Xerosnake90
500+ Head-Fier
About 2 years ago when my audio journey began I had auditioned several of the streaming services available before settling on Deezer. Qobuz was the best sounding but at the time it was missing a LOT of music that I had on my Spotify that I had used for a couple of years prior. I preferred Deezer over Tidal and settled in with it. I had since left the hobby, and have now returned. After revisiting Qobuz I've now found it to have everything that I had on my Deezer and promptly switched over. Just a couple of impressions between the two
Deezer
For $14.99 a month I got access to better quality audio than I had over Spotify. Tidal the two were a bit closer if not similar, I'd venture to say I thought Deezer sounded a BIT better hence my decision to use it but quite frankly I don't remember. Here are some of my complaints
- They recently updated the mobile app to show a collection of album covers above your playlist. Looks nice but it can slide down and obstruct your song list. If you close your phone and open back up you have to back out from the playlist and back in or you only see the names of 2 songs at a time.
- For whatever reason and only on my Tablet songs just fail to load. I have to manually push retry
The desktop app has a couple issues
- There is no gapless play available like in the mobile app. This is really annoying since so many albums blend songs together, it really takes you out of the experience
- If a song isn't downloaded it takes a good 2 - 4 seconds for playback to start. If downloaded, that cuts it down to about 1 second. So the issues with no gapless are farther accentuated
- When you exit an album, instead of taking you back to your location on the previous screen it puts you back to the top of the page. Also annoying when you have 100+ albums and you were moving between them
- The last big issue with Deezer is that some songs for whatever reason just tend to cut off early. This was most noticeable when listening to the album Dawn FM by The Weeknd. The Song Out of Time ends with a radio broadcast type of deal and it cuts off about a second short. I don't recall exactly if this happens elsewhere but as said, annoying especially since it's one of my favorite albums
Qobuz
For $12.99 a month I have access to all but 2 albums on my Deezer list. That being Dream Theater's Systematic Chaos and Alina Baraz Sunbeam EP. I'm not torn up over either. I've found every other song/playlist and then some
Sound quality is a nice step up. Comparing between the two services, their high quality albums have a higher resolution and the term that comes to me is blackground. In Steven Wilson's First Regret/3 Years older from his Hand Cannot Erase album the song starts off with rainfall and echoing of children's voices. On Qobuz the background is black, with defined rainfall and echoing of voices. On Deezer everything seems muddier, the black background isn't there, the rain and children's voices are noticably less clear. This continues throughout the song and same with other higher quality albums. Black backgrounds and more detailed sounds.
That's not to say all albums have these improvements. Pontus Hultgren Beyond the flow of time sounds the same as it did on Deezer, and even the higher quality Dangerous Worlds doesn't sound drastically different from the Deezer version despite being "Hi-Res". That being said recording quality makes a huge difference. A well recorded song on Qobuz will sound better even at cd quality than it does on Deezer.
My only complaint I've come across so far is when I randomize music and choose a track to start with, it doesn't play that track. It immediately randomizes the entire album/playlist. So if I want to hear a certain song first I need to push play on it and then turn on random.
Overall Qobuz has been an incredible experience so far. It's cheaper, it sounds better, doesn't have the issues described with Deezer. Figured it'd be nice to put this out there in case some people were curious about the two
Deezer
For $14.99 a month I got access to better quality audio than I had over Spotify. Tidal the two were a bit closer if not similar, I'd venture to say I thought Deezer sounded a BIT better hence my decision to use it but quite frankly I don't remember. Here are some of my complaints
- They recently updated the mobile app to show a collection of album covers above your playlist. Looks nice but it can slide down and obstruct your song list. If you close your phone and open back up you have to back out from the playlist and back in or you only see the names of 2 songs at a time.
- For whatever reason and only on my Tablet songs just fail to load. I have to manually push retry
The desktop app has a couple issues
- There is no gapless play available like in the mobile app. This is really annoying since so many albums blend songs together, it really takes you out of the experience
- If a song isn't downloaded it takes a good 2 - 4 seconds for playback to start. If downloaded, that cuts it down to about 1 second. So the issues with no gapless are farther accentuated
- When you exit an album, instead of taking you back to your location on the previous screen it puts you back to the top of the page. Also annoying when you have 100+ albums and you were moving between them
- The last big issue with Deezer is that some songs for whatever reason just tend to cut off early. This was most noticeable when listening to the album Dawn FM by The Weeknd. The Song Out of Time ends with a radio broadcast type of deal and it cuts off about a second short. I don't recall exactly if this happens elsewhere but as said, annoying especially since it's one of my favorite albums
Qobuz
For $12.99 a month I have access to all but 2 albums on my Deezer list. That being Dream Theater's Systematic Chaos and Alina Baraz Sunbeam EP. I'm not torn up over either. I've found every other song/playlist and then some
Sound quality is a nice step up. Comparing between the two services, their high quality albums have a higher resolution and the term that comes to me is blackground. In Steven Wilson's First Regret/3 Years older from his Hand Cannot Erase album the song starts off with rainfall and echoing of children's voices. On Qobuz the background is black, with defined rainfall and echoing of voices. On Deezer everything seems muddier, the black background isn't there, the rain and children's voices are noticably less clear. This continues throughout the song and same with other higher quality albums. Black backgrounds and more detailed sounds.
That's not to say all albums have these improvements. Pontus Hultgren Beyond the flow of time sounds the same as it did on Deezer, and even the higher quality Dangerous Worlds doesn't sound drastically different from the Deezer version despite being "Hi-Res". That being said recording quality makes a huge difference. A well recorded song on Qobuz will sound better even at cd quality than it does on Deezer.
My only complaint I've come across so far is when I randomize music and choose a track to start with, it doesn't play that track. It immediately randomizes the entire album/playlist. So if I want to hear a certain song first I need to push play on it and then turn on random.
Overall Qobuz has been an incredible experience so far. It's cheaper, it sounds better, doesn't have the issues described with Deezer. Figured it'd be nice to put this out there in case some people were curious about the two
