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QOBUZ IN AMERICA

Sal1950

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I honestly think MP3 has had a bad rap, I find it very difficult to differentiate between high quality MP3 and FLAC or CDs.
Of course it really depends on data rate but yes, 320 can sound very good. I've been listening to Spotify for a couple years now and really had no bitch on SQ.

Listening to Linda Ronstadt-Whats New (Edition Studio Master) "whatever that means" streaming to the Web Player in Linux. What a beautifully recorded album. It's a 24/96 stream but something is downsampling it to 44K before my DAC and dang it just froze again. :mad: Don't know why the web player keeps locking up, it will play a song or two and then freeze mid-track. To restart I ususlly have to just forward to the next track. After all the years working on QC at PCLOS I hate messing with buggy software, I want it to just work! Seems like there's a buffering problem going on but ???, I've got a 90+mbps line so it's not that, anyway don't have any freezing problems under Windoz and the dedicated app?
 

Sal1950

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Using the Windoz app and listening to a couple 24/192 streams I'm getting some popping/ticking like data dropouts. Get it both using PC> USB > Emo DC-1 DAC>Marantz analog input, and PC>HDMI directly into the Marantz Pre/Pro. Thottleing back the stream to 24/96 from the same album and the noise disappears?
 

Ratatoskr

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Qobuz continues to have problems with the Windows app. I found their web player to be less buggy. Solved problems entirely by using Audirvana+ to play either Tidal or Qobuz.
 

MrGoodbits

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Haven't had any issues with Qobuz Mac app, but mostly been using Audirvana+ and that's been flawless so far but the interface is a little basic. What I REALLY want is the Qobuz app interface---but it can't handle audio plugins, and I'm addicted to CanOpener and Sonarworks.
 

Darwin

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I was thinking the other day...why wouldn’t Roon, some time, start a streaming service...
Because there is no money in it. They would probably have to be prepared to lose money on that part of their service.
But it would reduce their dependence on other services.
 

Sal1950

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Spotify, Pandora, and Tidal have never made money and show no signs of doing so any time soon.
Google. Amazon and Apple can afford to break even or even lose a little money.
I believe at some point a few of them will give up and close their doors. That then giving the few left a larger number of customers to divide up.
Maybe?
 

vert

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I was given a 3 month free subscription to Qobuz with my purchase of Audirvana+ and it works very well, sounds extremely good. There are many playlists for one to explore. When searching for stuff by some legendary artist however, say Elvis, Nat or Frank, you will get a lot of "noise" in the results in the form of useless compilations, best offs and such, that make it impossible to find the good stuff if you don't know the precise title, and I'm not sure why Qobuz, or any other service, would include those, other than boosting their library counts.

On the go, Qobuz works well within the USB Audio Player Android app, but streaming will freeze at some points in my commute unless I chose a lower resolution than 16/44 i.e. a subscription cheaper than the 20 CHF or $ / mth one would be enough in that use case, and 4G works pretty well in Switzerland. But then, for home, I'd like to have the premium subscription. But for what? for 1 hour on weekends, at most, where I can sit and enjoy some music. I'm unable to work and listen to music, and if I could, I'm not sure I would use a streaming service over a choice of thousands of Internet radios.

So to me, a music service subscription is almost pointless. I could see being a Qobuz subscriber on and off, for just one month when I feel in the mood to explore some new music; then again, there's YouTube. That's another problem I have: a lot of the new music, or the old music I was curious about, I just don't like enough to buy. For the remainder, a meager list of a dozen must-have titles or so gleaned from my 3 month free subscription, I can buy the CDs for cheap or even borrow at the public library.

I like Qobuz's service for buying music in that you get the choice of several formats. It proved very useful once when I bought an album that sounded awful in FLAC format; as their rep was being a d*ck about it claiming it was only my ears and his audiophile ears knew better, it occured to me to dowload the uncompressed WAV, and converting it to FLAC myself using dbPowerAmp, which worked. So their file was bad and they wouldn't admit it, or refund me, but to their credit having a choice of several formats proved an extremely useful feature. THAT BEING SAID, CDs can be bought online here typically for 30% less (sometimes even less) than the standard Qobuz CD format price. It's not that I'm on a very strict budget, but we do have a family budget and priorities, and my wife and I tend to mercilessly cut or avoid expenses that are not fully justified.
 
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Sal1950

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Qobuz continues to have problems with the Windows app. I found their web player to be less buggy. Solved problems entirely by using Audirvana+ to play either Tidal or Qobuz.
You don't show your location but I'm finding here the opposite. The Web player is mostly useless, it freezes up every so often and the only way to start it again is to forward to the next track if you were listening to a album. The app player works OK with only a very occasional few second dropout and the sputtering with 24/192 streams.
It's not that I'm on a very strict budget, but we do have a family budget and priorities, and my wife and I tend to mercilessly cut or avoid expenses that are not fully justified.
I fully understand. Being retired and on a fixed income I have to keep a tight rein on my spending. I didn't think I needed a streamer but after a while of using Spotify I've found it a must have.. I'm now playing with the free beta of their USA offering mainly just to determine if I can hear a major difference between the Spotify 320 mbps and 16/44 or better on Qobuz, and also balance that against it's additonal $10 a month or buying a couple CD's of stuff I really want.
Sucks to be poor. LOL
 

ripvw

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just signed up for a free trial of Qobuz...trying to get used to the Mac player's interface vs Tidal. They claim to have about 2 million HiRez titles, but I've noticed that many of those albums have multiple copies at different resolutions - so not exactly 2 million as I count it. In any case I like the idea of 24/192 vs Tidal's 24/96 - but will gladly admit I'm not likely to hear any difference. Also nice is HiRez for the car and iPhone - Tidal is limited to 16/44 in that respect. Defintely not going to hear that difference in the car but with the iPhone and the Etymotic's it MAY be audible.

Of course they want more money for this - $25 a month for Qobuz "Studio" vs Tidal "Master" at $20. Or you can pay $300 a year and get discounted downloads as well - not my cup of tea.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/qobuz-hi-rez-streaming-launches-us

I'll keep listening and playing with it until my free subscription runs out and then I'll have to make a choice. The Khadas Tone Board should be here soon so I'll have another reason to binge on music...
 

esm

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I recently signed up for the trial, and I'm pretty disappointed in the overall selection compared to Tidal (and definitely compared to Spotify). Their classical selection seems excellent, but there's a large catalogue of electronic music that I'm not able to find, and their search engine seems to miss things even if a specific track I've searched for appears somewhere in their database. Of the content they know about, a great deal of particularly popular music appears to not have a streaming license, and they instead push you toward purchasing through them (and I'm uninterested in purchasing content through a streaming service that could go out of business next year).

I'm also pretty disappointed in the poor curation of at least electronic music (literally, they only have one category: "electronic/dance", which I guess means trap and ambient are basically the same thing, right?), which would be fine except they also don't have any sort of personalized recommendation engine, meaning that it's pretty hard to discover new music and artists.

They appear to be targeting the "I know what I like, let me listen to a single whole album" crowd. That's fine, but I own a great deal of music already, so I don't usually look to streaming for things I already know; I'm looking to set a mood, or discover new music. I guess I'm not their target audience?

On the technical side, I was hoping to be able to use it natively on either my old Fire TV or my newer nVidia Shield TV, but the Qobuz app isn't available in either app store. (I haven't tried side-loading the Android app on the Shield yet.) So, I've been testing it with a chromecast audio (optical into my udp-205), casting from my living room android tablet, and playback constantly stops; when I check the tablet, playback is paused, and resumes as soon as I hit play. Kodi's integration appears serviceable, but Kodi's strong suit has never been music playback, sadly. BubbleUPNP's integration seems to be working as well.

At this point, the combination of technical issues, poor selection, and lack of personalization are making it pretty unlikely that I'll continue a subscription beyond the free trial. I'm slowly realizing that what I really want is a "hi-fi"/lossless version of Spotify (for which I would pay dearly; I didn't even blink at $25/month for Qobuz), but it seems as though they are unlikely to fill that space any time soon.
 

suttondesign

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I adore Tidal. It has changed my life. When used through Roon with EQ and other features, it's a knockout. And it's redbook.
 

Sal1950

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BigBeard

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Tidal has improved since in the past 2/3 years, but spotify's catalogue and presentation is far better. It is only the quality that keeps my away. If they offered hi-res streaming, I would cancel tidal in an instant (I find that tidal pushes a certain genre of music/artists - bad for discovering new music). If Qobuz is too focused on classical, I would not like that either.
 

WLVCA

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I just completed a 90 day trial of Qobuz. Found most of the music I wanted and it usually worked, but not always. I went in hoping to have a good experience and was ready to sign up for paid service when my 90 day trial expired

I was using the Windows desktop software primarily and would have periodic freezes or other glitches. One day a couple weeks ago I could not get it to play at all.

On three occasions over the past month I sent them an email with questions or issues. They never responded to any of my inquiries. Going online I am still being directed to the UK site.

So, my experience with Qobuz was mixed. YMMV. At present I am looking elsewhere. Perhaps I'll look again once they get their act together.

Right now I am using Pandora Premium and it works - no glitches or lockup and starts up immediately. Sound quality is not high resolution but it is not horrible.
 

JJB70

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I don't think Mark Waldrep is too impressed with the Qobuz marketing spin for their high res service.
 

Hugo9000

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From Part 2 (http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6419):

I love that Qobuz is fighting against the “deceptive misuse” of audio terminology and are willing to help us find our way. Maybe they should start by removing the “Hi-Res Audio” logo discussed in my last blog…it is reserved for hardware and has no business on a site that delivers music downloads or streams.

Perhaps the inclusion of the "Hi-Res" logo that's supposedly just for hardware is to let Qobuz customers know that such hardware will allow them to play those files natively?
 
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