Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, rando said:

Some words have meaning.  Better chosen words hold many more.

Sentences that only the writer understands have no meaning to anyone but the writer. That's not communication, it's self pleasure. 

[rando]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Sentences that only the writer understands have no meaning to anyone but the writer. That's not communication, it's self pleasure. 

 

This meeting should've been an email PM. 💦

 

" Better be a gentleman or you'll turn me off"

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 minutes ago, rando said:

 

This meeting should've been an email PM. 💦

 

" Better be a gentleman or you'll turn me off"

 

 

 

You took it there. 

 

I just said you write to please yourself, rather than communicate. 

[Franck]

Hi

i would like to report problems with credits presentation.
For example in the album HISTORY from MJ all the credits are messed up, in almost every song we have all the personnel from the whole album appearing instead of only the ones from that particular song, and since it’s a double album that’s a lot of people!

So the credits are useless...

[The Computer Audiophile]

HI Guys, my interview with the Qobuz team is now up!

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Guys, Qobuz through Roon has been extremely slow for me since the Roon version 18 upgrade. I often click on an album in Qobuz but it takes ten second for anything to play. Sometimes longer. When I notice this happening, I switch to the Tidal version of the same album, and it loads instantly. 

 

Anyone else experience this?

[dmackta]

14 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Guys, Qobuz through Roon has been extremely slow for me since the Roon version 18 upgrade. I often click on an album in Qobuz but it takes ten second for anything to play. Sometimes longer. When I notice this happening, I switch to the Tidal version of the same album, and it loads instantly. 

 

Anyone else experience this?

No! Mine's faster actually. Go figure. 

[Cebolla]

On 2/16/2021 at 4:47 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Guys, Qobuz through Roon has been extremely slow for me since the Roon version 18 upgrade. I often click on an album in Qobuz but it takes ten second for anything to play. Sometimes longer. When I notice this happening, I switch to the Tidal version of the same album, and it loads instantly. 

 

Anyone else experience this?

 

Blimey, don't tell me you've found a use case for TIDAL's bandwidth saving MQA 😀

[The Computer Audiophile]

4 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

 

Blimey, don't tell me you've found a use case for TIDAL's bandwidth saving MQA 😀

My 1 Gigabit up/down fiber internet connection has no use for MQA :~)

[Pharminepulse]

Can somebody give me advice what to do: last year i filled like 20 forms for adding an album to qobuz, lot of music i'm listening to is missing, mostly rock/metal. For example some albums of Cult of Luna, Amenra, even new album from Greg Puciato and the full discography from Astronoid(qobuz app sees the artist, but nothing is visible when i press on it). Got not a single response on the forms i send. 

[Mark Dirac]

Search has become wonky in some situations:

1. I searched for "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy"
   Two correct versions were offered immediately.
   I clicked on the artist (Sarah McLachlan) in order to research the differences between the two versions.
   But under "Sarah McLachlan" these two releases do not appear at all. Instead, there are dozens of releases by dozens of people who are not Sarah McLachlan.
2. I browsed to Peter Gabriel to search for Mercy Street. There are so many releases listed under "Peter Gabriel" not by Peter Gabriel that I gave up. 
3. I have been noticing this "noise" with popular artists for perhaps a couple of months.

Windows 10.

[FIndingit]

On 2/9/2021 at 4:58 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

My English isn't "good" enough for Rando either. 

This is handy when communicating with Rando: http://www.yodaspeak.co.uk

[Lighthouse]

Whew! It's been a so long time since I visited this site. I renewed my interest in music and just found out Qobuz is on US.

 

 

Yes, I was under the rock for a very long time regarding music.

 

Interestingly, Qobuz seems to use tar format, which is both similar (no stranger to tar since I study/run servers) and weird. Why are they not using zip or even say de-facto 7zip file?

[David Craff]

14 hours ago, Mark Dirac said:

Search has become wonky in some situations:

1. I searched for "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy"
   Two correct versions were offered immediately.
   I clicked on the artist (Sarah McLachlan) in order to research the differences between the two versions.
   But under "Sarah McLachlan" these two releases do not appear at all. Instead, there are dozens of releases by dozens of people who are not Sarah McLachlan.
2. I browsed to Peter Gabriel to search for Mercy Street. There are so many releases listed under "Peter Gabriel" not by Peter Gabriel that I gave up. 
3. I have been noticing this "noise" with popular artists for perhaps a couple of months.

Windows 10.

 

Hi Mark Dirac

 

1. the release are available, but you need to scroll down to load the rest of content. We know this is not the best way to discover or find content for a artist.

We are working on a new artist page, with filter, clean content (discography) etc. And in the next release you can search in the loaded page, that can help you.

 

2. Peter Gabriel is very well known. And as we display content where he was only composer, you can see lot's of release in addition to his official discography. As I say for the first point, we are working on a new artist page that must fix this issue.

 

3. Same as other point. It's indeed the case with popular artists.

 

Regards

[David Craff]

16 hours ago, Pharminepulse said:

Can somebody give me advice what to do: last year i filled like 20 forms for adding an album to qobuz, lot of music i'm listening to is missing, mostly rock/metal. For example some albums of Cult of Luna, Amenra, even new album from Greg Puciato and the full discography from Astronoid(qobuz app sees the artist, but nothing is visible when i press on it). Got not a single response on the forms i send. 

 

Hi

 

Thank you for your feedback.

Please be assured that your requests have been taken into account. The Supply Chain service, does what it takes to find the suppliers, label, to add the content you requested. It is a long process, which often requires an agreement and a contract signature and this in the different countries covered by Qobuz. It can take a lot of time.

 

Regards

[111MilesToGo]

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.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Anyone find this album in Qobuz?

 

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Anyone find this album in Qobuz?

 

 

Roon/Qobuz is having some difficulty showing me anything from Margo Timmins right now. It's not even showing me all the albums in my own local library that have her on them.

 

edit: However, searching a different way gave this result: So no, only TIDAL

 

[AudioDoctor]

Chris, if you come across a place to buy this album, please let me know.

[OutOfBreath]

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

[OutOfBreath]

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.

 

 

[Stever750]

On 12/10/2020 at 10:11 PM, Mark Dirac said:

I've noticed a couple of tracks switching to a higher sample rate than stated in the app. Let me know if you would like me to post or PM further examples.

@David CraffI have the exact same issue. Unstable next track rate change. If next track is 96k following a 44k track, the rate changes at the start of the track then 5s or so in the relay clicks on my marantz dac  and the rate drops to 44. It does this every time for a particular track. Some tracks play at 96, when they are supposed to be 44.

This issue is not present with tidal or amazon HD, there all tracks rate changes are set at the start of each new track. 

[Stever750]

I should add it does this with two separate PCs, and in both USB and optical connections, and using Wasapi or ASIO

[David Craff]

On 2/21/2021 at 11:53 AM, Stever750 said:

@David CraffI have the exact same issue. Unstable next track rate change. If next track is 96k following a 44k track, the rate changes at the start of the track then 5s or so in the relay clicks on my marantz dac  and the rate drops to 44. It does this every time for a particular track. Some tracks play at 96, when they are supposed to be 44.

This issue is not present with tidal or amazon HD, there all tracks rate changes are set at the start of each new track. 

 

Hi

 

Issue fix in the next release. Hope to be live next week.

 

Regards

[athegn]

In Google I find this:-

 

https://www.qobuz.com/ie-en/album/symphonies-igor-stravinski/5099920763251

 

I cannot find it in  your UK Qobuz app.

 

Any advice please?