Article: Roon 1.6 With Qobuz Integration and More

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4 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

So why would people change from Tidal to Qobuz ?

Because of hires only ?

 

About 1,850,000 more Hi-Res tracks on Qobuz than MQA tracks on Tidal. Qobuz content, discovery, and genre focus. Also their app design, for when you're not in Roon. Basically, Qobuz seems more meant for me.

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9 hours ago, R1200CL said:

 

This number I totally wrong. Reading on Qobuz homepage the number is between 70000 and 75000. And not all albums is available for streaming.  Around 90% of that number.

2,000,000 is the approximate number of tracks, as given in Qobuz press releases and stated by Qobuz managers in interviews. The number you found refers to albums, and contains a typo: it is missing a "1" in front of "170,000". The number you quoted later in your post is 175,000 albums, and below I'll address how you get to the number of tracks from there.

 

I arrived at "about 1,850,000 more Hi-Res tracks on Qobuz than MQA tracks on Tidal" by subtracting the approximate number of Tidal Masters tracks I found the last time I checked MQA_List.csv which you can download from the first post here.

 

9 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Also hires is only to be available on the Sublime plan. 

(Edit. Studio also have hires)

 

Yes we know that.

 

9 hours ago, R1200CL said:

It seems they operate with different numbers in hires on webpages. My anticipation is that the other 100.000 is somewhere between CD and 24/192

 

OK, so 170,000 to 175,000 albums. What is the average number of tracks? About 12? Adjust that by the number of singles and EPs, and we get approximately 2,000,000 tracks.

 

9 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Further it is my understanding you cannot use hires in offline mode. Maximum quality is CD.

 

The "import" feature in the desktop app downloads and plays Hi-Res tracks. I don't know about iOS, but the same feature in the Android app downloads in selectable resolutions and I just did that at 24/96 kHz. The app then played back the album, reporting 24/96.

But at the moment, there is a problem. I don't know about iOS, but the Android OS resamples everything that comes out of the Qobuz and Tidal apps to 48 kHz anyway.  So regardless of that the app is reporting, the final result is not full resolution. We can get around that on Android by using a third-party app like UAPP, but then you do not have offline mode.

 

(I'm told the Tidal app bypasses that resampling for Masters tracks, but only on phones from LG and Essential with their own internal Hi-Res DACs and perhaps even then not reliably, while for all other tracks even on those phones it does not bypass the OS.)

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Another minor difference. 

 

Tidal allow up to 5 devices. Qobuz 3. 

 

The limit is not installs, but the number playing at any one time. If you really do listen to multiple devices at the same time, you'll need to synchronize them or you'll be getting slightly different timing from each and it will sound off. That requires something like Roon.

 

I read somewhere on the Qobuz website that the number of simultaneous Sonos devices may be limited, but I believe Roon, LMS/Squeezebox, and other solutions may be different. I don't recall bumping up against that limit with LMS, but maybe I'll test my limits later.

 

For me Qobuz is for serious sit-down listening on my best systems one at a time. When I have the whole house turned on, I'm usually letting the good folks at Radio Paradise do the DJing for me.

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5 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

OK. Tracks vs albums. My bad. 

 

Tidal has 60 millions 😀

 

That’s 50% more music......

 

Much of which is from poor-quality remix CDs that sounded lousy even when they first came out. Tidal is fighting a two-front battle, and the big overall numbers are best used for comparisons with Apple Music and Spotify, not Qobuz, HDtracks, or other services focused on quality.

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2 minutes ago, jhwalker said:

 

The iOS allows downloading any available resolution you've paid for.  So the top tier subscription allows downloading full resolution (e.g, up to 24/192, or whatever they have), while lower subscription levels allow downloading CD quality, etc.  You always have the ability to download any albums you've PURCHASED at full resolution.

 

And if you use the camera connection kit to output via USB from your iDevice, it outputs the full resolution - it only resamples down to 48k if you're using the headphone out or connecting to an external device via Lightning port.

 

Thanks. That completes the last three paragraphs of my reply to @R1200CL about offline mode. But has anyone actually tested what the iOS app is doing internally? On Android the Tidal and Qobuz apps appear to be working normally, even when the OS is resampling internal and USB playback. Others have used Android dev tools to monitor this, then posted their results on head-fi. That is one of the reasons I use UAPP.