Qobuz Feature Requests

[RedSwede]

Nice to see some appreciation for the Eq/DSP idea :-).

 

Qobuz is different from the likes of Spotify/Apple music etc with the focus on audio quality and appealing to those that go the extra mile in its pursuit. A bog-standard 6 band graphic Eq is not going to help with this - it's only a small step up from Bass/Treble knobs on a Sansui. It has to be parametric, or quite possibly the AutoEQ standard, or better still, a host for AU-type engines (surely adding an AU host would be really easy...)

 

I think the popularity of being able to equalise headphones and to do custom acoustic correction would be pretty high.

 

And to add - for iOS I think this ball can only be in Qobuz's court - the audio stream is just not available, outside of jailbreaking.

[Pro Jules]

I suggest Qobuz commissions one of these guys to build an EQ for them. 

 

https://www.fabfilter.com/artists/floris

 

Fabfilter is highly regarded in the Pro Audio (studio) scene.

 

Or Daniel Weiss  of Weiss Audio Switzerland https://www.weiss.ch/about Very highly regarded in both the Pro Audio and the Hi Fi world.

[David Craff]

On 12/15/2020 at 4:02 PM, RedSwede said:

Nice to see some appreciation for the Eq/DSP idea :-).

 

Qobuz is different from the likes of Spotify/Apple music etc with the focus on audio quality and appealing to those that go the extra mile in its pursuit. A bog-standard 6 band graphic Eq is not going to help with this - it's only a small step up from Bass/Treble knobs on a Sansui. It has to be parametric, or quite possibly the AutoEQ standard, or better still, a host for AU-type engines (surely adding an AU host would be really easy...)

 

I think the popularity of being able to equalise headphones and to do custom acoustic correction would be pretty high.

 

And to add - for iOS I think this ball can only be in Qobuz's court - the audio stream is just not available, outside of jailbreaking.

 

Hi,

 

I have a meeting with the Mobile Product Manager about this feature, next week. Hope this can give you this feature in 2021.

 

Regards

[RedSwede]

3 hours ago, David Craff said:

 

Hi,

 

I have a meeting with the Mobile Product Manager about this feature, next week. Hope this can give you this feature in 2021.

 

Regards

Hey - if it gets serious discussion with the PM, then I can't say fairer than that!!

[davidovada]

Ciao from Italia. Is it possible to show all new releases in a specific category(jazz, in my case)...rather than a sampling of new releases each week? I often read about new music in other media, then search Qobuz via Roon...and there they are. It would be swell to see this feature implemented. Grazie.

[David Craff]

15 hours ago, davidovada said:

Ciao from Italia. Is it possible to show all new releases in a specific category(jazz, in my case)...rather than a sampling of new releases each week? I often read about new music in other media, then search Qobuz via Roon...and there they are. It would be swell to see this feature implemented. Grazie.

 

Hi,

 

This is not yet possible. But we are working on a feature to bronze the catalog by genre and mood. 

 

Regards

[AnotherSpin]

55 minutes ago, David Craff said:

 

Hi,

 

This is not yet possible. But we are working on a feature to bronze the catalog by genre and mood. 

 

Regards

 

In fact, this can be one of the most important features - to see all the new items in a particular genre added to catalogue in the last day, week, month.

[David Craff]

3 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

In fact, this can be one of the most important features - to see all the new items in a particular genre added to catalogue in the last day, week, month.

 

In the feature to bronze content by genre, we will add the new albums.

[Delius Myth]

What has happened to the booklet pdf feature in Android? Particularly now that liquid and reading mode has been introduced specifically for Android the loss of this feature is highly distressing and removes one of the key differentiators from other streaming services.

[davidovada]

On 12/22/2020 at 10:27 AM, David Craff said:

 

Hi,

 

This is not yet possible. But we are working on a feature to bronze the catalog by genre and mood. 

 

Regards

grazie, David.

[rn701]

On 12/7/2020 at 1:10 AM, Balthazar B said:

• We enjoy robust music discovery functionality, and this is one area where you have to admit Qobuz falls a bit short of the competition. An ability to support AI-driven artist/album/song/genre/etc. radio listening, instead of just playlists, would go a long way towards enhancing the attractiveness of Qobuz as a fully-featured, well-integrated music service that further realizes the promise shown in your really nice applications, the high quality of your catalog, and your capabilities in providing exemplary streaming to your customers.

This is a popular request. Last year they said it was coming this past spring, then summer, then... crickets.

 

In a recent video discussion between Qobuz and Roon CEO, Qobuz David Solomon said they had looked at this feature, but decided it was hard to implement and that Roon already does it and does it better than they ever could. (Highly debatable whether Roon Radio is all that great, but whatever. )

 

This suggests that Qobuz has abandoned the feature. Which is a shame, because every other streaming service has it. It is pushing me back to Tidal, but it's hard to choose the lesser evil of Tidal's MQA fetish and Qobuz's lack of this basic, widely available feature. At least MQA doesn't sound actually bad.

 

Anyway, some sort of definitive statement from Qobuz regarding their direction on this would be helpful. I really would like to dump Tidal and not have to rely on Roon's (broken) solution, plus Roon doesn't work for mobile.

[Pro Jules]

I have to use Qobuz via Mconnect app for my UPnP player. It’s always defaulting to “discover” which is boring. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

32 minutes ago, Pro Jules said:

I have to use Qobuz via Mconnect app for my UPnP player. It’s always defaulting to “discover” which is boring. 

Is there a feature request hidden in that comment?

[Pro Jules]

Hehe.
 

Just editing now after a walk. 
 

yes, an aggregate of most played songs would be great. 
 

same with albums. - have a sort order that lists them in frequency of play. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

23 minutes ago, Pro Jules said:

Hehe.
 

Just editing now after a walk. 
 

yes, an aggregate of most played songs would be great. 
 

same with albums. - have a sort order that lists them in frequency of play. 

Seems like your request should be directed to the Mconnect team rather than Qobuz. 

[left channel]

In response to a request above, I would just like to take the opportunity to thank the folks at Qobuz for the human-curated playlists that accompany music history articles, explore genres, and follow other themes. I am not interested in AI-driven "radio" and would never use it if implemented in Qobuz. I deleted Pandora early on, and also tried it in Tidal and hated it. But I do appreciate the work of human DJs. Outside of Qobuz, I listen to Radio Paradise and other great DJ-driven work. But I find AI that decides what I should listen to based on past listening to be as disappointing as machine translation of poetry.

[Pro Jules]

They just offer a skin to control Qobuz on UPnP. This would be good on Qobuz itself also. 

[Mark Dirac]

Concertmaster

Another area where Qobuz - and also its competitors - are struggling is with metadata (or even just categorisation) for classical recordings. Possibly, this is more awkward for Qobuz given that they position themselves as a classical fan's service, more than do Tidal, Amazon or Spotify.

 

So I am encouraged to see this classical front-end for Spotify:

 

https://www.hiresaudio.online/classical-music-front-end-for-spotify/

 

https://getconcertmaster.com/

 

which looks fantastic.

 

Wouldn't it be great for Concertmaster to be facilitated/encouraged/paid to produce a Qobuz capability.

[Balthazar B]

7 hours ago, left channel said:

But I find AI that decides what I should listen to based on past listening to be as disappointing as machine translation of poetry.

If well-executed, AI won't be as limited as this at all. A good AI-driven musical discovery capability:

• Is fundamentally a neural network able to deepen its knowledge of each individual over time, and
• Can correlate patterns of musical preferences multidimensionally, which can include
• "Ideas" to offer based on comparing a person's wide body of preferences with others, as well as
• Using a profound form of "music DNA" to hop between genres, composers, eras for eclectic listeners, while
• Taking into acount not just particular pieces of music, but including dimensions such as performers and ensembles, acoustic/electric, live/studio, slow/energetic, album/song, etc. to assemble nuanced, fresh experiences tailored for each individual listener from the vast repository of recorded music available on most streaming services.

I enjoy many human-assembled playlists as well, but unless they organically change/develop pretty rapidly, I'll get as bored listening to them again as I would a party tape that hasn't changed since 1974.

[Balthazar B]

9 hours ago, rn701 said:

In a recent video discussion between Qobuz and Roon CEO, Qobuz David Solomon said they had looked at this feature, but decided it was hard to implement and that Roon already does it and does it better than they ever could. (Highly debatable whether Roon Radio is all that great, but whatever. )

That's really disappointing. It just means that Qobuz's competitors will continue pulling away and develop ever-more-sticky relationships with their customers. Of course, there may be only a handful or two of organizations with the resources and knowledge to competently develop this capability -- and nobody is quite doing it perfectly yet. But it's one of those things that will be table stakes for media providers, IMHO, if it isn't that already (not just with streaming music, but books, streaming video, and other information services as well).

[RedSwede]

Had a bit of a play over the holidays with EQing non ideal systems and what is minimally needed to give good improvement in sound quality.

 

1. Qobuz should be able to load .txt files with PEQ parameters in the standard REW format. This would mean we could correct headphones using the AutoEQ database of 2 or 3000 headphones, or relatively simply create a PEQ set from REW.

2. Testing in-car, the option for separate L/R EQ is important.

3. Variable time delay to either L or R would be an incredible feature for in car without a front-centre speaker. It creates a soundstage from nothing.

4. A simple, variable crossfeed implementation for headphones

5. Ability to save these profiles and easily switch - say from the now playing window. You can then quickly switch from car to headphone profile, for example.

 

On an “OK” car stereo, I was amazed and the increased listenability from 8 or 9 PEQ bands and some time delay (this was at least as important as EQ, both for soundstage and linearity). I get wifi in my garage so used Roon to test it all - it took about 30 minutes to measure and get a minimal set of filters.

This would add far more to my listening experience in any situation where I am using my phone than high res, actually...

 

[left channel]

16 hours ago, Balthazar B said:

If well-executed, AI won't be as limited as this at all. A good AI-driven musical discovery capability:

 

Even Mr. Singularity himself, Ray Kurzweil, foresees limits in AI's ability to work with poetry and literature even as it reaches the ability to translate and organize nonfiction and even some types of fiction. I expect similar limitations in music.

 

16 hours ago, Balthazar B said:

That's really disappointing. It just means that Qobuz's competitors will continue pulling away

 

If Qobuz were like its competitors, I would not be here.
 

[dmackta]

14 minutes ago, left channel said:

 

Even Mr. Singularity himself, Ray Kurzweil, foresees limits in AI's ability to work with poetry and literature even as it reaches the ability to translate and organize nonfiction and even some types of fiction. I expect similar limitations in music.

 

 

If Qobuz were like its competitors, I would not be here.
 

All this is true but not sure where the idea we are not working on personalization, radio features, and autoplay came from. People just have no idea how small our team still is. Anyway, I've got a feeling '21 is gonna be a good year. 

[Balthazar B]

24 minutes ago, left channel said:

17 hours ago, Balthazar B said:

If well-executed, AI won't be as limited as this at all. A good AI-driven musical discovery capability:

 

Even Mr. Singularity himself, Ray Kurzweil, foresees limits in AI's ability to work with poetry and literature even as it reaches the ability to translate and organize nonfiction and even some types of fiction. I expect similar limitations in music.

 

17 hours ago, Balthazar B said:

That's really disappointing. It just means that Qobuz's competitors will continue pulling away

 

If Qobuz were like its competitors, I would not be here.

 

Thanks for commenting!

• We're not asking AI to create music, but to do immense and deep pattern matching to present a plausible set of existing musical (or video, or written) selections based on all the information it can correlate, over time, about what a person enjoys listening to (or watch, or read -- or find) -- and doesn't. AI can do this pretty well right now, and it gets better year by year. 
• If Qobuz had certain capabilities some of its competitors already have -- in addition to what it already is and does extremely well -- it would be a much more compelling service for me.

[left channel]

31 minutes ago, Balthazar B said:

 

Thanks for commenting!

• We're not asking AI to create music, but to do immense and deep pattern matching to present a plausible set of existing musical (or video, or written) selections based on all the information it can correlate, over time, about what a person enjoys listening to (or watch, or read -- or find) -- and doesn't. AI can do this pretty well right now, and it gets better year by year. 
• If Qobuz had certain capabilities some of its competitors already have -- in addition to what it already is and does extremely well -- it would be a much more compelling service for me.

 

I understand and appreciate your position. Please just note I did not write "create", I wrote "translate and organize", and that people much smarter than me believe a certain level of human expression will always remain incomprehensible to machine intelligence. Anyway I would opt out of any attempt to record everything about my listening habits, just as I'm already opted out of map history, search history, and etc.  I don't use capabilities some of the competitors already have because I find their results disappointing and the whole idea creepy, so if such features were added to Qobuz I wouldn't find it more compelling myself, but if it keeps you subscribing then that's fine. I just want the Qobuz folks to know I appreciate what they're already doing now.