Official Qobuz Issues Thread

[Kal Rubinson]

9 hours ago, Sal1950 said:

What method of digital transport did you use from the Roon computer to the DACs?

USB.

[Kal Rubinson]

1 hour ago, Cebolla said:

 

Enabling JRMC's DLNA renderer is straight forward enough:

...............................................................................................

Unfortunately, I can't think of a Qobuz supporting standard UPnP/DLNA controller application for the Mac, if you'd rather not use a handheld device as the user interface.

Actually, I'd rather not use a Mac.

[#Yoda#]

7 hours ago, BrokeLinuxPhile said:

 

 

I'm not so sure that this falls on Qobuz, and more on the label supplying the files.  The labels are the ones committing fraud if they aren't providing product as labelled to a distributor.  If someone sold fake budweiser to your liquor store, it's not the liquor store's fault. 

 

Qobuz will be at fault here, IMO, if they don't refund money after you complain of mislabelled downloads.  If they refund the your money, but leave the album available mislabelled for others to be duped, that's when they have a problem on their hands.

 

What is the policy?  If I buy a mislabelled album do i get my money back?

 

 

I'm pretty sure that the labels are the origin of this issues, but your bud comparison isn't quite correct. The bottles that the liquor store is selling are closed with a cap and they cannot analyze the content.

 

Except MQA files, it is quite easy for a download store or streaming service to check the real quality of the audio files, delivered by the labels. There are server based analysis tools that can do this automatically and quite reliable.

 

It is necessary that the provider recognize that selling or streaming HiRes audio files is a matter of trust because the audible advantages of HiRes music are perceivable but slight, IMO. Without the Sublime or other discount options, Qobuz customers are paying a premium price for this pleasure, customers of most other download stores anyway and they can expect to get what they have payed for.

 

Usually Qobuz offers a compensation when you send a qualified complain to the customer service, but that is not the point for me. I expect that the download store either replace the mislabelled album or, if the label is not willing or able to send a suitable version, delete it from the catalog, respectively publish a comment on the album page that it is e.g. "Recorded in 44.1kHz, mastered to 88.2kHz" like HDtracks is doing it sometimes after complaints. In fact it means, it has been upsampled, but the customer is informed.

 

In the special case that I indicated yesterday "J.S. Odara - Tales Of America", I abstained from complaining officially at the customer service because it is a very nice album, the audible differences from 96kHz to 192kHz are in general very slight and I've purchased the album with the Sublime discount to a very fair price, cheaper than CD quality download. I think it is rude to expect a compensation for this and hope that @David Craff will forward the issue, Qobuz will draw the obvious conclusion for this specific case and other examples of mislabeled albums I've mentioned in earlier posts. Establishing a reliable quality control to prevent such issues would be appreciated and should be standard for all HiRes download and streaming services.

 

Again, it is not my intention to defame Qobuz, this issue applies to the whole music industry with the labels in the first instance. 

 

 

[#Yoda#]

6 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Besides ultrasonics at various frequencies, is there anything else that signifies to you what the original resolution of a musical piece was?

As you can see in the chart, there is absolutely no signal above 27.7kHz, in this case, not even distortions. I seems as if the quality is slightly better than 24/48, but not very much and presumably not really audible. Anyway, there is content above 24kHz and dependent on the recording and mastering method a 88.2kHz or 96kHz container is justifiable, but not 192kHz, IMO.

 

I'm not an expert in audio recording or mastering, perhaps this somehow special chart is caused by a faulty use of filters. 

[Musicophile]

2 hours ago, church_mouse said:

@Musicophile  I am curious if you noted whether Qobuz stopped selling the upsampled album after you had flagged up the error?

For some I checked and they are now ok.

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

4 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

In the special case that I indicated yesterday "J.S. Odara - Tales Of America", I abstained from complaining officially at the customer service because it is a very nice album, the audible differences from 96kHz to 192kHz are in general very slight and I've purchased the album with the Sublime discount to a very fair price, cheaper than CD quality download.

 

There is one clue that can be used to find what you describe.

 

Some player applications allow deeper inspection into a stream's metadata than others.  The Qobuz web player doesn't really show much information about the stream, just telling you simple things like "cd quality" or "24/96khz", etc.

 

LMS shows decompressed flac codec bitrate while the file is playing, that's a metric that doesn't hide anything.  If the bitrate appears low there,  files will show the analysis behaviour you are describing.

 

For "J.S. Odara - Tales Of America"....I played this via the Qobuz web player, and the app showed an audio stream of 24/192, just like the album is tagged.  I then then played it via LMS.  First track "American Dream"  is showing the stream playing back at a codec data rate of 4632kbps.  That's low for 24/192.  For 24/96 I should see 3200-3400ish kbps, for 24/192 I should see around 5500-6000ish kbps.   "American Dream" falls right in the middle of the two.  If this is a new release, and it was recorded 24/192, flac compression was high during mastering.  Or it was upsampled from a lower resolution source.

 

This is not limited to hi-res files.  Take the Doobie Brother's album "Toulouse Street".  If played back from the web player, it shows the album playing back at cd quality, 16/44.1.  If played back via LMS, track one "Listen to the Music" is showing a codec data rate of only 863kbps.  For TRUE cd quality, I'd expect to see at least 1000-1100kbps there.  But considering when this album was originally recorded, you won't see a high data rate, media was 'data rate' limited back then.  Album sounds really good when streamed BTW.

 

So sampling rate is one metric, but it's really just a container.  How much stuff is inside the container is the codec data rate.   That should be right next to each individual track file in the Qobuz app/web player IMO.  A new release showing 24/192 and a low data rate is a red flag for data compression in use or upsampling.

[rando]

The rational action here would be to compile a single list of faulty music listings and then bring your findings to notice.  

[#Yoda#]

2 hours ago, BrokeLinuxPhile said:

 

There is one clue that can be used to find what you describe.

 

Some player applications allow deeper inspection into a stream's metadata than others.  The Qobuz web player doesn't really show much information about the stream, just telling you simple things like "cd quality" or "24/96khz", etc.

 

LMS shows decompressed flac codec bitrate while the file is playing, that's a metric that doesn't hide anything.  If the bitrate appears low there,  files will show the analysis behaviour you are describing.

 

For "J.S. Odara - Tales Of America"....I played this via the Qobuz web player, and the app showed an audio stream of 24/192, just like the album is tagged.  I then then played it via LMS.  First track "American Dream"  is showing the stream playing back at a codec data rate of 4632kbps.  That's low for 24/192.  For 24/96 I should see 3200-3400ish kbps, for 24/192 I should see around 5500-6000ish kbps.   "American Dream" falls right in the middle of the two.  If this is a new release, and it was recorded 24/192, flac compression was high during mastering.  Or it was upsampled from a lower resolution source.

 

This is not limited to hi-res files.  Take the Doobie Brother's album "Toulouse Street".  If played back from the web player, it shows the album playing back at cd quality, 16/44.1.  If played back via LMS, track one "Listen to the Music" is showing a codec data rate of only 863kbps.  For TRUE cd quality, I'd expect to see at least 1000-1100kbps there.  But considering when this album was originally recorded, you won't see a high data rate, media was 'data rate' limited back then.  Album sounds really good when streamed BTW.

 

So sampling rate is one metric, but it's really just a container.  How much stuff is inside the container is the codec data rate.   That should be right next to each individual track file in the Qobuz app/web player IMO.  A new release showing 24/192 and a low data rate is a red flag for data compression in use or upsampling.

I know this numbers from JRiver MC but doubt that the data rate is a reliable indicator for the final resolution of a track and that there is a stringent correlation to bitrate and resolution. I think, beside this two factors it is very much dependent on the complexity of the music as such.

[#Yoda#]

3 hours ago, rando said:

The rational action here would be to compile a single list of faulty music listings and then bring your findings to notice.  

I've tried this in several forums since 2015 but the participation was not really awesome. It seems to me that not many audiophiles care about the reliability of the content quality they purchase or stream. As @Musicophile already mentioned, upsampling is usually not an issue for Classical or Jazz aficionados and they are a significant part of HiRes download or streaming customers.

I'm afraid as long as due diligence and provenance is a not a significant factor for most labels, download stores and streaming services, nothing will change and it is up to the customers to check the quality of their purchased music with proper analyzing tools and point the resellers and public to mislabeled albums. 

[rando]

I trimmed a bit from that post separating the NA Beta, laughable their staff personally vets every track they are adding to the empty spaces, and the well established home office.  The actions of both are bleeding together here. 

 

I won't go to further lengths defending my suggestion.  At the very least a 10+ album list in one place puts a good amount of information in one place for the NYC staff to view. 

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Bit depth the same as resolution, right?  You increase bit depth, and you increase bit rate and file size.  So there should be correlation between resolution and bit rate.

 

Keeping this tied to Qobuz, I'd like to see the bit rates specified for each track and/or individual file sizes when browsing the catalog. 

[David Craff]

On 2/22/2019 at 11:26 PM, Musicophile said:

David,

 

Please use your influence on this topic to tell Qobuz how much this matters.

 

I really love the service, and have used it for years now, but the search function and, closely linked, the meta tagging of the stuff on offer, could be one of their biggest differentiation factors in the market, especially for classical, but also e.g. differentiating the different remasters of an album.

 

After all, they are targeting classical music lovers and audiophiles, where those things just matter.

 

And at this point, search is still pretty much a mess. If

 

Furthermore, as already flagged previously, I have yet to find an exhaustive list of all new releases, not just the "selection" Qobuz considers relevant.

 

This is still what I consider Qobuz biggest weakness, or maybe not a weakness, but clearly a lack of positive differentiation.

 

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for this feedback.

 

I'm in charge of the search engine and know that there is lot's of thing to improve.

The best way to help me, if you want, is to explain me your issue. You can answer this question to do that : 

- Which platform did you use to search on Qobuz? (Desktop, Android, iOS, Sonos...)

- What type of product are you looking for? (Release, artiste, track...)

- What are you looking for? (ex: 3rd movement of Sonata of Piano no. 14 of Beethoven)

- What did you enter?

- Did you find what you were looking for and explain? *

 

As I explain before I have created some hashtags to test the search engine. Some of them can answer you needs, but stay as beta and can be change in the future. They only work for release, not for artists, tracks, playlists...

 

Here they are, but don't forget that they may disappear, change or not work properly at any time.

- #HiRes to filter only Hi-Res file, but this one is not set for streaming only (for the moment)

- #MutilChannel to filter release in 5.1

- #NewRelease to filter only new product < 1 month

- #ComposerOnly to filter the query to composer only

- #Award to filter release with award (Qobuz award or Press Award)

 

If you have idea for #hashtag, tell me.

 

Regards

[David Craff]

On 2/23/2019 at 1:15 AM, #Yoda# said:

Hi David,

 

to simply try this is not sufficient and usually without consequences. It is the job of Qobuz and other download stores or streaming provider to sell their customers the promised contend in the quality they've paid for. It should not be the job of your customers to verify the quality!

To show how effective the trying is, I've attached a chart of the current Qobuz top album for download and streaming J.S. Odara - Tales Of America. It is labeled as 24/192 but there is no audible content above 28kHz. 24/96 would have been an absolutely adequate resolution. Only Highresaudio.com indicated this as upsampled and is selling and streaming it correctly as 24/96 album. 

 

 

 

We have a dedicated department to check the content delivered by the labels. I'm transferring your example to this department. Thank you. Thank you.

[Musicophile]

1 hour ago, David Craff said:

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for this feedback.

 

I'm in charge of the search engine and know that there is lot's of thing to improve.

The best way to help me, if you want, is to explain me your issue. You can answer this question to do that : 

- Which platform did you use to search on Qobuz? (Desktop, Android, iOS, Sonos...)

- What type of product are you looking for? (Release, artiste, track...)

- What are you looking for? (ex: 3rd movement of Sonata of Piano no. 14 of Beethoven)

- What did you enter?

- Did you find what you were looking for and explain? *

 

As I explain before I have created some hashtags to test the search engine. Some of them can answer you needs, but stay as beta and can be change in the future. They only work for release, not for artists, tracks, playlists...

 

Here they are, but don't forget that they may disappear, change or not work properly at any time.

- #HiRes to filter only Hi-Res file, but this one is not set for streaming only (for the moment)

- #MutilChannel to filter release in 5.1

- #NewRelease to filter only new product < 1 month

- #ComposerOnly to filter the query to composer only

- #Award to filter release with award (Qobuz award or Press Award)

 

If you have idea for #hashtag, tell me.

 

Regards

I typically access Qobuz via Audirvana or the iOS apps, sometimes the desktop app.

 

A typical search case would be “find all available versions of Shostakovich piano quintet“, and then filter e.g. only highres, or exclude versions not available for streaming. This would however require tagging and grouping of the individual oeuvre, and I’m also not sure how Qobuz handles for examples the different European transcriptions of Shostakovich (Spelled Chosta in French).

 

Another typical use case would be “find all new releases of Chandos in the last 3 months“.

 

And finally, when searching e.g. for Kind Of Blue, you get seven different album versions. How do I easily understand which one is which. 

 

I understand many of these require extensive manual tagging, but this would really be useful for the end user. 

[#Yoda#]

9 hours ago, David Craff said:

 

 

We have a dedicated department to check the content delivered by the labels. I'm transferring your example to this department. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm wondering a little bit what this people are doing all day long.🤔

Come on, this album is top of Qobuz charts for download and streaming and your "department" hasn't noticed so far that there is anything strange with the resolution?

Anyway, thank you for transferring! I hope you've done the same with the other obviously upsampled albums in the Qobuz catalog I've posted here recently because I still cannot see any progress.

 

I do not wonder that it is an UMG album.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, #Yoda# said:

I'm wondering a little bit what this people are doing all day long.🤔

Come on, this album is top of Qobuz charts for download and streaming and your "department" hasn't noticed so far that there is anything strange with the resolution?

Anyway, thank you for transferring! I hope you've done the same with the other obviously upsampled albums in the Qobuz catalog I've posted here recently because I still cannot see any progress.

I think you're shooting the messenger (Qobuz) when you should really be shooting the label that uploaded the files to Qobuz. Sure,  Qobuz says it vets the releases etc... but the real issue is the labels.

[#Yoda#]

6 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I think you're shooting the messenger (Qobuz) when you should really be shooting the label that uploaded the files to Qobuz. Sure,  Qobuz says it vets the releases etc... but the real issue is the labels.

Totally agree, but it is the job of the provider to check the quality of the content they're selling to their customers. What would you tell your Porsche dealer when he's selling you a Carrera with a VW Beetle engine?

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, #Yoda# said:

Totally agree, but it is the job of the provider to check the quality of the content they're selling to their customers. What would you tell your Porsche dealer when he's selling you a Carrera with a VW Beetle engine?

What did you tell your local record shop when they sold you an SACD created from 44.1 PCM files?

[#Yoda#]

26 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

What did you tell your local record shop when they sold you an SACD created from 44.1 PCM files?

I know, that there are several SACDs, published at least up to 2015 are upsampled sometimes even from 16/44.1 PCM files. The difference to HiRes download stores and streaming services is that today it is really easy for them to check the quality of incoming files in a first step, except it is a black box like a MQA album https://www.xivero.com/musicscope-server/

[gdpr]

21 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

What did you tell your local record shop when they sold you an SACD created from 44.1 PCM files?

On the good side of things, they ‘introduced’ upsampling which was not much used, neither understood at that time. Most of the time it was (is) not easy to hear it was not real SACD.

Of course, there were indeed a lot of fake SACD’s brought to market, which of course fraudulous business practices.

Dirk

[Ski Bum]

I am a new U.S. beta hi-rez user of Qobuz, which I stream through Roon.  I am able to successfully stream most of the Qobuz hi-rez and redbook files, but occasionally I will run into an album that appears to be available for streaming from Qobuz but I get error messages in Roon (to the effect that the song is unavailable) when I try to stream it.  For example, the new Jenny Lewis album appears among the Qobuz new albums and I can add it to my Roon library, but the songs are unavailable when I try to stream them.  Is this  a U.S. licensing issue? 

[gdpr]

16 minutes ago, Ski Bum said:

I am a new U.S. beta hi-rez user of Qobuz, which I stream through Roon.  I am able to successfully stream most of the Qobuz hi-rez and redbook files, but occasionally I will run into an album that appears to be available for streaming from Qobuz but I get error messages in Roon (to the effect that the song is unavailable) when I try to stream it.  For example, the new Jenny Lewis album appears among the Qobuz new albums and I can add it to my Roon library, but the songs are unavailable when I try to stream them.  Is this  a U.S. licensing issue? 

That’s because the complete album will only be released on March 22nd.

Info readibily available in the download store of Qobuz.

Best to first check release date in such cases

Dirk

[geodon005]

I have several questions about Qobuz and I was hoping I could get some answers here. I have truly been enjoying my free trial and plan on subscribing.

 

1st Question: I was able to get a now-discontinued Chromecast Audio on the cheap and was led to believe that it would allow me to stream hi-res audio (24 bit, 96kHz) from my iOS device (iPhone or iPad) to my Denon AVR. Is this true? If so, does it matter if I use the 3.5 mm plug to split L/R RCA connectors, or would using the digital optical cable be better?

 

2nd Question: When I listen to a music track on the Qobuz player on my iPad via headphones that indicates it is 24 bit, 96 kHz, is that actually what I am hearing? Is that also true if I listen to the same on my iPhone X using the Lightning-to-3.5 mm adapter?

 

Thanks so much for any help you can provide.

 

 

[BrokeLinuxPhile]

Hit my first micro service outage here tonight, only lasted for about 10 minutes though, started a little after 1 am EST.  No hard outage,  just buffers wouldn't fill and playback kept pausing and starting.  Was convinced we were going to lose power again while the audio stutters happened, extremely high winds in new england today, lost power twice.  And a tree.  I checked Tidal and it was still streaming cleanly when Qobuz stuttered.

 

Whatever it was it cleared fast, unlike my near daily problems with Tidal.  Qobuz way more reliable for me overall so far, keep up the good work.

[David Craff]

11 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

I'm wondering a little bit what this people are doing all day long.🤔

Come on, this album is top of Qobuz charts for download and streaming and your "department" hasn't noticed so far that there is anything strange with the resolution?

Anyway, thank you for transferring! I hope you've done the same with the other obviously upsampled albums in the Qobuz catalog I've posted here recently because I still cannot see any progress.

 

I do not wonder that it is an UMG album.

 

It's very frustrating to take time out of a problem, to finally have that kind of comment. I will now focus on issues directly related to the products I manage.