Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[Richard Dale]

14 minutes ago, Muddy Walter said:

Be good if there was a simple way to check the service, a status page.

 

As far as I know the Qobuz service runs on Amazon cloud services and is very unlikely to have a single point of failure where this sort of status page would make sense.

[OldHardwareTech]

13 minutes ago, Richard Dale said:

As far as I know the Qobuz service runs on Amazon cloud services and is very unlikely to have a single point of failure where this sort of status page would make sense.

I'm pretty sure you're right about it running on AWS, at least it was the last time I ran traceroute on it.

[Muddy Walter]

Service seems better now. Managed to send Qobuz a list of missing music (4 complete albums and many missing tracks on 3 other albums).

[OldHardwareTech]

14 minutes ago, Muddy Walter said:

Service seems better now. Managed to send Qobuz a list of missing music (4 complete albums and many missing tracks on 3 other albums).

Just got back home. I can access and play my playlists again so everything seems to be working again here in the southern US.

[Lightwave]

Hi @David Craff

 

I've switched to Qobuz from Tidal for a few months already. First, the positives:

• Absolutely love the bit-perfect streaming
• Love the commitment from Qobuz to not alter the master like Tidal did with MQA
• Qobuz's curation is much nicer than others IMHO
• I like to root for the small guy who's doing the right thing!

Now the negatives, which I hope you'd address as a priority. I've reported this issue repeatedly to Qobuz but it's not getting any attention.

 

I'm getting more and more corrupted albums and in some cases, albums that existed when I first moved to Qobuz just completely dropped off the catalog. e.g., Tokyo Jazz Lounge's "Piano Ballads: Jazz Covers Collection" album.

 

Here is just one of the many many corrupted album.  e.g., Laura Marling's "I Speak Because I can" shows up twice in the artist's page on Qobuz. If you sort by release date, One of the version has 8 corrupted tracks out of 11.  The other album is fine.  However, both shows up as corrupted in Roon. Roon got confused... Roon's metadata on the Roon's server got out of sync somehow.

 

I was assured by Qobuz before I migrated over from Tidal that the Qobuz catalog is only expanding to catch up with Tidal and Spotify. When I reported corrupted tracks, I wouldn't get any response back from Qobuz for weeks. When I got a response, it's a canned response "brushing me off" politely, saying that a request is submitted to the label to re-upload the tracks. I'm sympathetic about slower response from customer service when Qobuz is surely growing way faster than before.

 

I can only speculate that it seems like that Qobuz is having a system issue where data are getting corrupted. Instead of asking the label to re-upload the tracks and probably get randomly corrupted in the future again, can Qobuz commit to getting the root cause fixed? This is very frustrating. Your desktop app can tell if a track is corrupted. Why can't Qobuz do a full catalog scan on the server to proactively fix this wide-spread issue? I can find a lot of corruption in the catalog. This is not an one-off issue.  It does feel like that this corruption issue is making the catalog expansion 3 steps forward 1 step back.

 

I'll report separate to Roon on the out of sync meta data issue.

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing such issue and I sincerely hope that Qobuz can keep improving on all fronts.

[David Craff]

On 6/25/2021 at 2:50 PM, thegios said:

@David Craff I wanna be honest here: I am going to ask for money back.

Web adn Android apps are bad, really bad in all sort of thing when intefacing with anything Chromecast related.

 

- Connection of Android app to Google Mini Speaker has become impossible: it's not connecting any longer whatever I try (reboot of phone and of speaker, cache clearing etc.)

- Volume issue is still presente: if I connect web app or Android app to my Nvidia Shield with integrated Chroemcast, changing volume from the phone slider has no effect all all

 

I'm sorry but I am going to write to customer support and ask for annual subscription money back, than will move back to Tidal (and eventually to Spotify once CD quality will be implemented).

 

Sorry but music quality is not everything, UX is terrible here...

 

Hi,

I understand and I hope that you go back to Qobuz in the futur

Regard

[Muddy Walter]

@David Craff I wonder if you can explain something? I raised a ticket with Qobuz Support about some albums which had become suddenly unavailable. At first I was advised to submit a catalogue request but I explained that these albums had been available - I noticed because they were in one of my playlists - but now they were not. The response was just that they have been "withdrawn from the catalogue".

Is this a common occurrence to only have music for a limited time? I subscribed mainly because the catalogue looked good and presumed it would get bigger, not smaller.

The music in question is not from an obscure artist. The albums are by Miles Davis. Four albums completely missing and fourteen tracks from three other albums.

[David Craff]

On 6/29/2021 at 12:50 PM, Muddy Walter said:

@David Craff I wonder if you can explain something? I raised a ticket with Qobuz Support about some albums which had become suddenly unavailable. At first I was advised to submit a catalogue request but I explained that these albums had been available - I noticed because they were in one of my playlists - but now they were not. The response was just that they have been "withdrawn from the catalogue".

Is this a common occurrence to only have music for a limited time? I subscribed mainly because the catalogue looked good and presumed it would get bigger, not smaller.

The music in question is not from an obscure artist. The albums are by Miles Davis. Four albums completely missing and fourteen tracks from three other albums.

 

Hi,

 

We have contracts with different music suppliers such as majors, labels etc... They are free to decide what they want to send us.

The album you are talking about was available and for several possible reasons it was removed from the supplier's catalog.
The reasons can be different:
- This product is no longer available from this supplier (change of label, etc...)
- The supplier, the artist : the rights holders have decided not to give us the rights anymore
Etc...

 

The fact remains that the removal of a product from the Qobuz catalog is not a choice of Qobuz.

Here is an example of inconsistency that we have at Qobuz. The band Rammstein (German Neo Metal) decided to give us the rights only on the download because we propose that unlike other platforms that have streaming rights.

 

Regards

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

@David Craff I have not read the 154 pages of this thread, so my apologies if this question has already been answered, but is there a plan to provide an equivalent to something like Spotify Connect for Qobuz, and if so on Linux platforms as well? 

 

[Cebolla]

The search facility is your friend, eg, searching for "Qobuz connect" in this topic only has 19 posts (or rather 20 now that I've posted this 😀) listed in the results. So not that many to read and more interestingly, perhaps, provides you with a history of how the various Qobuz representatives have responded (or not) to the same sort of question over the years:

Showing results for '"qobuz connect"' in content posted in Official Qobuz Issues Thread. - Audiophile Style

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

1 hour ago, Cebolla said:

The search facility is your friend, eg, searching for "Qobuz connect" in this topic only has 19 posts (or rather 20 now that I've posted this 😀) listed in the results. So not that many to read and more interestingly, perhaps, provides you with a history of how the various Qobuz representatives have responded (or not) to the same sort of question over the years:

Showing results for '"qobuz connect"' in content posted in Official Qobuz Issues Thread. - Audiophile Style

 

Thanks - had not thought of searching for "Qobuz Connect".

So nothing tangible yet.

[Talisman]

This is about the Qobuz desktop app in Windows 10.

 

I have a 4K monitor, which means Windows 10 scales everything to 200% to make text, icons, etc. legible.

 

The problem is, it makes text in the Qobuz app (and that app only) too big for my taste. As you already know, we can resize the Qobuz desktop app's text at will, just like a website. (Nice!) Unfortunately, unlike a website, the Qobuz app won't hold the setting. When I reboot or close/reopen the Qobuz app, it's back to the unwanted size.

 

Anything I can do about this?

[OldHardwareTech]

On 6/29/2021 at 5:50 AM, Muddy Walter said:

@David Craff I wonder if you can explain something? I raised a ticket with Qobuz Support about some albums which had become suddenly unavailable. At first I was advised to submit a catalogue request but I explained that these albums had been available - I noticed because they were in one of my playlists - but now they were not. The response was just that they have been "withdrawn from the catalogue".

Is this a common occurrence to only have music for a limited time? I subscribed mainly because the catalogue looked good and presumed it would get bigger, not smaller.

The music in question is not from an obscure artist. The albums are by Miles Davis. Four albums completely missing and fourteen tracks from three other albums.

I just wanted to add to David's reply.  Dropping albums from their catalog isn't something unique to Qobuz.  I've been using streaming services for a long time and every one I've ever subscribed to has dropped an album I like at one time or another. So don't hold it against Qobuz.  One alternative is what I do, I subscribe to more than one service. Specifically Tidal (yes I know that's a dirty word on this forum lol), and along with Qobuz I can listen to everything I want-for now anyway. Qobuz does have better sound quality so I mainly use them but sometimes I really want to listen to something Qobuz doesn't have in their catalog.

[BrownMagic]

13 hours ago, hopkins said:

Thanks - had not thought of searching for "Qobuz Connect".

So nothing tangible yet.

They did mention that they are working on it. No idea when it would come. It’s a shame because I will be moving to Spotify HiFi only because of their amazing Spotify connect tech. If Qobuz can come with their own connect it would surely win more customers. Relying on Roon and other crappy 3rd party apps is a no go for me. 

[al2813]

Not sure if this was asked before as it is hard t search such a long thread. One of the things I like about Qobuz and for me make it an audiophile streaming service is the ability to listen to several versions of the same album. Since I got more into audiophilia I learned about the importance of which version (master, year etc.) of the album you are listening to. It is possible to guess as Qobuz shows you the year of the recording (which may different of the year of the original album appearance if a remaster etc.), but it would be amazing if Qobuz could give more info! 

[athegn]

I have to use Download a lot as I am often in places where signals are limited or non existant; now getting about more will need to use these downloaded albums. They are now not accessible?

On my Galaxy A7 2018 phone they are stored in SD/Andriod/data/com.qobuz.music/files/Music/importCache/ some 30GB of data covering nearly 300 albums in nearly 16,000 seperate files!

In Qobuz settings the only choice, similar to the above path is SD/Andriod/data/com.qobuz.music/files/Music/ i.e. it seems to ignore importCache/

This is new; I guess since the previous update to version 5.9.* - now updated to 6.0.0.4.(updated after June 22nd) Not sure exactly but some downloads done is last week or so do appear; these are possibly stored in:-

 SD/Andriod/data/com.qobuz.music/files/Music/QOBUZ

I am saying possibly as the only one of the accessible downloads is shown there; where could the other 5 albums be?

The online Playlists appear to be complete; all 200+ albums seem to be accesible on the phone but offline Playlists only for last 6 albums?

I have not changed anything myself.

What could have happened to stop me getting offline access to these nearly 300 albums?

Any advice appreciated.

 

[Bevok]

On 6/16/2021 at 10:11 AM, Bevok said:

when I lose the connection (e.g. turn off receiver I'm Chromecasting to) the local device (phone or iPad) starts playing the track out its speaker. This actually happens with Airplay too.

This also happens when I am using CarPlay and turn off my car, the phone starts playing music out the built on speaker. This phenomenon is quite annoying in a number of situations eg turning off headphones.

[Savolax]

As a new customer I was surprised to see some sound quality problematic content in Tidal catalog (and some even as universal streaming platform issue) being a non-issue on Qobuz. Customer service requests never did seem to change anything regarding those SQ issues.

Only issue for me at the moment only seems to be Qobuz is not widely known by smaller digital distributors or is not relevant service to distribute content with. Hopefully this improves in future and Qobuz is there on the list with Spotify/Tidal/Deezer etc.

 

Keep up the good work and making Qobuz more known for relevant people.

It seems I am going to unsubscribe from Tidal.

 

[111MilesToGo]

Qobuz Android App Version 6.0 - Catastrophic screw-up

 

I updated my Qobuz Android App on my Cayin N6ii DAP to version 6.0.0.4 today. Prior to that I had the last series-5 version, 5.20.0.1, which had worked "well" (which means in the known way, but according to my currently quite limited expectations). This version 6 is a gigantic and catastrophic screw-up - believe me, these words are not enough to fully represent my surprise and anger, but words appropriate for the feelings would NOT be appropriate for writing.

 

I should like to bring this directly to the attention of @David Craff and Dan Mackta @dmackta. I feel this urgency is justified due to the long history of serious Qobuz software issues and inadequacies.

 

Up-front remark: It might well be possible that my observations are limited to the Cayin N6ii Digital Audio Player, even if version 5.20 had functioned as it should. I would be happy if others users of other DAPs could check the behavior of Version 6, please.

 

Myself, I am going to wait for a very short while. Thereafter I will resort to the Qobuz Android App version 5.20.0.1 as available e.g. on APKMirror. Since sideloading would be first for me, I hope to have made sure enough how it should be done beforehand.

 

My observations:

 

1.) I cannot play any HiRes tracks anymore - to be precise, almost none

 

Worst things first: Despite having a Studio Premier subscription, I cannot play HiRes tracks anymore. For example, trying to stream and play that Tom Petty 24/96 album which is the first one of the New Albums this week, it just doesn't start. Same failure for a HiRes album which I have among my favorites. I came across one or two HiRes albums that would play, though, but I strongly suspect I had played them before from version 5 of the app such that they would be left in the cache (cf. issue 2 below).

 

When I set the Streaming Resolution to be 16/44.1 in the Qobuz app preferences, I can stream and play these albums perfectly fine - limited to CD quality, of course.

 

The same failure occurs when I import those albums today. No imported HiRes would play, the same album imported as CD quality plays.

 

Dear David, I can imagine faintly that your Android software people were trying to do something with respect to that infamous HiRes issue which @DarginMahkum and I brought to your attention in our private thread here on AS. If that were true, then I conclude they put horrible regressions into the code.

 

2.) I cannot clear the cache anymore

 

As I wanted to check playing some HiRes tracks from streaming instead of from the local cache, I wanted to entirely clear the cache, which resides on my SD card. I simply can't do that anymore. No matter what resolution I chose to delete (CD or HiRes), nothing happens. The cache remains filled.

 

3.) Offlined ("imported") tracks have a somewhat bigger chunk file size now, by still by far inappropriate

 

As I had complained bitterly here on this thread some time ago about the Qobuz way of storing imported offlined tracks, I checked into that matter today, too. Previously, imported tracks were stored in lots of chunk files, each 2 MB in size. A horrible concept, since for example 100 imported albums with a total size of 100 GB end up as 50,000 chunk files on the SD card. At boot and at various times of using my DAP, it took Android approx. 15 minutes to read the SD card directory. Of course, the chunk file concept gets increasingly terrible with increasing audio track resolution, i.e. number of chunk files er track. Horrendous!

 

Following that discovery, I had given up on importing any album since long. But of course we are paying for that feature ...

 

So I imported a few albums today and checked the download directory. The chunk file concept is still being used, albeit I see different file sizes today, ranging from the original 2 MB to 3.4 MB and "even" 5 MB.

 

OMG, if that is a Qobuz attempt to make Android devices read the import directory faster, then that BY FAR still is awfully inappropriate. Chunk file sizes should be increased in such a way as to decrease the number of chunk files BY A FACTOR OF 10 OR MORE. Chosing different chunk file sizes for different track resolutions would help greatly to fulfill both the anti-piracy needs and the useability of the Android devices.

 

I do sincerely hope these issues get resolved as soon as possible. I should really like to be informed here when you think these issues have been solved completely. Dear Qobuz people, I should like to point out time and again that Qobuz has singular offering for my audio desires which I endorse. But even my patience is not unlimited. Can you feel the heat from your competitors coming closer and closer in your back?

 

 

[111MilesToGo]

To add to this: I discovered two reports on Head-Fi where people report ”all hell breaks loose“ with version 6 of the Android App. These are for different devices, an iBasso DX300 and a Fiio M11 Pro.

 

These are here:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/qobuz-lossless-streaming-service-thread.856101/post-16433199
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/qobuz-lossless-streaming-service-thread.856101/post-16440859

[DarginMahkum]

14 hours ago, 111MilesToGo said:

Qobuz Android App Version 6.0 - Catastrophic screw-up

 

I updated my Qobuz Android App on my Cayin N6ii DAP to version 6.0.0.4 today. Prior to that I had the last series-5 version, 5.20.0.1, which had worked "well" (which means in the known way, but according to my currently quite limited expectations). This version 6 is a gigantic and catastrophic screw-up - believe me, these words are not enough to fully represent my surprise and anger, but words appropriate for the feelings would NOT be appropriate for writing.

 

I should like to bring this directly to the attention of @David Craff and Dan Mackta @dmackta. I feel this urgency is justified due to the long history of serious Qobuz software issues and inadequacies.

 

Up-front remark: It might well be possible that my observations are limited to the Cayin N6ii Digital Audio Player, even if version 5.20 had functioned as it should. I would be happy if others users of other DAPs could check the behavior of Version 6, please.

 

Myself, I am going to wait for a very short while. Thereafter I will resort to the Qobuz Android App version 5.20.0.1 as available e.g. on APKMirror. Since sideloading would be first for me, I hope to have made sure enough how it should be done beforehand.

 

My observations:

 

1.) I cannot play any HiRes tracks anymore - to be precise, almost none

 

Worst things first: Despite having a Studio Premier subscription, I cannot play HiRes tracks anymore. For example, trying to stream and play that Tom Petty 24/96 album which is the first one of the New Albums this week, it just doesn't start. Same failure for a HiRes album which I have among my favorites. I came across one or two HiRes albums that would play, though, but I strongly suspect I had played them before from version 5 of the app such that they would be left in the cache (cf. issue 2 below).

 

When I set the Streaming Resolution to be 16/44.1 in the Qobuz app preferences, I can stream and play these albums perfectly fine - limited to CD quality, of course.

 

The same failure occurs when I import those albums today. No imported HiRes would play, the same album imported as CD quality plays.

 

Dear David, I can imagine faintly that your Android software people were trying to do something with respect to that infamous HiRes issue which @DarginMahkum and I brought to your attention in our private thread here on AS. If that were true, then I conclude they put horrible regressions into the code.

 

2.) I cannot clear the cache anymore

 

As I wanted to check playing some HiRes tracks from streaming instead of from the local cache, I wanted to entirely clear the cache, which resides on my SD card. I simply can't do that anymore. No matter what resolution I chose to delete (CD or HiRes), nothing happens. The cache remains filled.

 

3.) Offlined ("imported") tracks have a somewhat bigger chunk file size now, by still by far inappropriate

 

As I had complained bitterly here on this thread some time ago about the Qobuz way of storing imported offlined tracks, I checked into that matter today, too. Previously, imported tracks were stored in lots of chunk files, each 2 MB in size. A horrible concept, since for example 100 imported albums with a total size of 100 GB end up as 50,000 chunk files on the SD card. At boot and at various times of using my DAP, it took Android approx. 15 minutes to read the SD card directory. Of course, the chunk file concept gets increasingly terrible with increasing audio track resolution, i.e. number of chunk files er track. Horrendous!

 

Following that discovery, I had given up on importing any album since long. But of course we are paying for that feature ...

 

So I imported a few albums today and checked the download directory. The chunk file concept is still being used, albeit I see different file sizes today, ranging from the original 2 MB to 3.4 MB and "even" 5 MB.

 

OMG, if that is a Qobuz attempt to make Android devices read the import directory faster, then that BY FAR still is awfully inappropriate. Chunk file sizes should be increased in such a way as to decrease the number of chunk files BY A FACTOR OF 10 OR MORE. Chosing different chunk file sizes for different track resolutions would help greatly to fulfill both the anti-piracy needs and the useability of the Android devices.

 

I do sincerely hope these issues get resolved as soon as possible. I should really like to be informed here when you think these issues have been solved completely. Dear Qobuz people, I should like to point out time and again that Qobuz has singular offering for my audio desires which I endorse. But even my patience is not unlimited. Can you feel the heat from your competitors coming closer and closer in your back?

 

 

 

I have Qobuz Beta (6.0.0.4)  on my DX300 with Andoid 9. Similarly, it stopped playing HiRes audio and I thought it was something to do with beta software, but apparently it is not. I did't try all the scenarios but the big issue of not playing HiRes audio (44.1 kHz audio is OK) is there. Playing via UAPP (without import) works fine, so it is a Qobuz Android application issue for sure.

 

I think we need an immediate support here.

[DarginMahkum]

@David Craff maybe it is time for you people to get a DAP like DX300 and have your software tested on it before releasing to the public?

[athegn]

I wonder whether my problem, loss of access to downloaded files, is related to these other problems with versions 6.0.04?

[111MilesToGo]

3 hours ago, DarginMahkum said:

 

I think we need an immediate support here.

... which is NOT provided by the Qobuz Android App Version 6.0.1.0, which was uploaded to the Google Play Store yesterday, superseding 6.0.0.4, and installed on my DAP today.

[111MilesToGo]

3 minutes ago, 111MilesToGo said:

... which is NOT provided by the Qobuz Android App Version 6.0.1.0, which was uploaded to the Google Play Store yesterday, superseding 6.0.0.4, and installed on my DAP today.

In fact, today I do notice another failure with 6.0.1.0 which I believe I didn't note with 6.0.0.4 yesterday, but maybe it was present already then.

 

Selecting a HiRes album via the Search function lets me look at the album details. For example: Igor Levit, Encounter (Sony). Album details in the Qobuz Android App state it is 24/96, which is confirmed by looking at the album via the Qobuz Download Store on the web, via playing it in UAPP on my Android DAP, and via playing it on my iPhone. Trying to play any track on the Android DAP produces the known failure "no replay at all", and it shows 48kHz on the Now Playing screen.

 

Same failure with a few other albums of various bitness/sample rate combinations.

 

I dare to mention that an enormous messing-up of metadata might be one of the bugs introduced in the Android App v6.