Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[Balthazar B]

@111MilesToGo, it does seem like Qobuz is buffering the following track when there are gapless metadata flags embedded in the content. Given your observations earlier about when this happens, I'm just curious:

• How much free storage do you have on your iPhone? I'm wondering about the root cause for the apparent difficulty to completely buffer large following tracks.
• What's the bitrate/resolution on the Beethoven 5th recording that you tested?
• What's the nature of your network connectivity? How much bandwidth is available to your phone, and what's the speed of transmission between you and the Internet?

[111MilesToGo]

35 minutes ago, Balthazar B said:

@111MilesToGo, it does seem like Qobuz is buffering the following track when there are gapless metadata flags embedded in the content. Given your observations earlier about when this happens, I'm just curious:

• How much free storage do you have on your iPhone? I'm wondering about the root cause for the apparent difficulty to completely buffer large following tracks.
• What's the bitrate/resolution on the Beethoven 5th recording that you tested?
• What's the nature of your network connectivity? How much bandwidth is available to your phone, and what's the speed of transmission between you and the Internet?

 

Thanks for your attention and help offered.

 

Answering your questions - I checked all of these things previously:

• Checked into my iPhone 14 Pro Plus 512 GB internals with an app named "Device Monitor2" from the AppStore. Out of its 6GB RAM, approx. 500MB to 1GB are called "free", even with Qobuz running. I did my later Qobuz tests with every other app closed.
• This particular Beethoven's 5th is the iconic Carlos Kleiber recording on Deutsche Grammophon, available as 24/96.
• My network connectivities:
  • The ISP is Deutsche Telekom, providing super-vectoring DSL into the house at a nominal 250/40 Mbit/s, which actually comes in as 225-230 DL and 42-43 UL as per the Ookla speedtest. Completely stable at all times. I ran the Ookla on my iPhone and my two laptops (Windows 10, Linux).
  • Within the house, I have an AVM Fritz (this is Germany's most beloved one) WiFi network. Router and repeaters are the most recent models 7590 and 2400. I used the Fritz iOS app to check the bandwidths: Between router and repeater they are in the 800 Mbit/s range, between any of router and repeater to the iPhone it is like 400 to 450 Mbit/s.
  • All my devices can exploit the full 225/42 Mbit/s potential from the ISP.
  • Looking at the WiFi data traffic and the ISP data traffic (accessing the router UI from the Windows laptop) when streaming to Qobuz on the phone, does not show any abnormal bandwidth usage.
  • ADDENDUM / EDIT: Outside the house on cellular, I have Deutsche Telekom, too. Of course, bandwidths vary strongly. I made sure in locations with 500-800-1000 DL / 40-80 Mbit/s UL that the Qobuz behavior is just the same.

Thanks for your comments. Cheers.

[David Craff]

51 minutes ago, Balthazar B said:

it does seem like Qobuz is buffering the following track when there are gapless metadata flags embedded in the content.

 

Hi, We do not have this information. For all tracks, we prepare the next one when the current listening approaches the end, to get continuous listening. If there is no gap on the track it will be gapless, if there is a gap, there is no gapless.

[davide256]

1 hour ago, Balthazar B said:

@111MilesToGo, it does seem like Qobuz is buffering the following track when there are gapless metadata flags embedded in the content. Given your observations earlier about when this happens, I'm just curious:

• How much free storage do you have on your iPhone? I'm wondering about the root cause for the apparent difficulty to completely buffer large following tracks.
• What's the bitrate/resolution on the Beethoven 5th recording that you tested?
• What's the nature of your network connectivity? How much bandwidth is available to your phone, and what's the speed of transmission between you and the Internet?

If one is trying to troubleshoot, you start with simplifying to rule out variables. Saving a gapless album to local library and then seeing if the problem persists playing the local version will determine if the issue is local or network streaming.

[111MilesToGo]

18 minutes ago, David Craff said:

 

Hi, We do not have this information. For all tracks, we prepare the next one when the current listening approaches the end, to get continuous listening. If there is no gap on the track it will be gapless, if there is a gap, there is no gapless.

Hi David, to be clear: I suppose you are referring to the keyword metadata in your statement. AFAIK, there is no "gapless" indicator in the metadata. And I suppose any player app is strictly required to put the last sample rate of track 1 at position n into its play buffer, and the first sample of track 2 into position n+1.

 

Just out of interest, I returned to the Apple Music App and the Tidal App on my iPhone. With the same tracks from my playlist as used for Qobuz, I get a flawless gapless replay in all cases tested. I cannot provoke gaps with Apple Music and Tidal by scrolling very close towards the end of a track 1, even like 5 seconds before the end - a sure bet with Qobuz to get a gap still today.

 

Thus I keep thinking - hypothetically - that Qobuz should keep on "optimizing" the buffering and preparing of the next track. Sorry if I am wrong.

[David Craff]

5 hours ago, 111MilesToGo said:

 

Hi @David Craff, I still owe you a feedback on what happens to gapless playback with the Qobuz iOS App version 7.6.1 when playing imported ("offlined") tracks. I am still on iOS 17.1.1; still holding back on 17.1.2 which was released last evening in order to stick to my clear case of ONLY installing the App version 7.1.6 as of yesterday morning. Before the checks now, I wiped the cache and the previously imported tracks, then imported the tracks from my test playlist only. In order to make playing only imported tracks from the iPhone storage double safe, I switched to Flight Mode.

 

The results are the same as reported yesterday for playing streams from the Qobuz servers:

• Gapless works most of the time,
• but the exceptions - i.e. failures of gapless stell present - have changed a little bit, of course:
  • The only exception left is this one: When I scroll forward in a track to some seconds or a minute before its end and transition into the next one, I still see gapless failures at times.
  • No problem seen yet when the second track is a long one.
  • No problem seen yet for this Suzanne Vega stuff of "Song 1" - "Short announcement" - "Song 2".
  • No difference for playing my tracks for the first or second time - i.e. gapless works except for the first and only exception given above - , supposedly because the tracks sit inside the iPhone.
     
• The weird behavior of the time slider and displayed time figures is the same.

 

Thanks for your attention.

 

I need to do some tests, can you send me your playlist for Qobuz and Tidal. So I can test on my to better understand your issue.

[111MilesToGo]

22 minutes ago, David Craff said:

 

I need to do some tests, can you send me your playlist for Qobuz and Tidal. So I can test on my to better understand your issue.

There you go for Qobuz:

http://open.qobuz.com/playlist/17921659

 

I didn‘t bother to make these a Tidal playlist, just picked the same albums and tracks manually.

[Balthazar B]

3 hours ago, 111MilesToGo said:

Hi David, to be clear: I suppose you are referring to the keyword metadata in your statement. AFAIK, there is no "gapless" indicator in the metadata. And I suppose any player app is strictly required to put the last sample rate of track 1 at position n into its play buffer, and the first sample of track 2 into position n+1.

 

Well, if the CUE sheet data was properly preserved from the original pressing image of the recording, then, among other things, gap-related information will be available to the playback system. This wiki article discusses the subject a bit. Obviously we don't know how Qobuz (or anybody else) is processing playback/streaming, or even whether the digital source content has been consistently and properly packaged by the various music publishers before delivery to streaming services, but if you're getting true and complete gapless playback though one signal chain, it should be available for other chains as well, so long as every component is not introducing something untoward.

 

The buffering David describes should work well to prequeue the content on your local device, although you may have discovered a situation (large content file) where the gapless transition is interrupted if that large file has not been completely queued at the time it needs to begin playing, in which case it is restreamed from Qobuz after the conclusion of the previous track, causing a gap.

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 minutes ago, Balthazar B said:

The buffering David describes should work well to prequeue the content on your local device, although you may have discovered a situation (large content file) where the gapless transition is interrupted if that large file has not been completely queued at the time it needs to begin playing, in which case it is restreamed from Qobuz after the conclusion of the previous track, causing a gap.

In most cases tracks start playing long before the entire track is downloaded to the local device. Thus, the size of the track doesn’t matter. Could be 30 seconds or 30 minutes. The same small bits and bytes will trickle in when needed. 

[Balthazar B]

6 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

In most cases tracks start playing long before the entire track is downloaded to the local device. Thus, the size of the track doesn’t matter. Could be 30 seconds or 30 minutes. The same small bits and bytes will trickle in when needed. 

 

Thanks, David. Then it will be interesting to figure out why there's an unwanted gap being introduced during the transition between the 3rd and 4th movements of Beethoven's 5th symphony with the recording that @111MilesToGo reported a few messages ago. It sounds like what I thought might be a possible root cause isn't it. Cheers!

 

FWIW, even though I can't replicate his situation with an iPhone 14, I'll try out the playlist he posted on my own devices (Android, Mac, and WiiM via their app) and will let you know what I hear. But I'm guessing he's experiencing a very specific (and rare, I hope) problem with the way iOS and your app interact. Maybe some config/setting changed?

[Balthazar B]

An update:

1. On my Android 14 device (a Pixel 6 Pro), the transitions between the tracks on the playlist play perfectly without gaps. BTW, a few of the tracks aren't available in the United States due to licenses.
2. On my Macbook M1 laptop, ditto.
3. However, interactions between the Android WiiM app/devices and Qobuz streaming have suddenly gotten weird, and this must have started within the last two days. I don't know whether it's something with the WiiM app, the WiiM backend, the Qobuz APIs, or something else, but it's definitely not right. I posted on the WiiM forum to see if it's just me or an issue affecting other users. OK, rebooting all my WiiM devices seems to have resolved the issue. And as with my phone and Macbook, all the transitions played properly without gaps.

[111MilesToGo]

Well, this Gapless Saga is going on for me for about a month now - it is becoming quite a torture by now. I have posted many details, circumstances etc here on this thread during this time.

 

Amongst them:

 

- My Android DAP (Cayin N8ii with ancient Android 9 and a slower WiFi than my iPhone) does play gapless perfectly. That would exclude any limitations due to my home WiFi network and ISP, I think.

 

- Along the way, I completely wiped the Qobuz App from my iPhone and installed it from scratch, to no avail. I actually did this several times.

 

- I gain confidence in my iPhone and my environment from the fact that both the Apple Music App and Tidal work perfectly, both for Gapless replay and a well-behaved time slider bar plus its time figures as displayed.

- - Gapless is perfect, no way to provoke gaps; which holds in particular for Tidal, as I did not test Apple Music in more detail than required for a comparison to Qobuz (Dolby Atmos brings in too many variables).

- - The time sliders of both AM and T as well as the time displays are ticking away as regularly as they should, unlike Qobuz‘s.

 

- Another observation is: Roon works perfectly, too, streaming Qobuz contents from the Roon Core on my laptop into Roon Arc on my iPhone.

 

The one thing I would do only if I were forced into it as if my life depended on it is this: Wiping the entire iPhone and installing iOS and all my apps, settings and files from scratch, manually, without resorting to any backup.

[vitoruch]

Excuse-me for changing the subject, guys, but.... @David Craff, last time you said about Qobuz Connect, your expectations were to open tests with partners still in 2023....to be delivered publically on early 2024. As far as you are aware of, is it on schedule?

 

Thanks a lot!

Vitor

[mooseloose]

Track listing information leaves a lot to be desired e.g. the latest Tiga album. In Spotify each guest singer is listed, but not so in Qobuz. I notice this a lot. Is there an issue with the metadata? I would have thought this would have been the same across different streaming platforms?

[111MilesToGo]

Sorry, back to the Gapless Qobuz iOS App topic (@david craff). Here is a screen video including audio from the speakers of my iPhone 14 Pro Max. (I think the iPhone Screen Recording App records the audio via microphone.)

 

 

 

The Qobuz iOS App plays three tracks from Peter Gabriel‘s Growing Up Live, 24/48.

- The first track (Here Comes The Flood) plays without interruption til the end; you can easily see the crazy irregular behavior of the timing figures.

- In accord with my previous findings, the continuous transition into the second track (Darkness) is replayed gaplessly, probably because the app had enough time to prepare for it during the first.

- During the second track, I move the time slider forward to some position close to the end of track 2. You see the resulting misbehavior of the time slider bar, racing backwards and forwards.

- And you hear the resulting misbehavior at the transition to track 3 (Red Rain), the audio gap of approx. half a second.

 

I hope this demo helps a bit. Hope you can play it with both video and audio.

 

Remark: My iPhone got force-updated to iOS 17.1.2 tonight. No changes seen as of now wrt the gapless and time slider issues.

 

[David Craff]

18 hours ago, mooseloose said:

Track listing information leaves a lot to be desired e.g. the latest Tiga album. In Spotify each guest singer is listed, but not so in Qobuz. I notice this a lot. Is there an issue with the metadata? I would have thought this would have been the same across different streaming platforms?

Hi

 

We planned to do the same at Qobuz but this is not an easy thing because we only received a string of names related to the track. We need this string to match with the artists on our base, be sure this is the one we need to display etc...

Not so easy to get good results. But we will.

 

Regards

 

[David Craff]

18 hours ago, vitoruch said:

Excuse-me for changing the subject, guys, but.... @David Craff, last time you said about Qobuz Connect, your expectations were to open tests with partners still in 2023....to be delivered publically on early 2024. As far as you are aware of, is it on schedule?

 

Thanks a lot!

Vitor

 

Hi

 

We'll be a few months late, but 2024 will be the launch year for Qobuz Connect.
We're already in contact with HiFi brands, and testing will begin shortly, but as it's a big project for a small team (yes, Qobuz is a small company) it's taking us longer than we thought.

 

Regards

[111MilesToGo]

Gapless Saga …

 

Here are two more screen recordings, one using Tidal, the other one Apple Music with the same Peter Gabriel Growing Up Live album. These videos demonstrate the expected and just exactly perfect behavior of both Apps on iOS, regarding both the gapless capabilities and time slider behaviors.

 

I think this is not asking too much: The Qobuz iOS App shall behave exactly like Tidal and Apple Music: Gapless under all circumstances (all, including the ones shown in the videos), time slider and its displayed time figures, and all that.

 

Tidal:

 

 

Apple Music:

 

 

Remarks: I was wrong in my previous post with the Qobuz video, the screen recorder captures the audio within the iPhone, not via microphone. Additionally, pls note that the Apple Music video here doesn‘t have audio, since the screen recorder seems to blank it out.

[mooseloose]

1 hour ago, David Craff said:

Hi

 

We planned to do the same at Qobuz but this is not an easy thing because we only received a string of names related to the track. We need this string to match with the artists on our base, be sure this is the one we need to display etc...

Not so easy to get good results. But we will.

 

Regards

 

Thanks, David.

[111MilesToGo]

One more note to @David Craff: Oh, you know that I appreciate very much what Qobuz does. I do respect that you are a small team.

 

And, as an aside, having worked in physics research at a university as well as in corporate strategy in an industrial company, I have experienced myself how software (app programming, even Excel files) over time can become messy and very intricate; even to the point where one thinks it should be rewritten completely or created anew from scratch …

[thegios]

Marantz Cinema 50: look who's missing 😁

@David Craff I have already read you'll be late for Connect: I am an IT Program & Delivery Manager with 25+ experience, if you need a help to speed this up I'm available for a new job 😁 Also what about bit perfect in Android app?

 

 

[David Craff]

2 hours ago, thegios said:

Marantz Cinema 50: look who's missing 😁

@David Craff I have already read you'll be late for Connect: I am an IT Program & Delivery Manager with 25+ experience, if you need a help to speed this up I'm available for a new job 😁 Also what about bit perfect in Android app?

 

 

 

Hi

 

Thank you very much for your suggestion. You should come to France and see if your profile matches the positions we have open.

Bit perfect Android is to be tested with the latest version of the OS. But it's hard to find the time for that.

 

Regards

[thegios]

On 12/7/2023 at 10:26 AM, David Craff said:

 

Hi

 

Thank you very much for your suggestion. You should come to France and see if your profile matches the positions we have open.

Bit perfect Android is to be tested with the latest version of the OS. But it's hard to find the time for that.

 

Regards

 

David I was joking of course :-) Regarding bit perfect, I am available for testing any beta version that includes this feature, so I can get rid of UAPP which is really terrible as user experience.

 

Regarding connect, for those that may not know, I found the following compromise: I setup my Qobuz account into Bubble UpNp which streams to the Marantz, I still use the official Qobuz app but any song/album/playlist I wanna play I do "share with Bubble UpNp" and it plays straight away. Of course any skipping must then be done in Bubble UpNp.

 

I want to be honest here: my Qobuz subscription has ended last month and I was really about to move to another hires streaming service supported by Marantz, where options would be Amazon Music HD, Deezer and Tidal. I still believe Qobuz has the highest quality and is the most transparent service, so I subscribed fir another year, but something new must happen @David Craff otherwise many will migrate to other platforms.

 

A few ideas, some already discussed:

- DLNA / UPNP support for Windows app

- Bit perfect support via USB in Android 14+

- Qobuz Connect fit Denon/Marantz

- a little UI overhaul 

[David Craff]

On 12/9/2023 at 9:52 AM, thegios said:

I want to be honest here: my Qobuz subscription has ended last month and I was really about to move to another hires streaming service supported by Marantz, where options would be Amazon Music HD, Deezer and Tidal. I still believe Qobuz has the highest quality and is the most transparent service, so I subscribed fir another year, but something new must happen @David Craff otherwise many will migrate to other platforms.

 

A few ideas, some already discussed:

- DLNA / UPNP support for Windows app

- Bit perfect support via USB in Android 14+

- Qobuz Connect fit Denon/Marantz

- a little UI overhaul 

 

Hi,

 

I understand you completely and you're free to do so. I just hope that if you leave us one day it's to see you again later when everything is up to your expectations.

 

About your list
- DLNA / UPnP: never, and even more so now that we're working on Qobuz Connect.
- Bit Perfect support via USB for Android: planned
- Qobuz Connect with Denon / Marantz: this is probably the most important brand for Qobuz and this project, so we're working closely with them to get it done as quickly as possible.
- A little UI Overhaul: This is underway, we have a new design system that will be gradually rolled out to all applications.

 

Regards

[Balthazar B]

1 hour ago, David Craff said:

- DLNA / UPnP: never, and even more so now that we're working on Qobuz Connect.
- Bit Perfect support via USB for Android: planned
- Qobuz Connect with Denon / Marantz: this is probably the most important brand for Qobuz and this project, so we're working closely with them to get it done as quickly as possible.
- A little UI Overhaul: This is underway, we have a new design system that will be gradually rolled out to all applications.

Thanks for the update, @David Craff! 

 

I hope WiiM is right up there as an important brand as well. 😁

 

Can certainly understand if the Android 14 bitperfect output will take a while, since from everything I'm reading, it's not clear when it will become generally available from Google. And if it will be available on all recent Android devices. But I'm very interested, not least of all because it may make it simple to add to some Android devices that are already or can be connected to home audio systems. Just as some people today use old iPhones as dongle inputs to play bit-perfect Apple Music on their stereos. Because Apple doesn't seem to care enough about developing/releasing a Connect type functionality of their own. 😉