Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[vitoruch]

Hi mister David Craff,

 

I've been reading this thead for a while, but never stopped to register, to be able to post - but today I finally did it :)

 

I am one more person really really hoping Qobuz Connect comes very soon!

As a matter of fact, my annual Qobuz inscription ends up in December - and I'm afraid if Connect is not ready till there, I'm going to have to change to another streaming company. I really, really don't want to do it, cause I think Qobuz curation is the best, it looks like "browsing your physical preferred record store", just amazing. But Chromecast drop issues are too frequent on IOS, so I can't get along for a long time, unfortunatelly.

 

- Is there a possibility Qobuz Connect comes this year - 2023?

 

Thanks for your attention

Vitor

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, vitoruch said:

Hi mister David Craff,

 

I've been reading this thead for a while, but never stopped to register, to be able to post - but today I finally did it :)

 

I am one more person really really hoping Qobuz Connect comes very soon!

As a matter of fact, my annual Qobuz inscription ends up in December - and I'm afraid if Connect is not ready till there, I'm going to have to change to another streaming company. I really, really don't want to do it, cause I think Qobuz curation is the best, it looks like "browsing your physical preferred record store", just amazing. But Chromecast drop issues are too frequent on IOS, so I can't get along for a long time, unfortunatelly.

 

- Is there a possibility Qobuz Connect comes this year - 2023?

 

Thanks for your attention

Vitor

 

 

 

Tidal now has the lossless FLAC high resolution albums availabel in its iOS app, and Tidal Connect as well. 

 

[Brantome]

7 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Tidal now has the lossless FLAC high resolution albums availabel in its iOS app, and Tidal Connect as well. 

 

But that surely still depends on whatever you’re casting to having had its firmware updated to support hi res FLAC. I know companies like Lumin have, and WiiM are on the verge of a public firmware release too.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, Brantome said:

But that surely still depends on whatever you’re casting to having had its firmware updated to support hi res FLAC. I know companies like Lumin have, and WiiM are on the verge of a public firmware release too.

100% correct.

[David Craff]

23 minutes ago, vitoruch said:

Hi mister David Craff,

 

I've been reading this thead for a while, but never stopped to register, to be able to post - but today I finally did it :)

 

I am one more person really really hoping Qobuz Connect comes very soon!

As a matter of fact, my annual Qobuz inscription ends up in December - and I'm afraid if Connect is not ready till there, I'm going to have to change to another streaming company. I really, really don't want to do it, cause I think Qobuz curation is the best, it looks like "browsing your physical preferred record store", just amazing. But Chromecast drop issues are too frequent on IOS, so I can't get along for a long time, unfortunatelly.

 

- Is there a possibility Qobuz Connect comes this year - 2023?

 

Thanks for your attention

Vitor

 

 

 

Hi

 

About Qobuz Connect, until the end of this year we will validate the technical part with partners (beta phase) and for 2024 we can go into production.

[vitoruch]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Tidal now has the lossless FLAC high resolution albums availabel in its iOS app, and Tidal Connect as well. 

 

 

Thanks for the reminder, that's good news.

 

What is not good news, on the other side, is having to struggle for several months so Tiday algorithms can barely accept that I don't like Hip hop, rap, etc... It's like entering the wrong store, searching for jazz, classic rock and classical music records. :|

 

Regards,

Vitor

[vitoruch]

1 hour ago, David Craff said:

 

Hi

 

About Qobuz Connect, until the end of this year we will validate the technical part with partners (beta phase) and for 2024 we can go into production.

I see, David, let's see how it goes. Thanks.

[The Computer Audiophile]

In three days it’ll be two years since Qobuz acknowledged that Connect is in the works. This is similar to Spotify supporting lossless 🙂
 

 

On 10/28/2021 at 10:31 AM, David Craff said:

Qobuz Connect is in progress (at the beginning for the moment and this will be a long way)

 

 

[111MilesToGo]

On 10/22/2023 at 11:26 AM, 111MilesToGo said:

@David Craff: Dear David, I‘m sorry to repeat my request posted here previously, since it seems it hasn‘t received an answer; at least I can‘t remember one (sorry if I‘m wrong!).

 

I‘d like to see the GUI of the iOS Qobuz App get a little overhaul in order to bring it up to the iOS standards. On long listings like in particular the Favorites list and the Local Music list, the scrolling axis should be BELOW the search field, but not ABOVE as it is now. It is such a nuisance and pain to have to manually scroll all the way up to the top in order to enter a search term, when one has been reading the list somewhere down. Please check all instances of search fields for an orderly and user-friendly behavior.

 

I know the iOS App is not the most common way of using Qobuz, and as such it doesn‘t have high priority as Qobuz Connect has. But, please, let me know whether my request will be picked up in the foreseeable future.

 

Thanks in advance for listening to this user.

 

4 hours ago, David Craff said:

 

Hi

 

Sorry for my late reply.

One information, at Qobuz there is no common app. Mobile Android, iOS, Windows Desktop & MacOs are important. And iOS is widely used. The fact is that it's mainly a problem of resources and means and not one application that has higher priority than another.

 

I am aware that the iOS app needs to be updated. I will share your feedback with the dev team.

 

Regards

 

3 hours ago, vitoruch said:

 

Hi,

 

I'm not sure if I have understood you well - if so, a workaround might be tapping on top of the screen (near to the notch) and it scrolls all the page up to the top. This behaviour is native to ios, so it works in every ios app.

 

Sorry if I got U wrong.

best regards, Vitor

Thanks a lot, @vitoruch, for pointing this out. Another iOS trick learnt! At least this is a workaround in order to make the search field show up when one is browsing somewhere way down in a long (e.g. the Favorites) list. Indeed, it takes two actions: (1) Tapping near the iPhone notch to let the list scroll all the way up, plus (2) a short swipe-down to let the search field show up in its usual position.

 

Still, the standard iOS behavior of lists with a search bar at the top is to scroll only the list, leaving the search field always sit at the top and not let it get scrolled out of view.

 

@David Craff, thanks for forwarding my request to the team, whenever it will arrive in the Qobuz iOS App.

 

;-) Sorry for interrupting the Qobuz Connect dialogues with a terribly down-to-earth request …

[David Craff]

On 10/25/2023 at 9:40 PM, 111MilesToGo said:

thanks for forwarding my request to the team, whenever it will arrive in the Qobuz iOS App.

 

Difficult to give you a date but all our applications will undergo a UX overhaul. This may take a little longer for iOS, as we have a code refactoring to complete beforehand.

[David Craff]

On 10/25/2023 at 9:04 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

In three days it’ll be two years since Qobuz acknowledged that Connect is in the works. This is similar to Spotify supporting lossless 🙂
 

 

 

 

 

If you take into account the decision to do it, the thinking about how to do it, the practical implementation (development) and the size of Qobuz's resources for such a big project, then yes, it does take quite a long time, unfortunately.

[111MilesToGo]

Dear all, I either need another help from the community, or I hit a buggy spot in the iOS app.

 

Every once in a while, everybody comes across an album in ones Favorite Albums List that is not available on Qobuz streaming anymore. In my case, it‘s one of the Miles Davis Workin‘ releases. (No, of course, it’s one of the original owner Prestige releases; I do detest all those ”extinct copyright managers“ …)

 

Unfortunately, it seems I can‘t find a way to remove that entry from my Favorite Albums List. Of course, I could walk around and check whether I can remove it using the Windows App, the Android App, the Qobuz Web Player or Roon, all of which I have available on various devices. However, I just want to use my iPhone as a quick and ubiquitous way to access Qobuz.

 

Any helping hint?

Or record a bug?

[JS21]

A bit late to the party here. Sublime membership for over a year now coming from 2+ years of Tidal. Been patiently waiting for Connect but it’s increasingly been very difficult to sort thru over 200 “Favorite” songs on my Aurender without the ability to sort by names, artists, etc. 

Is there a workaround here that I might be missing?

[111MilesToGo]

5 hours ago, JS21 said:

A bit late to the party here. Sublime membership for over a year now coming from 2+ years of Tidal. Been patiently waiting for Connect but it’s increasingly been very difficult to sort thru over 200 “Favorite” songs on my Aurender without the ability to sort by names, artists, etc. 

Is there a workaround here that I might be missing?

Sorting features as implemented in the various Qobuz Apps have been discussed quite a lot, both on this thread and on the Qobuz feature requests thread (https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/57507-qobuz-feature-requests). What I know is:

 

Yes, Playlists of songs can be sorted. However, I don‘t use them at all. So I can‘t respond in detail here. I know you can also sort them manually, which will be painful sooner or later.

 

The Favorite Album List is a pain for the user. It can only be sorted within the apps by artist, date added, and alphabetically. However, metadata don‘t meet an individual user‘s concepts, and they are wildly inconsistent across labels and albums - thus the metadata as provided by the record companies ultimately are NOT VERY USEFUL for sorting.

 

Unfortunately, I do not know any workarounds within the Qobuz Apps.

 

There exist little helpers, which let you go a tiny bit of the way you want to go. In the first place, I‘d like to mention the Soundiiz web platform, which lets you work with your playlists externally. I think their original purpose was to transfer playlists between several streaming platforms, but Soundiiz also allows you to export your playlists (songs and favorite albums) in various Excel and text formats. With a little bit of e.g. Excel capabilities, you can manipulate these lists as you desire. However, folks here on Audiophile Style have tried to re-import such resorted lists into Qobuz via Soundiiz, but to no avail AFAIK. Please correct me, I‘d love to be wrong.

 

You can find quite some posts here searching for Soundiiz.

 

Sorry to be unable to help more. I‘d love to see sorting features to get implemented in the various Qobuz Apps, as mentioned several times here.

[JS21]

On 11/3/2023 at 3:37 AM, 111MilesToGo said:

Sorting features as implemented in the various Qobuz Apps have been discussed quite a lot, both on this thread and on the Qobuz feature requests thread (https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/57507-qobuz-feature-requests). What I know is:

 

Yes, Playlists of songs can be sorted. However, I don‘t use them at all. So I can‘t respond in detail here. I know you can also sort them manually, which will be painful sooner or later.

 

The Favorite Album List is a pain for the user. It can only be sorted within the apps by artist, date added, and alphabetically. However, metadata don‘t meet an individual user‘s concepts, and they are wildly inconsistent across labels and albums - thus the metadata as provided by the record companies ultimately are NOT VERY USEFUL for sorting.

 

Unfortunately, I do not know any workarounds within the Qobuz Apps.

 

There exist little helpers, which let you go a tiny bit of the way you want to go. In the first place, I‘d like to mention the Soundiiz web platform, which lets you work with your playlists externally. I think their original purpose was to transfer playlists between several streaming platforms, but Soundiiz also allows you to export your playlists (songs and favorite albums) in various Excel and text formats. With a little bit of e.g. Excel capabilities, you can manipulate these lists as you desire. However, folks here on Audiophile Style have tried to re-import such resorted lists into Qobuz via Soundiiz, but to no avail AFAIK. Please correct me, I‘d love to be wrong.

 

You can find quite some posts here searching for Soundiiz.

 

Sorry to be unable to help more. I‘d love to see sorting features to get implemented in the various Qobuz Apps, as mentioned several times here.

Appreciate the help, 111milestogo.

I have previously tried the painful way of sorting manually but when more multiple songs in favorites are added, I’m back to square 1. Best case for me is just to wait it out.. Tidal makes it so easy though.

[jaaptina]

On 11/3/2023 at 3:01 AM, JS21 said:

A bit late to the party here. Sublime membership for over a year now coming from 2+ years of Tidal. Been patiently waiting for Connect but it’s increasingly been very difficult to sort thru over 200 “Favorite” songs on my Aurender without the ability to sort by names, artists, etc. 

Is there a workaround here that I might be missing?

You can make playlists based on your own sorting preferences. I've made playlists that fit my mood. It works fine for tracks. If I want to fit an album in said playlist I save the 1st track. 

[JS21]

14 hours ago, jaaptina said:

You can make playlists based on your own sorting preferences. I've made playlists that fit my mood. It works fine for tracks. If I want to fit an album in said playlist I save the 1st track. 

Good idea, thank for the tip. 

[111MilesToGo]

@David Craff Dear David, I would like to ask you whether your are aware of and working on recent issues with the Qobuz iOS App which potentially / probably are severe fallout from Apple releasing iOS 17 (Sep 2023). My observations come from an iPhone 14 Pro Max 512GB, which had iOS 16's til the last 16.7.2, then installed iOS 17 first as 17.1, now on 17.1.1.

 

The fallout from iOS 17 to several music players is seen and reported by several people on the web. Some potential fallout started a bit earlier in the 16s, maybe when Apple released some things before 17. From surveying these reports, and from my own experiences, the issue areas concerned comprise:

• Gapless replay broken
• Sample rate handling to the extent of
  • (a) iOS not exposing the sample rate capabilities of outboard (USB) DACs to an app correctly, and
  • (b) the music player app not performing the appropriate sample rate switching as required by the audio file
• Music player app losing internal 64-bit capability (if present)

This list might still be incomplete.

 

Two remarks: Qobuz is my dearest music streaming service. And an iPhone is quite a good and convenient digital audio transport device, thus it's valuable also to a demanding music lover.

 

 

My observations with the Qobuz iOS App on my a.m. iPhone:

• Very severe: Gapless replay is completely BROKEN. This issue occurs for:

1. Any streamed and any offlined (imported) audio tracks
2. Any input bit depths / sample rates
3. Any output, out of which I tested
   • iPhone speaker output
   • Output to outboard USB-DACs via the Lightning port into the DAC USB ports, in my case to Chord Hugo 2 and Cayin RU7 using various adapters
   • Output via Bluetooth (AAC) to a Sony WF-1000XM5 TWS IEM

• Sample rate setting and switching seem to be okay, as far as I can tell from the sample rate indicators on my two USB-DACs. This was tested for the same three sets of circumstances given above under gapless. Unfortunately, I cannot see the output bit depth ...

I find these failures and successes to be reproducible in a number of test repetitions. Of course, the usual precautions and checks were done, like fully update iOS and the apps, do reboots, check with several outboard DACs and cablings as mentioned above.

 

I suppose you don't need any hinting at appropriate audio tracks, but anyway ... any recording of Beethoven Symphony No.5 Movement 3 going into Movement 4, Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon, and almost every proper concert recording with applause etc. spanning across track transitions.

 

 

I should expand a bit on other music player apps in order to point you towards further potential issues in the Qobuz iOS App:

• Neutron Music Player on iOS:

1. Sample rate handling is severely broken, which means
   • (a) Neutron doesn't get to see the outboard DAC rate capabilities correctly, and
   • (b) it does an incorrect or even no switching of outgoing sample rates
2. DSD handling is broken
3. 64-bit internal processing is broken

The "Neutron and iOS 17" stuff is found at https://neutroncode.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6919&sid=9e320a24678c8e9ddbdd3c8383508414 (don't be irritated by the thread title, in fact it collects all iOS 17 related issues further down).

• Apple Music (standard app and Classical) on iOS receives a mixed bag of reports of proper functioning as well as myriads of failures, amongst them gapless replay being broken. Myself, I have seen both proper functioning, but also some - even irreproducible - errors.

 

In addition to all this, I checked the behavior of the Qobuz Android App today - everything is fine and well-behaved.

 

Thus, I would like to ask other Qobuz iOS App users for their experiences, and I would be grateful if you @David Craff could give feedback here.

 

 

PS: David, I don't know precisely what your preferred Qobuz Issue Report Channel is. Thanks for kindly letting me know. Sorry if this channel here lets you invest more of your time than desirable.

 

[David Craff]

Thanks for this big feedback. I will have a look with the team and come back as soon as possible here to give you update.

 

Regards

[Mark Dirac]

On 10/5/2023 at 8:38 AM, thegios said:

 

I have a Pixel 7 PRO that just got updated :-)
@David Craff any chance the android app will be updated accordingly so that I can get rid of UAPP app?

What a pity that Android requires the app to select bit-perfect, rather than the user. (Because that imposes on developers the need to change their apps.)

 

@thegios could you check please if there's a switch in Android's "Developer options", because there are currently all manner of switches to play with in there, regarding sample rates and stuff.

[jhwalker]

6 hours ago, 111MilesToGo said:

@David Craff Dear David, I would like to ask you whether your are aware of and working on recent issues with the Qobuz iOS App which potentially / probably are severe fallout from Apple releasing iOS 17 (Sep 2023). My observations come from an iPhone 14 Pro Max 512GB, which had iOS 16's til the last 16.7.2, then installed iOS 17 first as 17.1, now on 17.1.1.

 

The fallout from iOS 17 to several music players is seen and reported by several people on the web. Some potential fallout started a bit earlier in the 16s, maybe when Apple released some things before 17. From surveying these reports, and from my own experiences, the issue areas concerned comprise:

• Gapless replay broken
• Sample rate handling to the extent of
  • (a) iOS not exposing the sample rate capabilities of outboard (USB) DACs to an app correctly, and
  • (b) the music player app not performing the appropriate sample rate switching as required by the audio file
• Music player app losing internal 64-bit capability (if present)

This list might still be incomplete.

 

Two remarks: Qobuz is my dearest music streaming service. And an iPhone is quite a good and convenient digital audio transport device, thus it's valuable also to a demanding music lover.

 

 

My observations with the Qobuz iOS App on my a.m. iPhone:

• Very severe: Gapless replay is completely BROKEN. This issue occurs for:

1. Any streamed and any offlined (imported) audio tracks
2. Any input bit depths / sample rates
3. Any output, out of which I tested
   • iPhone speaker output
   • Output to outboard USB-DACs via the Lightning port into the DAC USB ports, in my case to Chord Hugo 2 and Cayin RU7 using various adapters
   • Output via Bluetooth (AAC) to a Sony WF-1000XM5 TWS IEM

• Sample rate setting and switching seem to be okay, as far as I can tell from the sample rate indicators on my two USB-DACs. This was tested for the same three sets of circumstances given above under gapless. Unfortunately, I cannot see the output bit depth ...

I find these failures and successes to be reproducible in a number of test repetitions. Of course, the usual precautions and checks were done, like fully update iOS and the apps, do reboots, check with several outboard DACs and cablings as mentioned above.

 

I suppose you don't need any hinting at appropriate audio tracks, but anyway ... any recording of Beethoven Symphony No.5 Movement 3 going into Movement 4, Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon, and almost every proper concert recording with applause etc. spanning across track transitions.

 

 

I should expand a bit on other music player apps in order to point you towards further potential issues in the Qobuz iOS App:

• Neutron Music Player on iOS:

1. Sample rate handling is severely broken, which means
   • (a) Neutron doesn't get to see the outboard DAC rate capabilities correctly, and
   • (b) it does an incorrect or even no switching of outgoing sample rates
2. DSD handling is broken
3. 64-bit internal processing is broken

The "Neutron and iOS 17" stuff is found at https://neutroncode.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6919&sid=9e320a24678c8e9ddbdd3c8383508414 (don't be irritated by the thread title, in fact it collects all iOS 17 related issues further down).

• Apple Music (standard app and Classical) on iOS receives a mixed bag of reports of proper functioning as well as myriads of failures, amongst them gapless replay being broken. Myself, I have seen both proper functioning, but also some - even irreproducible - errors.

 

In addition to all this, I checked the behavior of the Qobuz Android App today - everything is fine and well-behaved.

 

Thus, I would like to ask other Qobuz iOS App users for their experiences, and I would be grateful if you @David Craff could give feedback here.

 

 

PS: David, I don't know precisely what your preferred Qobuz Issue Report Channel is. Thanks for kindly letting me know. Sorry if this channel here lets you invest more of your time than desirable.

 

Just a quick note: gapless playback is not UNIVERSALLY "completely broken".  Works just fine for me using the Qobuz app on my iPhone 15 Pro, both playing back locally on the phone and via AirPlay to my receiver.  Sample was the recent "Rachmaninoff 150" release from Berlin Philharmonic / Kirill Gerstein, using the "Variations on a Theme of Corelli" tracks, which should play back seamlessly, without interruption - they do.

 

Also confirmed via Chicago Symphony / Pierre Boulez recording of the Firebird Suite, which is spread over multiple tracks as well, and plays back flawlessly.

[111MilesToGo]

8 minutes ago, jhwalker said:

Just a quick note: gapless playback is not UNIVERSALLY "completely broken".  Works just fine for me using the Qobuz app on my iPhone 15 Pro, both playing back locally on the phone and via AirPlay to my receiver.  Sample was the recent "Rachmaninoff 150" release from Berlin Philharmonic / Kirill Gerstein, using the "Variations on a Theme of Corelli" tracks, which should play back seamlessly, without interruption - they do.

 

Also confirmed via Chicago Symphony / Pierre Boulez recording of the Firebird Suite, which is spread over multiple tracks as well, and plays back flawlessly.

Thank you for your feedback. Any case of positive or negative feedback by others might help Qobuz to get a grip on this.

 

Let me ask you, please: What bitness/sample rates did you look at?

[Balthazar B]

56 minutes ago, 111MilesToGo said:

Thank you for your feedback. Any case of positive or negative feedback by others might help Qobuz to get a grip on this.

 

Let me ask you, please: What bitness/sample rates did you look at?

 

Why don't you and @jhwalker cross check the sources that are behaving differently for the two of you? It could indicate whether there may a problem with the way different source material was encoded by the publishers before they provisioned the content to Qobuz. Or since your iPhones are of different generations, it could be something with the hardware and how iOS17 interacts with each of them.

[jhwalker]

2 hours ago, 111MilesToGo said:

Thank you for your feedback. Any case of positive or negative feedback by others might help Qobuz to get a grip on this.

 

Let me ask you, please: What bitness/sample rates did you look at?

 

I didn't do exhaustive testing, just these two quick examples from my Qobuz "favorites" section I knew should be examples of gapless playback.

 

The Rachmaninoff is 48/24 and the Stravinsky is 44/16.

[thegios]

5 hours ago, Mark Dirac said:

What a pity that Android requires the app to select bit-perfect, rather than the user. (Because that imposes on developers the need to change their apps.)

 

@thegios could you check please if there's a switch in Android's "Developer options", because there are currently all manner of switches to play with in there, regarding sample rates and stuff.

Didn't find anything... But it's normal that it's up to the app.

 

Android 14 gains support for lossless audio formats for audiophile-level experiences over USB. The app (developer) can/must query a USB device for its preferred mixer attributes, register a listener for changes in preferred mixer attributes, and configure mixer attributes using a new AudioMixerAttributes class. This class represents the format, such as channel mask, sample rate, and behavior of the audio mixer. The class allows for audio to be sent directly to the usb device, without mixing, volume adjustment, or processing effects.

 

So what I expect is that an app has a switch in the options for Android Mixer or Bit Perfect and then if user chooses Bit Perfect the app configures corresponding mixer attribute thru AudioMixerAttributes class.

 

This is similar to what UAPP has been doing for a long time even prior to this new Android 14 capability.