all the gear and ask for changes by the manufacturer. UPnP/DLNA is the wild west. I commend all the people who've made it work over the years. 

[greyscale]

Has Qobuz paid the certification fee for DNLA?.

link:https://spirespark.com/dlna/certification-pricing

[dmackta]

Hi regarding UPNP/DLNA it is in the backlog. We'd like to get it working but as Chris notes it is not trivial to develop and maintain wide support for these decidedly non-standard standards. My hope is we start work on it in the next year. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

6 minutes ago, greyscale said:

Has Qobuz paid the certification fee for DNLA?.

link:https://spirespark.com/dlna/certification-pricing

That's a third party company that helps other companies get their products working with DLNA.

[dmackta]

On 6/13/2020 at 12:16 PM, left channel said:

 

 

Hi @dmackta, is Qobuz still adding 10,000 albums a day? Thought I'd check back on these two examples, as I'm often challenged on whether the Qobuz catalog is growing. I know these are edge cases as neither artist is American, but I believe they ought to be in there.

 

Radka Toneff: two albums from Odin Records are now there, Live in Hamburg and Fairytales, but four others (from Polygram?) are missing including two compilations. Fairytales may have been there all along — it was at the center of a bit of MQA controversy here a while back, then seemed to disappear — so perhaps it was just hard to find until search was upgraded. Only Steve Dobrogosz is shown as the primary artist on that album, even though on the cover Toneff is listed first. Also, in the new search results, Lifelines by Arild Andersen is listed as one of her releases, even though she is only credited as a composer on one track and did not perform anywhere on that album.

Some days it's less than 10,000. Some days it's more. We are signing new suppliers all the time. Sounds like some metadata or ingestion issues on those releases, I will take a look. 

On 6/13/2020 at 12:16 PM, left channel said:

Bruce Cockburn: Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws was fixed, thank you, and two more albums were added. But 18 are still missing, including a couple "deluxe" versions with additional tracks, but all should be in the catalog too. Are any more on the way?

True North has all that Cockburn and they are on the list of suppliers we are wanting to sign. It's not like the music is sitting there waiting for us to realize we don't have it and then boom we can push a button. The contract negotiations can take months. Where bigger companies have large licensing teams that do nothing but negotiate and manage these deals, Qobuz does not. 

[left channel]

8 minutes ago, dmackta said:

Some days it's less than 10,000. Some days it's more. We are signing new suppliers all the time. Sounds like some metadata or ingestion issues on those releases, I will take a look. 

True North has all that Cockburn and they are on the list of suppliers we are wanting to sign. It's not like the music is sitting there waiting for us to realize we don't have it and then boom we can push a button. The contract negotiations can take months. Where bigger companies have large licensing teams that do nothing but negotiate and manage these deals, Qobuz does not. 

 

Thanks @dmackta! We appreciate you taking a look at those meta data and ingestion issues. As for the rest, last fall it sounded like many of those albums were likely to appear soon, but I'm sure since then Covid has slowed down even the biggest labels.

[vortecjr]

6 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The thing with Roon is they get to certify all the gear and ask for changes by the manufacturer. UPnP/DLNA is the wild west. I commend all the people who've made it work over the years. 

I can't say it's been that wild or that hard to get DLNA/UPnP to work. It's always been very easy and very reliable. Our new Sonore endPoint is DLNA/UPnP and I have zero concern about it and know it will have minimal support.   

[The Computer Audiophile]

13 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

I can't say it's been that wild or that hard to get DLNA/UPnP to work. It's always been very easy and very reliable. Our new Sonore endPoint is DLNA/UPnP and I have zero concern about it and know it will have minimal support.   

You guys are lucky you do t have to get UPnP to work with other hardware. 

[Ran]

48 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

You guys are lucky you do t have to get UPnP to work with other hardware. 

 

The issue is not with the UPnP / DLNA protocol per se but with the implementation. Most high end audio manufactures do not have software developers in-house to deal with mobile, desktop and web based development. Take for example company X. They make excellent power amps and pre amps but have never developed a streamer or even an app but now, due to market demand, they want to offer a streamer. They can invest money into the project, hire software developers, R&D people, etc... this is very costly and time consuming. Or they can they outsource to a third party that has built a low powered module with code base from 15 years ago. It support DLNA but only some of the features. It may have been developed prior to DLNA spec-ing gapless playback (Just an example) but it is cheap and allows faster time to market for the new product. So company X goes with the second option. The product goes under review and the reviewer, who does not know what gapless playback is or have never read the DLNA specs give it a great feedback. Months down the road, a user will complain on this forum that some features are missing but company X does not have a clue what is he taking about.

 

This scenario is very common. I have seen it with companies that sell streamers for more than $10k only to find out that the network module is a 20 dollars card with crippled functionality.

 

The DLNA “Alliance” dissolved years ago having left the licensing to a 3rd party who use this as a money grab so companies can have the DLNA logo in their products.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

 

The issue is not with the UPnP / DLNA protocol per se but with the implementation. Most high end audio manufactures do not have software developers in-house to deal with mobile, desktop and web based development. Take for example company X. They make excellent power amps and pre amps but have never developed a streamer or even an app but now, due to market demand, they want to offer a streamer. They can invest money into the project, hire software developers, R&D people, etc... this is very costly and time consuming. Or they can they outsource to a third party that has built a low powered module with code base from 15 years ago. It support DLNA but only some of the features. It may have been developed prior to DLNA spec-ing gapless playback (Just an example) but it is cheap and allows faster time to market for the new product. So company X goes with the second option. The product goes under review and the reviewer, who does not know what gapless playback is or have never read the DLNA specs give it a great feedback. Months down the road, a user will complain on this forum that some features are missing but company X does not have a clue what is he taking about.

 

This scenario is very common. I have seen it with companies that sell streamers for more than $10k only to find out that the network module is a 20 dollars card with crippled functionality.

 

The DLNA “Alliance” dissolved years ago having left the licensing to a 3rd party who use this as a money grab so companies can have the DLNA logo in their products.

+1

[TJtennispro]

On 6/13/2020 at 12:16 PM, left channel said:

 

 

Hi @dmackta, is Qobuz still adding 10,000 albums a day? Thought I'd check back on these two examples, as I'm often challenged on whether the Qobuz catalog is growing. I know these are edge cases as neither artist is American, but I believe they ought to be in there.

 

Radka Toneff: two albums from Odin Records are now there, Live in Hamburg and Fairytales, but four others (from Polygram?) are missing including two compilations. Fairytales may have been there all along — it was at the center of a bit of MQA controversy here a while back, then seemed to disappear — so perhaps it was just hard to find until search was upgraded. Only Steve Dobrogosz is shown as the primary artist on that album, even though on the cover Toneff is listed first. Also, in the new search results, Lifelines by Arild Andersen is listed as one of her releases, even though she is only credited as a composer on one track and did not perform anywhere on that album.

 

Bruce Cockburn: Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws was fixed, thank you, and two more albums were added. But 18 are still missing, including a couple "deluxe" versions with additional tracks, but all should be in the catalog too. Are any more on the way?

Are you serious? They’ve got to add more Widespread Panic first. 98% of people won’t listen Radka or B. Cockburn? Are they DJ’s? 

[vortecjr]

50 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

The issue is not with the UPnP / DLNA protocol per se but with the implementation. Most high end audio manufactures do not have software developers in-house to deal with mobile, desktop and web based development. Take for example company X. They make excellent power amps and pre amps but have never developed a streamer or even an app but now, due to market demand, they want to offer a streamer. They can invest money into the project, hire software developers, R&D people, etc... this is very costly and time consuming. Or they can they outsource to a third party that has built a low powered module with code base from 15 years ago. It support DLNA but only some of the features. It may have been developed prior to DLNA spec-ing gapless playback (Just an example) but it is cheap and allows faster time to market for the new product. So company X goes with the second option. The product goes under review and the reviewer, who does not know what gapless playback is or have never read the DLNA specs give it a great feedback. Months down the road, a user will complain on this forum that some features are missing but company X does not have a clue what is he taking about.

 

This scenario is very common. I have seen it with companies that sell streamers for more than $10k only to find out that the network module is a 20 dollars card with crippled functionality.

 

The DLNA “Alliance” dissolved years ago having left the licensing to a 3rd party who use this as a money grab so companies can have the DLNA logo in their products.

I can replace your use of the word "DLNA" with "USB" and the same argument would be true more or less. I agree with you that most Ethernet inputs including those with Airplay, Spotify, Tidal, DLNA/UPnP, RoonReady, etc are based on inexpensive cards, but not all. I disagree that X company does not have a clue...they do and just don't want to pay to have whatever functionality you want implemented. Why on earth would anyone pay 10K for a streamer anyway:)          

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

I disagree that X company does not have a clue

You'd be surprised...

[David Craff]

On 6/13/2020 at 11:06 PM, Richter Di said:

I just learnt that in the US there is wonderful section called Hi-Fi Audio Partners with cool playlists from Bowers & Wilkins, Cambridge Audio etc. Any chance @David Craff to have these playlists also here in Germany?

 

Hi,

 

This is not yet available for Germany's Store but will arrive.

 

Here come some playlists from the Hi-Fi Audio Partners for US Account. You can listen them but may have some tracks not available :

- https://play.qobuz.com/playlist/3314272

- https://play.qobuz.com/playlist/3191147

- https://play.qobuz.com/playlist/2845368

- https://play.qobuz.com/playlist/2693054

- https://play.qobuz.com/playlist/2692987

- https://play.qobuz.com/playlist/2200244

- https://play.qobuz.com/playlist/2317112

 

Regards

[Mike48]

23 hours ago, vortecjr said:

I can't say it's been that wild or that hard to get DLNA/UPnP to work. It's always been very easy and very reliable. Our new Sonore endPoint is DLNA/UPnP and I have zero concern about it and know it will have minimal support.   

 

I appreciate your saying that. I use products at price points ranging from an Auralic Aries G1 to a Raspberry Pi, and they all work reliably with DLNA. None of the software I use is expensive; from free apps such as Volumio to JRiver at about $60. All handle it fine. JRiver has done that since before I started using it, about 8 years ago. MinimServer (which was free for many years), also.

 

@The Computer Audiophile, I understand that companies complain, but companies that have had trouble with something new might just blame it on on someone else. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / but in ourselves...."

 

It is clear, as @Ran pointed out, that some firms try to get into streaming with neither a real understanding of it nor a willingness to commit adequate resources. They wind up using DBD (defective by design) chipsets like those chosen by brands "P" and "C", not testing them adequately, and selling expensive products that don't work right. I am not sure that implementing streaming need be terribly costly, but I am sure it demands attention to detail. If companies can do listening tests on each resistor (as some claim to do), surely they can accomplish working DLNA. How the hell can a high-end company sell a product that doesn't do gapless playback and call it "state of the art" (as company "P" did)? The only answer is sloppiness and ignorance of the real issues involved.

 

Thanks to @Cebolla  among others for pointing out that the delay by Qobuz may relate to security, rather than audio technology.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, Mike48 said:

 

I appreciate your saying that. I use products at price points ranging from an Auralic Aries G1 to a Raspberry Pi, and they all work reliably with DLNA. None of the software I use is expensive; from free apps such as Volumio to JRiver at about $60. All handle it fine. JRiver has done that since before I started using it, about 8 years ago. MinimServer (which was free for many years), also.

 

@The Computer Audiophile, I understand that companies complain, but companies that have had trouble with something new might just blame it on on someone else. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / but in ourselves...."

 

It is clear, as @Ran pointed out, that some firms try to get into streaming with neither a real understanding of it nor a willingness to commit adequate resources. They wind up using DBD (defective by design) chipsets like those chosen by brands "P" and "C", not testing them adequately, and selling expensive products that don't work right. I am not sure that implementing streaming need be terribly costly, but I am sure it demands attention to detail. If companies can do listening tests on each resistor (as some claim to do), surely they can accomplish working DLNA. How the hell can a high-end company sell a product that doesn't do gapless playback and call it "state of the art" (as company "P" did)? The only answer is sloppiness and ignorance of the real issues involved.

 

Thanks to @Cebolla for pointing out that the issue in Qobuz's case may relate to security, rather than audio technology.

 

All your stuff works well because JRiver has a software team that has worked on DLNA for 17 years.

[Mike48]

7 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

All your stuff works well because JRiver has a software team that has worked on DLNA for 17 years.

 

I call it "concern for quality" and "knowing what you're doing." Not just JRiver, but the majority of other firms have been able to do it right. Only a few have been doing audio streaming as long as JRiver.

 

Selling something that doesn't work, I call "sloppiness" and "hiding your head in the sand."

 

Would you excuse a bad power amp by saying design is difficult? I don't think there is anything in life that is easy to do right. I thought high-end audio was about doing it right, not taking the easy path and then complaining it was too hard.

 

Honestly, Chris, I have a LOT of respect for your contributions, and I am surprised to see you taking this tack.