Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[goon525]

48 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

Qobuz claims to have access to 170,000 hi-res audio tracks. The fact that they're aren't even 2000 albums that have been produced at real hi-res doesn't seem to matter.

 

http://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/566i-y4gg0--jilj9-5q8j86o9

 

Interesting article. 

 

Given that virtually every classical album recorded for at least the last decade has been at high res, and Gramophone magazine reviews well over a hundred a month, this figure of under 2000 is self-evidently, as we in the UK like to say, bollocks.

[Jud]

8 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Qobuz claims to have access to 170,000 hi-res audio tracks. The fact that they're aren't even 2000 albums that have been produced at real hi-res doesn't seem to matter.

 

http://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/566i-y4gg0--jilj9-5q8j86o9

 

Interesting article. 

 

He discounts the good careful work of people like Giles Martin on beloved music as being "hi-res" due to the original recording technology (some of which Mark Knopfler uses these days, and manages to sound pretty damn good).

 

I on the other hand enjoy the idea of music from any era being presented to me as well as possible.

[Peter Hyatt]

7 hours ago, goon525 said:

 

Given that virtually every classical album recorded for at least the last decade has been at high res, and Gramophone magazine reviews well over a hundred a month, this figure of under 2000 is self-evidently, as we in the UK like to say, bollocks.

 

Agreed. 

 

I’ve been adding new albums daily; almost all classical and almost all hi res. 

 

I’m over 3k and adding daily.  Perhaps 90% classical.  

 

Jud, my wife gave me two tix to see Mark Knopfler in August. I think he is meticulous in his recording...great attention to detail. 

[Paul R]

13 hours ago, bobbmd said:

@mourip see my post #1342 and my earlier post elsewhere on this page ROON is extremely slow to load for years now even worse now and like you either takes FOREVER to load qobuz albums playlists etc and when it does nothing plays except i get that audio device failed to initialize but quitting the qobuz app in upper left corner and clicking restart fixes the app 'problem' sometimes have to do this several times nothing i do even signing in/out of Qobuz on ROON helps-no one from ROON has bothered to answer my questions yet(not unusual) but David Craff(Qobuz) answered me almost immediately- do you have audirvana that has never failed either Qobuz or TIDAL or my iTunes library or all my playlists etc

Perhaps a dumb suggestion, bit why are you running the Qobuz app *and*  Roon at the same time?  Do you have the problem when you just run one or the other? 

 

Also, without really seeing your system it is just a guess, but your description makes me Wonder if your network is either just a tad slow, or maybe has some kind of congestion on it. 

 

Qobuz in Roon will load in about a second here, while searches may take 2-3 seconds. I don’t consider that slow, but our expectations (or hardware, etc.) may be a bit different. 

[left channel]

10 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Qobuz claims to have access to 170,000 hi-res audio tracks. The fact that they're aren't even 2000 albums that have been produced at real hi-res doesn't seem to matter.

 

http://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/566i-y4gg0--jilj9-5q8j86o9

 

Interesting article. 

 

The author provides no source for or proof of that statement about 2,000 albums. In fact, any album that was recorded in analog can be digitized at Hi-Res. Perhaps he read somewhere about albums produced specifically as Hi-Res digital releases, but that is not the whole story. The sad part is that for a while some concerts and other albums were recorded only at 16/44.1, but anything done before or after that period can be produced in Hi-Res.

Regarding his statement on whether the audible difference between CD-quality and Hi-Res can be described mathematically, a recent study found that not everyone can hear the difference even between 320 kpbs MP3 and CD-quality, but of those who can hear the difference between CD-quality and Hi-Res, some can only describe it in emotional rather than objective terms:

SOUND QUALITY ENHANCES THE MUSIC LISTENING EXPERIENCE
Victoria J. Williamson, Michael South, and Daniel Müllensiefen
University of Sheffield (UK) Goldsmiths, University of London (UK)
http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas03dm/papers/SoundQuality_WilliamsonSouthMullensiefen_ICMPC2014.pdf

[rando]

C'mon, take up your emphatic statements represented in an offsite article somewhere it doesn't impede Qobuz staff ability to direct help where it is needed. 

 

Please. 

[R1200CL]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

He discounts the good careful work of people like Giles Martin on beloved music as being "hi-res" due to the original recording technology (some of which Mark Knopfler uses these days, and manages to sound pretty damn good).

 

I on the other hand enjoy the idea of music from any era being presented to me as well as possible.

 

I can agree to he does to probably anyone that doesn’t follow the standard. Wich seems to be his main point. 

 

The hi res logo was meant for the hardware used to create what we call hi res music. 

To me this is an interesting point. 

 

That you can create hi res out of old masters used on equipment not meeting the hi res standard is something else. And I think he does not attacking that as I understand it. He is attacking those companies, Qobuz included, that is misusing the hi res logo, and marketing everything as hi res if it’s 24/96 or better, even if not recorded on equipment meeting the standard. 

 

 

 

[Sal1950]

The Qobuz catalog has a way to go before being competitive with Spotify.  I've bumped into a couple of well known popular artists albums that are missing and the US Country music catalog seems limited. Time will round it out I'm sure, hopefully sooner that later.

 

The first week of my beta demo I was having some serious problems with lockups, both with the webplayer and the Windoz app. These issues seems to have disappeared over the last week?

[Paul R]

I am afraid I don't understand your point, unless you are saying that "Hi-Res" is a copyright or trademark or something along those lines. 

 

Even a master analog tape from the 1960s is hi resolution audio by our standards, and a hi-resolution digital capture of such a tape is a "Hi-Res" so far as I can see. Sure there will be tape noise and analog noise and wow & flutter and all sorts of other things that just are not there with digital. What does that matter? 

 

I guess I just do not see the point to this argument, unless there is some hidden commercial reason. 

 

-Paul 

 

[left channel]

17 minutes ago, Paul R said:

I guess I just do not see the point to this argument, unless there is some hidden commercial reason.

 

The point of this argument is that the person who started this conversation likes to start arguments. Why don't we just drop it? This is OT anyway.

[greyscale]

Just wondering, how does Qobuz sell boxed sets?  I own the DG set "Debussy The Complete Works" Qobuz appears to offer this boxed set as individual  CDs. Will there be Box Set offers in the future?.

[Paul R]

5 minutes ago, left channel said:

 

The point of this argument is that the person who started this conversation likes to start arguments. Why don't we just drop it? This is OT anyway.

 

Waldrep?  He usually has some point in there somewhere, and it usually is worth thinking about. But in this case... 

 

-Paul 

 

[left channel]

Just now, Paul R said:

 

Waldrep?  He usually has some point in there somewhere, and it usually is worth thinking about. But in this case... 

 

-Paul 

 

 

No not Waldrep. And that's all I'm saying. Let's get back on topic.

[Hugo9000]

That is a trademark of the Japan Audio Society, and those criteria apply to the use of that logo.

 

High Resolution, on the other hand, seems to generally be accepted as 24/44.1 and above.  In my opinion, some analogue remasters and good conversions to digital sound superior to some albums that were recorded digitally and always at these "high res" or Hi-Res rates.  As usual, mic placement and engineering and mastering quality seem to matter more than the original or final format.

 

Qobuz uses the Hi-Res Audio logo, but I would assume they are relying on the provider of the files, so if the music doesn't meet the Japan Audio Society's criteria, that would be the fault of the labels, and I wouldn't blame Qobuz for the misrepresentation.

 

 

Regarding missing artists and albums, there are a bunch of missing Chris Isaak albums, and regarding country as Sal has mentioned, LeAnn Rimes is completely missing, unless her albums are completely mis-tagged lol.

 

There are very many classical albums that are missing, by artists that are partially represented, and on major labels like DG, Sony, Warner, etc.  Perhaps those are still in the process of being added, since I imagine the rights themselves aren't at issue.

 

I'm very pleased with the sound quality on Qobuz, but the tagging and search for classical is absolutely horrible.  The soloist(s), composer, conductor, ensemble, work name and opus number should always be properly tagged and searchable.  With many albums on Qobuz, it seems they've chosen only one or two of those categories to tag, instead of all of them.

[rickca]

28 minutes ago, greyscale said:

Just wondering, how does Qobuz sell boxed sets?  I own the DG set "Debussy The Complete Works" Qobuz appears to offer this boxed set as individual  CDs. Will there be Box Set offers in the future?.

Really good question.  I've been wondering about the same thing.

[left channel]

Hi-Res Audio is an industry standard marketing term for anything over 16/44.1. The industry definition of anything produced at Hi-Res from the beginning is a separate topic. In fact this whole discussion is a separate topic.

There is also another thread here titled What Can't You Find on Qobuz USA Yet That You'd Like to See?

[bobbmd]

@Paul R Thanks for the reply and there are no/never dumb questions-I wasn't clear- I don't run ROON, A+3, or the respective TIDAL/Qobuz desktop app at the same time if you do you sometimes run the risk of the application saying device is being 'hogged' by another device(and sometimes not) especially if you (I) use a different DAC(I guess 'endpoint' in ROON techie jargon)

 

My system isn't slow in my opinion everything(Google Goggle Mail my EMR and the streaming services and A+3) except ROON loads in seconds like you say- for me ROON takes minutes to load( a lot of minutes) BUT that has always been like that and is even worse now for example the other day it took 15-20 minutes for a song to start playing on ROON either in Qobuz or TIDAL more likely Qobuz AND nothing plays now(when it plays at all) in HiRes or MQA only in lossless 16/44 regardless if I use my Gungnir or Explorer2

 

I have signed in/out of TIDAL and Qobuz several times doesn't help and rebooted(just restarts not force quit) several times and those steps don't help any either and am awaiting 'help' from ROON

 

I like your suggestion there might be 'congestion' somewhere I think it has to be with ROON but I'll be darned if I know how to clear that up-I have asked ROON support in past to show me how cancel out my version of ROON( now 1.6) and allow me to reinstall it 'new' don't see why it can't be done as I have had ROON since it started and have a lifetime subscription

 

For example am listening to my entire cd ripped in AIFF/FLAC library 16000+tracks on A+3 my DAC's are showing either 24/88.2 or 24 96 and in some rare cases 24/192

 

FWIW- my system is late 2012 mac mini i7 16gb ram/spectrum cable >>100mbps to apple time capsule 2tb tower WiFI  output is mac mini  el capitan usb to either first generation schiit gungnir or meridian explorer 2 nothing else then out to my ancient Yamaha vx-2500 avr to my cambridge soundworks(henry kloss's old company) towers model 6's and s-300 satellites and original ensemble passive subwoofers and i use sennheiser 598's and rs 195's for headphones

 

if you have any other ideas or suggestions let me know my SQ otherwise is wonderful ROON has just become annoying frustrating BUT  A+3 is almost just as good except for metadata

bobbmd

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, left channel said:

 

No not Waldrep. And that's all I'm saying. Let's get back on topic.

 

I thought the subject was someone asserting that Qobuz is not really presenting hi resolution music. (shrug) 

 

-Paul

 

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, bobbmd said:

For example am listening to my entire cd ripped in AIFF/FLAC library 16000+tracks on A+3 my DAC's are showing either 24/88.2 or 24 96 and in some rare cases 24/192

 

FWIW- my system is late 2012 mac mini i7 16gb ram/spectrum cable >>100mbps to apple time capsule 2tb tower WiFI  output is mac mini  el capitan usb to either first generation schiit gungnir or meridian explorer 2 nothing else then out to my ancient Yamaha vx-2500 avr to my cambridge soundworks(henry kloss's old company) towers model 6's and s-300 satellites and original ensemble passive subwoofers and i use sennheiser 598's and rs 195's for headphones

 

if you have any other ideas or suggestions let me know my SQ otherwise is wonderful ROON has just become annoying frustrating BUT  A+3 is almost just as good except for metadata

bobbmd

 

I run Roon Core here on a Mac Mini of the same vintage and specs, so I expect you have plenty of power for that.   

 

Are you trying to drive the DACs from the same Mac Mini? If so, given you are upsampling your CD content, that could be part of the issue. (You might have already told us that, so apologies if I missed it.) 

 

Loading time of minutes, combined with everything else working fine, does mean you got a real problem. Looking back in my journal, I have found a few things that might give you some pointers to look through. 

 

Disk format - are you using MacOS formatted volumes to store your ripped CDs on? With 16K tracks, pretty much any other format,  such as NTFS is going to be slow on MacOS. I am not even sure if FAT32 will hold that many files, but if it does, the way FAT stores the disk directory will again be slow on a Mac. If you don't have your music in MacOS format, try doing that.  16K CD files will easily fit on a Terabyte USB 3 disk. Can pick them up cheap if you don't have one. (I use two Seagate 8TB disks here, in a RAID-0 format. Caught the disks on sale.) 

 

Upsampling, Filters, etc. - Try turning them off, see what happens. If the system speeds up dramatically, turn them back on one at a time until you find the guilty party. Upsampling CD 16/44.1K to 24/88.2K is not going to overload that Mac. 

 

Wireless Conflict - if you happen to have another wireless router active, it can "fight" for RF bandwidth, and do just awful things to your internal network. This is kind of unlikely, but the end result of this kind of conflict is awfully slow media streaming. Email, normal web browsing and such may not show as dramatic degradation as streaming will. So if you have a wifi extender, even another Airport connected, try disconnecting that and see if speed increases.

 

*I happen to have a Cisco wireless endpoint here I just obtained, and just tested conflicting against my Airport Base Station. I was able to get the Mac Mini to "slow down" so much it took about 90 seconds for the main Roon screen to populate. I also got messages about the audio file "is loading slowly" when trying to play a track. That's nowhere as slow as you are seeing, but it may help a bit. 

 

Hope that gives you a few other things to look at. 

 

Yours,

-Paul 

 

 

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, left channel said:

Hi-Res Audio is an industry standard marketing term for anything over 16/44.1. The industry definition of anything produced at Hi-Res from the beginning is a separate topic. In fact this whole discussion is a separate topic.

There is also another thread here titled What Can't You Find on Qobuz USA Yet That You'd Like to See?

 

It is not that simple.   If you are referring to this marketing symbol: 

 

Then the term is rather meaningless.  It can apply to a 16/44.1 CD file that has been transcoded and streamed or otherwise sold at  24/192K - or even Octo DSD. 

 

High Resolution audio has to have been recorded in high resolution, and provenance is definitely an issue with any service selling or purporting to sell high resolution music, streaming, download, or on media. Now so far as I can tell, Qobuz is selling "the good stuff" - which is why I have no trouble at all paying for a subscription.  If someone is saying that the "Hi-Res" music Qobuz is streaming is not high resolution, that pretty much by definition is an on topic issue. 

 

Why are you so against discussing it? It isn't true so it should be easy to disprove. 

 

-Paul

 

 

[R1200CL]

4 hours ago, Hugo9000 said:

Qobuz uses the Hi-Res Audio logo, but I would assume they are relying on the provider of the files, so if the music doesn't meet the Japan Audio Society's criteria, that would be the fault of the labels, and I wouldn't blame Qobuz for the misrepresentation.

 

A very interesting assumption. 😀

 

Now why isn’t HD tracks then using same logo ?

 

UMC only points to Spotify and YouTube themselves. 

 

 

[Jud]

5 hours ago, R1200CL said:

 

I can agree to he does to probably anyone that doesn’t follow the standard. Wich seems to be his main point. 

 

The hi res logo was meant for the hardware used to create what we call hi res music. 

To me this is an interesting point. 

 

That you can create hi res out of old masters used on equipment not meeting the hi res standard is something else. And I think he does not attacking that as I understand it. He is attacking those companies, Qobuz included, that is misusing the hi res logo, and marketing everything as hi res if it’s 24/96 or better, even if not recorded on equipment meeting the standard. 

 

 

 

 

Mark Waldrep has for years been trying to get people to notice him and buy his 24/96 recordings by criticizing others and attempting to persuade consumers they're being taken by everyone but him. You are welcome to believe him and not subscribe to Qobuz. Now the rest of us have music to enjoy.

[R1200CL]

16 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Mark Waldrep has for years been trying to get people to notice him and buy his 24/96 recordings by criticizing others and attempting to persuade consumers they're being taken by everyone but him. You are welcome to believe him and not subscribe to Qobuz. Now the rest of us have music to enjoy.

 

I didn’t know. OK thanks Jud. 

 

Anyway here is the prove rove that Qobuz actually can use that hi res logo. 

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=4583

 

[spin33]

6 hours ago, R1200CL said:

The hi res logo was meant for the hardware used to create what we call hi res music. 

To me this is an interesting point. 

 

Well, it's a bit of an interesting point, up to a point :-).

 

IMO, discussions re: the definition of Hi-Res, what qualifies as Hi-Res, what doesn't, etc. likely should be in a different thread. It's not a 'Qobuz Issue'. It's a legitimate, but separate, definitional debate.

 

That being said (and to the specific point quoted above), it is curious that Qobuz has chosen to use a Hi-Res logo that appears to be technically incorrect. @R1200CL is correct to point out that the logo used is the official designation for hardware, not software, (whether for recording or playback) that meets the JAS Hi-Res standard. The JAS logo for Hi-res music is different; see below. Who (other than Qobuz) knows why the choice was made? A clerical design error? A conscious decision? (The Hi-Res Music logo is a tad ugly and less eye-catching :-).

 

For me it's no big deal, they could invent their own Hi-Res logo and I'd be fine. I'll continue to use Qobuz regardless. But they did make the choice to go with a JAS logo and for some reason used the 'wrong' one, so it is a fair question. And it can fairly, I think, fall into the category of 'Qobuz Issues', albeit a minor one in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Jud]

28 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

 

I didn’t know. OK thanks Jud. 

 

Anyway here is the prove rove that Qobuz actually can use that hi res logo. 

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=4583

 

 

Qobuz does ask that if anyone finds content the labels have sent them as hi res that is instead not truly 24-bit, or upsampled, that they bring this to the attention of Qobuz.