Qobuz Discussion Thread

[Bass13]

Yep me too....it comes up empty...

[08Boss302]

5 minutes ago, KRSDarwin said:

Thanks @08Boss302 I know it shouldn’t be that hard but whether I go though Roon or Qobuz direct I do not seem able to produce the same results.  As I continue to type Stereophile the playlist option drops off after Stereophil as per below.

 

I will keep tying as you have convinced me it is user error/incompetence. 
 

Thanks (I think). 

hmmm ok, ensure you have all genres ticked and that might help.

 

there is another way too

if you ensure you have all genres ticked and go to the playlist area and select hifi audio partners it should pop up then too

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, hammerharry said:

USA account? No luck either

ahhh yep. My bad, maybe this is the difference however I am suprised that they would remove playlists.

 

[KRSDarwin]

I am on an Australian account. So maybe different content. Will try emailing Stereophile (who I subscribe to) and ask them to work with Qobuz to extend to Australia. 
 

Has not been in Audio Partners in mine, as I checked there. 

Edited June 26, 2021 by KRSDarwin

[KRSDarwin]

I have sent an email request off to Stereophile and Qobuz to have it added to Australia.  Let’s see what responses I get. 
 

Thanks all for contributing to possibly getting to the bottom of this. 
 

Cheers

[KRSDarwin]

Well that was great work by Qobuz, today I received the following e-mail from Qobuz, and am listening to the Stereophile playlist on Qobuz as I type:

 

"Hello, 
 Thank you for your message. 
 You can access this playlist in Australia through the following link https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/6468666 (three songs are not available in the Australian catalogue for the moment).
 Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
 Kind regards,

Qobuz Customer Service"

 

Excellent.

[wolster]

16 hours ago, KRSDarwin said:

Well that was great work by Qobuz, today I received the following e-mail from Qobuz, and am listening to the Stereophile playlist on Qobuz as I type:

 

"Hello, 
 Thank you for your message. 
 You can access this playlist in Australia through the following link https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/6468666 (three songs are not available in the Australian catalogue for the moment).
 Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
 Kind regards,

Qobuz Customer Service"

 

Excellent.

 

Worked for me. Thanks! @KRSDarwin

[Niktech]

Quite an extensive collection of The Doors on Quobuz in Hi Res 24/96 which is very noice . Morrison Hotel (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) is 24/196 kHz.

 

I’ve come full circle back to Quobuz. Or perhaps that’s a 180 , after getting screwed by the wacky Deezer subscription model
 

Cheers

[KRSDarwin]

18 hours ago, KRSDarwin said:

Well that was great work by Qobuz, today I received the following e-mail from Qobuz, and am listening to the Stereophile playlist on Qobuz as I type:

And to complete the picture, Stereophile emailed me back with Jim Austin’s contact to seek to address the issue. I informed them it was all sorted and thanked them for their response.  Nice to see some good customer service and genuine assistance. 

[Guest dr_carl]

I have subscribed to qobuz. Sounds better than tidal on my gear. Currently streaming what is called Best of 192 kHz : Rock, but I'm only getting 96 kHz....anyone else having this experience?

 

If I  stream a local 192 kHz file I get 192 displayed, so I can believe the DAC...

 

Edit:

 

Solved it. There's a setting in BluOS that sets the streaming resolution

Edited July 1, 2021 by dr_carl
Answered my own question

[rand129678]

I just posted this in another thread but makes sense to post here too - regarding albums missings in Qobuz that you can play in Tidal/Spotify/Apple Music.

 

I used this form (Qobuz Support sent me this link) to request 3 missing albums (that are there on Tidal).

 

http://qob.uz/request

 

And 3 months later they are now there for me. So they are listening and actively trying to fill the gaps.

 

Make sure you fill the form carefully - share a proper link to the Tidal/Spotify/Apple Music page. Get the artist name, album title, record label correct. It makes it easier for the Qobuz staff to get it right. 

 

The record label is shown on the album page of all the apps.

 

Hope that helps

[POV]

I’m trialling Qobuz at the moment and comparing with Tidal.  Not sure how people are comparing but I am noticing that there is a volume difference in Roon between Tidal and Qobuz with Qobuz always being higher volume.  Given that we know even small changes in volume impact perception of a range of stereo effects I am wondering if this could be contributing to the expressed view that Qobuz sounds better?

 

Not suggesting folks are wrong, just wondering if this may be contributing.  I prefer Tidal interface and library is much better for my music tastes.  I’m hopeful that Spotify Hifi will land and be good for filling the library but until then I can’t see Qobuz replacing Tidal for me.

[Bass13]

One thing I have noticed, regardless if its Qobuz which I currently use or Tidal, which I did have.

 

If the recording is not good then the sound quality of the music is so effected its not funny, so much so that I actually thing something is wrong with my system.

For instance, Nils Fraham album All Melody is absolutely stunning it sounds amazing, as do so are many of his other albums, yes most are in Hi-Res, but there so are many other albums from different artist in Hi-Res that sound not that good, yet some in CD quality sound fantastic.

 

IMO the recording is by far the most important factor regardless if streaming from Qobuz or the Tidal platforms or if its in  HI-RES or CD quality.

 

 

[Bunno77]

26 minutes ago, Bass13 said:

 

For instance, Nils Fraham album All Melody is absolutely stunning it sounds amazing, as do so are many of his other albums

 

One of my favourites and it does sound good but in some quiet passages the noise of the equipment used does bug me. Sound a bit like white noise. I hear it on a lot of albums.

[brumby]

31 minutes ago, Bass13 said:

IMO the recording is by far the most important factor regardless if streaming from Qobuz or the Tidal platforms or if its in  HI-RES or CD quality.

I think you are right.  I also think that this argument far precedes the advent of streaming or even digital vs analogue.  It in fact stretches back to the dawn of recorded music.  A bad recording cannot be made good by any amount of post processing.  But a good recording can be made into a dog's breakfast through post processing (aka "mastering" or "remastering").  This was the fate of a lot of well recorded vinyl in the early days of CD - it was butchered in the process of transferring it to CD.  It wasn't the medium, it was the "message".

[sir sanders zingmore]

31 minutes ago, brumby said:

I think you are right.  I also think that this argument far precedes the advent of streaming or even digital vs analogue.  It in fact stretches back to the dawn of recorded music.  A bad recording cannot be made good by any amount of post processing.  But a good recording can be made into a dog's breakfast through post processing (aka "mastering" or "remastering").  This was the fate of a lot of well recorded vinyl in the early days of CD - it was butchered in the process of transferring it to CD.  It wasn't the medium, it was the "message".

100%
One of my big disappointments with MQA was that I originally thought it was about sourcing the best mastering (you know, the “M” part). I was young and naive. 

[TerryO]

A friend came over two weeks ago and we tried his Qobuz account with the gear in the main listening room, we both agreed it didn’t sound as good as Tidal, plus Qobuz didn’t have several recordings that I often use as reference tracks. 
 

I do intend to properly trial Qobuz and back to back it with Tidal at some stage but so far I’m in no hurry. I had hoped that it would be an improvement over Tidal as that would have been an easy and cheap improvement in sq.

 

Time will tell I guess.

 

cheers,

Terry

Edited July 27, 2021 by TerryO

[brumby]

I haven't tried Tidal so I'm not in a position to judge.  I'm not too enamoured with the MQA concept, however.  I went with Qobuz because their Classical selection is reputedly the best outside the specialist (Primephonic and Idagio) streamers and because they pay their artists a it more than the other services.  So far, I've not found much that I want to listen to that they haven't got with the glaring exception of Eva Cassidy.  And their sound quality is eminently acceptable IMHO.

[Bass13]

21 hours ago, TerryO said:

A friend came over two weeks ago and we tried his Qobuz account with the gear in the main listening room, we both agreed it didn’t sound as good as Tidal, plus Qobuz didn’t have several recordings that I often use as reference tracks. 
 

I do intend to properly trial Qobuz and back to back it with Tidal at some stage but so far I’m in no hurry. I had hoped that it would be an improvement over Tidal as that would have been an easy and cheap improvement in sq.

 

Time will tell I guess.

 

 

 

If you have young ears, I dare say you should/will hear micro details in the music better then most of us older folks if its there, but the recording is by far the most important factor regardless for the sound quality overall.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Bass13

[TerryO]

4 hours ago, Bass13 said:

 

If you have young ears, I dare say you should/will hear micro details in the music better then most of us older folks if its there, but the recording is by far the most important factor regardless for the sound quality overall.

My ears aren’t young either unfortunately. …
 

In theory they are the same recordings on both service providers, if they are not then does that mean from the tracks we compared that Tidal delivers higher quality recordings? 
 

Before anyone says MQA, in this instance, I was using a Mola Mola Makua pre with a built in Tambqui Dac that doesn’t support MQA.
Anyway this is what we observed on a small comparison, only a bigger longer comparo will tell what works best in this system. I have several other DACs that do support MQA so when I do the longer comparo I’ll try them as well.

 

cheers,

Terry

Edited July 28, 2021 by TerryO

[sir sanders zingmore]

33 minutes ago, TerryO said:

In theory they are the same recordings on both service providers, if they are not then does that mean from the tracks we compared that Tidal delivers higher quality recordings? 

 

 

That seems to be a matter of opinion. I would say, based on my experience, that “if they are not then does that mean from the tracks I compared that qobuz delivers higher quality recordings?”

 

33 minutes ago, TerryO said:

Before anyone says MQA, in this instance, I was using a Mola Mola Makua pre with a built in Tambqui Dac that doesn’t support MQA.

 

It has been shown by a few people that you always get some sort of MQA recording.  This is independent of whether your dac supports it. In fact it’s independent of what format you choose in tidal. I’m other words if you choose the non-MQA version of a track (which is admittedly, almost impossible to find these days since tidal has removed them all), you are still getting the MQA version, just downsampled. 

[TerryO]

51 minutes ago, sir sanders zingmore said:

 

It has been shown by a few people that you always get some sort of MQA recording.  This is independent of whether your dac supports it. In fact it’s independent of what format you choose in tidal. I’m other words if you choose the non-MQA version of a track (which is admittedly, almost impossible to find these days since tidal has removed them all), you are still getting the MQA version, just downsampled. 

From what I can see Tidal puts up what resolution each music file is that you are downloading. I would say over 50% of the music I download doesn’t show it is MQA modified, most show CD resolution. So has Tidal said they have updated all files, even though they show many as only CD resolution? 
So are you saying that even if a Dac doesn’t support MQA one still gets to hear the, so called, benefits of MQA? Given the small, half a dozen songs, comparison to our ears the Tidal recordings did have better SQ.

 If that’s the case then no need to buy a Dac that supports MQA. …

 

cheers,

Terry
 

[Satanica]

Beware that there are most likely volume differences between streaming services due to different volume normalisation levels\methods which will get in the way of proper comparisons unless end-user level matching is applied.

[sir sanders zingmore]

27 minutes ago, TerryO said:

From what I can see Tidal puts up what resolution each music file is that you are downloading. I would say over 50% of the music I download doesn’t show it is MQA modified, most show CD resolution. So has Tidal said they have updated all files, even though they show many as only CD resolution? 

 

 

Tidal hasn’t said this explicitly. Files that appear to be CD quality have been analysed and shown to be downsampled MQA

 

 

27 minutes ago, TerryO said:

So are you saying that even if a Dac doesn’t support MQA one still gets to hear the, so called, benefits of MQA? Given the small, half a dozen songs, comparison to our ears the Tidal recordings did have better SQ.

 If that’s the case then no need to buy a Dac that supports MQA. …

 

cheers,

Terry
 

It depends how you listen. If you go via Roon for example, it (roon) does the “first unfold” for you even if your DAC does not support MQA. To get the full experience you need an MQA dac. 
I’ve read various opinions about how much improvement you get if you have an MQA capable dac, but I have no first hand experience to report 

[Stereophilus]

1 hour ago, sir sanders zingmore said:

It depends how you listen. If you go via Roon for example, it (roon) does the “first unfold” for you even if your DAC does not support MQA. To get the full experience you need an MQA dac. 
I’ve read various opinions about how much improvement you get if you have an MQA capable dac, but I have no first hand experience to report 

Although worth noting you can turn-off MQA processing in Roon through the settings.

[NonPlayableCharacter]

100% concur that if you go to Tidal with Masters tier enabled and find an artist that has only mqa catalogue e.g. Led Zeppelin, then push your tier down to Hi-Fi (CD quality), you will see no mention of mqa in the list from that artist. If you then play something, you will be getting 16/44.1 mqa despite there being no mqa label on the artist's catalogue in Tidal in the HiFi tier.

 

I did an interesting experiment with a mate a few months back where we got 4 different streamer/DACs together and compared them on both local files (hi-res and cd), Qobuz (this was prior to Oz launch, using a VPN) and Tidal. We wrote our notes separately and blind to each other. The interesting outcome with mqa playback was we both chose the same player/DAC for the winner, and it wasn't an mqa certified device. It transpires that Auralic's approach to filters (after Roon did the first unfold) was better than native mqa DACs. Go figure...