Qobuz Discussion Thread

[Grizaudio]

Why does Qobuz want to charge two different amounts for upfront payment? 

[eltech]

 

 

Tidal gone

Edited April 17, 2021 by eltech

[awayward]

7 minutes ago, Grizaudio said:

Why does Qobuz want to charge two different amounts for upfront payment? 

Go to the Qobuz website, the $249.99 doesn’t exist

Edited April 17, 2021 by awayward

[Grizaudio]

I just signed up to Qobuz. 

No MQA.... amazing! 

 

The 96khz tracks sound absolutely amazing. 

One of my favourites, much better via Qobuz:

[cjstokes]

On 16/04/2021 at 8:37 PM, mbd said:

Apologies if this has been discussed (Did a quick scan through four pages of comments), but for those who already have Qobuz (US/EU based), are you intending to shift to the Australian version? I've been happily using the US Qobuz (via Roon) on my setup for a while, and not sure if I should shift the account to an AU based one. 

Yes, I've changed to AU (I had transferred from FR to US and my US trial period was about to end as the AU service became available).

The main reason is that I suspect access to subscribing through accounts in other countries will eventually become firmly geoblocked, and I don't want to have to transfer my Qobuz library over in Roon in future and have to manually redo all the Roon tagging.

Roon is just starting to become useable for me, so my current Qobuz library is small (< 200 albums which transferred easily with TuneMyMusic, although tags are lost), but I'll start using it a lot more as they get the bugs of the last major update sorted out, and the transfer will becoming more painful the longer I wait.

[cjstokes]

1 hour ago, awayward said:

Go to the Qobuz website, the $249.99 doesn’t exist

"1 month free, then $249.99 / year" is just French for "$0.00 then $229.99 / year"

It loses a little in translation

(FYI: My PayPal transaction said I'd be charged $229.99 in a month's time)

[Grizaudio]

The service sounds great, but it’s missing some favourite electronica. 

small indie outfits. 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Grizaudio

[mjs]

On 16/04/2021 at 8:07 PM, mbd said:

Apologies if this has been discussed (Did a quick scan through four pages of comments), but for those who already have Qobuz (US/EU based), are you intending to shift to the Australian version? I've been happily using the US Qobuz (via Roon) on my setup for a while, and not sure if I should shift the account to an AU based one. 

As I posted on the MQA Fraud thread, I have just shifted my Qobuz account library from the UK to Oz and have shut down my Tidal account (shifting all Tidal tracks to my Oz Qobuz account as well) No dramas, all sounds good, either via Auralic LDS or Roon.

Edited April 17, 2021 by mjs

[Niktech]

12 hours ago, Grizaudio said:

The service sounds great, but it’s missing some favourite electronica. 

small indie outfits. 

I'm finding the same. I'm also finding that everything is categorised under the one genre - Electonica. Whereas  I listen to a lot of sub and perhaps sub sub genres of electronica. Downtempo, psydub, psychill, chillgressive to name but a few. Unless you know the name of the artist you are searching for I don't think you would find it by simply browsing 'Electronica'.

It also doesn't make it possible to 'discover' artists in that sub genre that perhaps I haven't heard of.

 

I purchase alot of hi res music directly from the artist or the indie label from Bandcamp, and I've actually bfound some of them to be represented on Quobuz, which has been a plus.

[Chris.chapterten]

Well I just started my Qobuz free trial and they seem to have most of my favourite bands and a half decent amount of HI-Res. I listen to mostly heavy metal and classic rock. Have sampled a few Hi-Res tracks and compared to Tidal in MQA... initial impression is that the MQA on Tidal has a sharper treble in that guitar sound is a bit brighter and more defined... also a bit louder overall. I’m guessing that’s some sort of EQ thing? In comparison on Qobuz the heavy metal from the 80s sounds more like an 80s recording? A bit flatter / smoother / quieter. 
 

But yeah.. these are just VERY early impressions. My HiFi system is also very basic (Powernode 2i into Dynaudio Emit speakers)... so take with a grain of salt..

[Kevy]

On a quick listen today, I'm undecided MQA vs QOBUZ 24bit FLAC.

 

If only there was an easy way to filter tracks for an A/B listen and find high-res albums in Roon. I've been looking through the download store on QOBUZ to see what's readily available and what people are buying.

 

Most MQA and FLAC are 24bit 96Hz . I have found the occasional higher sample rate MQA (e.g. Marianne Thorsen's version of Mozart Violin Concerto's) but these are relatively rare.

 

Without going into specific details, my preference depends on the actual recording. For instance, I prefer the presentation mid forward musicality of the MQA version of Yifei Liu's Mulan's Reflection as opposed to that on QOBUZ.  The majority of tracks I listened to this morning sounded 'fine' on either with perhaps a slight subjective preference towards QOBUZ for orchestral. The description that QOBUZ seems smoother, flatter in EQ is something I also noticed.

 

In the end, I decided I'll just listen to whatever ROON chooses and 'enjoy' what I'm listening to. 

 

Disclaimer: Not the most resolving of headphones used in this morning's comparison. MBP -> ROON -> Wireless to Hugo2/2Go -> Empyrean

Edited April 18, 2021 by Dr_Kevy

[awayward]

19 minutes ago, Dr_Kevy said:

 

If only there was an easy way to filter tracks for an A/B listen and find high-res albums in Roon

If the tracks are in your Roon library, you can use Focus to filter by sample rate

[Tobes]

1 hour ago, awayward said:

If the tracks are in your Roon library, you can use Focus to filter by sample rate

But only if Roon has updated the metadata for the particular album to reflect the correct sampling rate.

 

Does anyone know if the Qobuz caching feature (storing played music for offline replay) can be enabled in Roon? I can't see it. 

I'm just trying to pin down why the Qobuz desktop app sounds better (to me) than Roon playback of the same music -  Qobuz app having superior focus, articulation, depth perspective/location.

I actually doubt it's the caching feature, since Roon does cache to memory/disk(?) but doesn't retain.

FWIW I have all Headroom management/DSP/filters disabled in Roon - just sending native pcm rates direct to my DAC. The same of course for the Qobuz app which doesn't have any of that stuff.

Maybe it's just a case of simpler being better, but both should be sending the same data to the DAC so should sound identical(?).

[Esoterica]

On 17/04/2021 at 12:30 PM, Kaynin said:

Tidal all over again...

Hmm yeah kind of, but MQA are smaller files afaik, so less likely to cause issues.
 

The thing is, I've set my Bluesound Node to only output CD 16 bit/up to 48kHz for qobuz and the SQ is fine, so I would possibly pay for it afterall. 

[Esoterica]

22 hours ago, Tobes said:

I think it's up to the player software to recognise the Hi-res title and have a mechanism to display as such.

The actual 'Hi-res' graphic used by Qobuz is, I believe, a registered trademark of the Japan Audio Society and would need licencing to display(?).

Audirvana for example just use a little 'H' symbol for identification. 

Exactly. In the BluOS app required for a Node, it just has a HR or CD icon. I don't think there's any way to tell the actual bitrate and frequency. I wish I could use the qobuz app to control and select music, as it's far easier to use.

 

The good news though is I've been streaming a little while this morning with the highest possible quality set on my Node and it's been flawless (touch wood). I'm also streaming on kayo simultaneously. 

[Jakeyb77_Redux]

I’m doing a side by side MQA vs Qobuz today. Mac mini M1 running Audirvana into a Fein 11. 
 

Playing “I’m Coming Out” in Flac in Qobuz. MQA in Tidal. 
 

Gotta say the Qobuz has more attack in the drums and sounds better 

[Kaynin]

18 minutes ago, Esoterica said:

Hmm yeah kind of, but MQA are smaller files afaik, so less likely to cause issues.
 

The thing is, I've set my Bluesound Node to only output CD 16 bit/up to 48kHz for qobuz and the SQ is fine, so I would possibly pay for it afterall. 

 

It has more to do with the quality of servers that Tidal/Qobuz use.  Hopefully Qobuz are investing in this area.

[NonPlayableCharacter]

23 minutes ago, Esoterica said:

Exactly. In the BluOS app required for a Node, it just has a HR or CD icon. I don't think there's any way to tell the actual bitrate and frequency. I wish I could use the qobuz app to control and select music, as it's far easier to use.

 

Agree. This has been a bit of a ball-ache for me and my Vault 2i since getting on Quboz.

 

I've suspended my use of Roon since the day I kicked Tidal out (mostly on this premise, but also because I was running my Roon Core on a Synology NAS and there are clouds on the horizon over Roon Core working on the upcoming DSM v7.0). Now I'm on Qobuz, I am looking for a small form-factor PC to run the Core; no rush though.

 

I've been using the BluOS app to play HR stuff, but then going to the same album/track on the Qobuz app running on my Win64 machine and checking the bitrate that way. It does make me feel like a bit of a knuckle-dragging idiot having to do this as a workaround; it strikes me that this would be a good feature for future BluOS versions. The other workaround is to check the display on my DAC to see what sampling rate and bit depth it sees on the coax input but the problem here is that the font is tiny and my seating position is 5 metres away and I am overcome with CBF with this approach.

[Chris.chapterten]

41 minutes ago, Esoterica said:

Exactly. In the BluOS app required for a Node, it just has a HR or CD icon. I don't think there's any way to tell the actual bitrate and frequency. I wish I could use the qobuz app to control and select music, as it's far easier to use.

 

The good news though is I've been streaming a little while this morning with the highest possible quality set on my Node and it's been flawless (touch wood). I'm also streaming on kayo simultaneously. 

Funny, I’m also using a node and streaming Kayo and HR music simultaneously today.... No issues. My internet connection is around 45mbps

[Esoterica]

6 hours ago, Chris.chapterten said:

Well I just started my Qobuz free trial and they seem to have most of my favourite bands and a half decent amount of HI-Res. I listen to mostly heavy metal and classic rock. Have sampled a few Hi-Res tracks and compared to Tidal in MQA... initial impression is that the MQA on Tidal has a sharper treble in that guitar sound is a bit brighter and more defined... also a bit louder overall. I’m guessing that’s some sort of EQ thing? In comparison on Qobuz the heavy metal from the 80s sounds more like an 80s recording? A bit flatter / smoother / quieter. 
 

But yeah.. these are just VERY early impressions. My HiFi system is also very basic (Powernode 2i into Dynaudio Emit speakers)... so take with a grain of salt..

I have a similar impression so far.

[Kaynin]

I've been using Qobuz for the past 3 hours and comparing to WAV CD rips along the way.  I have to say, I'm a big fan so far, Qoduz sounds great to me.  I like the GUI, I think it's better than Spotify.  I've found that Spotify has become too busy, in their quest to keep adding new features to stay "fresh".

 

I transferred my Spotify album list via Soundizz, and it was a breeze.  I found it didn't pick up all of my albums, but I just manually added those.  

 

Two of my main concerns - server quality and library, so far, aren't a concern at all.  I'll keep playing over the next month, and if it continues like this then I'll cancel Spotify and just run Qobuz.

[Gambit 1870]

Interesting the comparisons between Qobuz and Spotify, audio quality wise it's a no brainer until Spotify Hifi drops later in the year. 

I'm actually surprised that Spotify has not gone down the high quality audio path a lot sooner, I think they have really dropped the ball there.

Since using Qobuz from the release, I find myself missing the Spotify algorithms. 

The discover weekly and daily mixes have become a staple of my listening. 

What I've found is the more discover weekly I have listened to, has opened up a whole new world of artists and music to me to the point where I've been creating some really diverse playlists. Then because I'm listening to those playlist more frequently, the discover weekly becomes yet more diverse. 

 

If Spotify is CD quality only I reckon I'd be happy with that, just for the diversity and range of music that it has exposed me to. 

Long time Qobuz users can correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen that so far. 

Jason

Edited April 18, 2021 by Gambit 1870

[NonPlayableCharacter]

12 minutes ago, Gambit 1870 said:

Interesting the comparisons between Qobuz and Spotify, audio quality wise it's a no brainer until Spotify Hifi dropd later in the year. 

I'm actually surprised that Spotify has not gone down the high quality audio path a lot sooner, I think they have dropped the ball there.

Since using Qobuz from the release, I find myself missing the Spotify algorithms. 

The discover weekly and daily mixes have become a staple of my listening. 

What I've found is the more discovery weekly I have listened to, has opened up a whole new world of artists and music to me to the point where I've been creating some really diverse playlists. Then because I'm listening to those playlist more frequently, the discovery weekly becomes yetbmore diverse. 

 

If Spotify is CD quality only I reckon I'd be happy with that, just for the diversity and range of music that it has exposed me to. 

Long time Qobuz users can correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen that so far. 

Jason

 

Not an unfair assessment.

 

I ran Tidal over Roon for about a year and was ambivalent about the quality; it was ok, but not spectacular - better than Spotify, sure, but nothing to write home about; NAS based FLACs were invariably better. I resubscribed to Spotify as an interim measure (after ditching Tidal the day that Square bought-in). I figured it would be good enough whilst awaiting Qobuz. Spotify algorithms are head-and-shoulders above everything else out there, including Roon's suggestions. Spotify is brilliant for on-the-go (who needs lossless when using Bluetooth connections to headphones/cars etc?). I am glad to be back on-board.

 

Between Spotify periods, I acquired a separate DAC in my main listening area. The oddest thing happened. Spotify actually became tolerable when I re-subbed (not amazing, not spectacular, but not at all crap) when played through my home system. I think I'm going to maintain the Spotify sub due to suggestions and mobile synergies. It's also great for player groups over Sonos right now whilst waiting for Qobuz on Sonos.

 

A really odd thing has happened in the last 5 or 6 days since Qobuz went live though. Once we started to see more HiRes stuff filtering through late Wednesday, I have had Qobuz playing in the background a fair bit (except Sunday morning when it's vinyl alone - those are the rules at Chez Tel) and something new has happened. My listening is split into 2 modes; I either sit, concentrate and listen to whole albums in the main listening area or I have music playing for ambience in the background around the house (I usually group Sonos players and let this happen - think bbq, party, etc). Because Sonos has not had the geography-brake released for Qobuz yet (I'm told end of April by Qobuz), I just left Qobuz playlists (some HR, some just CD, and some mixed) running through my Bluesound, into my DAC and into the M6si amp as background on low to medium volume. The odd thing is that this is the first time I have experienced lower level background music that has pulled me away from the other task at hand, drawn me in and made me think "wow, that sounds good". It's happened maybe 7 or 8 times over the weekend and every time it's been a Hi-Res Qobuz track.

 

YMMV.

[08Boss302]

I am still on my US Qobuz and just earlier had a chat with a mate who has the AU Qobuz trial There was an album he couldnt find on the AU Qobuz that is on the US Qobuz.  Its an obscure metal album but interesting its not on the AU version.

Has anyone else that has the US or UK based version done any comparison with mates on the AU version.  If there is a few differences I assume these would be down to geographical licensing rights?

FWIW, that same album is not on Tidal AU or Spotify either.

[Gambit 1870]

25 minutes ago, El Tel said:

 

Not an unfair assessment.

 

I ran Tidal over Roon for about a year and was ambivalent about the quality; it was ok, but not spectacular - better than Spotify, sure, but nothing to write home about; NAS based FLACs were invariably better. I resubscribed to Spotify as an interim measure (after ditching Tidal the day that Square bought-in). I figured it would be good enough whilst awaiting Qobuz. Spotify algorithms are head-and-shoulders above everything else out there, including Roon's suggestions. Spotify is brilliant for on-the-go (who needs lossless when using Bluetooth connections to headphones/cars etc?). I am glad to be back on-board.

 

Between Spotify periods, I acquired a separate DAC in my main listening area. The oddest thing happened. Spotify actually became tolerable when I re-subbed (not amazing, not spectacular, but not at all crap) when played through my home system. I think I'm going to maintain the Spotify sub due to suggestions and mobile synergies. It's also great for player groups over Sonos right now whilst waiting for Qobuz on Sonos.

 

A really odd thing has happened in the last 5 or 6 days since Qobuz went live though. Once we started to see more HiRes stuff filtering through late Wednesday, I have had Qobuz playing in the background a fair bit (except Sunday morning when it's vinyl alone - those are the rules at Chez Tel) and something new has happened. My listening is split into 2 modes; I either sit, concentrate and listen to whole albums in the main listening area or I have music playing for ambience in the background around the house (I usually group Sonos players and let this happen - think bbq, party, etc). Because Sonos has not had the geography-brake released for Qobuz yet (I'm told end of April by Qobuz), I just left Qobuz playlists (some HR, some just CD, and some mixed) running through my Bluesound, into my DAC and into the M6si amp as background on low to medium volume. The odd thing is that this is the first time I have experienced lower level background music that has pulled me away from the other task at hand, drawn me in and made me think "wow, that sounds good". It's happened maybe 7 or 8 times over the weekend and every time it's been a Hi-Res Qobuz track.

 

YMMV.

I'm away at work at the moment, so I have yet to experience the Hi Res goodness of Qobuz (bring on Tuesday), but I think my statement will still stand. 

 

I'm with you though, if the music can cut through and draw you in to the point where it becomes the priority then that can only be a good thing.