[streamline]

Since Qobux is leading the pack: what do you use with Qobuz? I'm on Linux almost all the time so I really like the web client, as I like to read the playlist notes, album blurb, artist bio, as well as the ability to zoom in on the album cover art. What I use to stream Qobuz to my speakers though is Bubble UPNP (Android) as a control point and Moode UPNP (OpenHome) as the renderer. So I browse using the Qobuz web client, mark something a favorite, pull it up in Bubble UPNP, and then hit play. Very clunky.

I also use USB Audio Player Pro, and it's no better as a Qobuz browser.

For special occasions I hook up my MBP directly to the DAC and then use the Qobuz Mac OS-native client. But that's not ideal either because of awkwardness of 10ft long USB cable plus the stream still appears to go through Core Audio, as there is still volume control from the app.

 

[pk4425]

Since Qobux is leading the pack: what do you use with Qobuz? I'm on Linux almost all the time so I really like the web client, as I like to read the playlist notes, album blurb, artist bio, as well as the ability to zoom in on the album cover art. What I use to stream Qobuz to my speakers though is Bubble UPNP (Android) as a control point and Moode UPNP (OpenHome) as the renderer. So I browse using the Qobuz web client, mark something a favorite, pull it up in Bubble UPNP, and then hit play. Very clunky.

I also use USB Audio Player Pro, and it's no better as a Qobuz browser.

For special occasions I hook up my MBP directly to the DAC and then use the Qobuz Mac OS-native client. But that's not ideal either because of awkwardness of 10ft long USB cable plus the stream still appears to go through Core Audio, as there is still volume control from the app.

I use the KISS theory: Qobuz desktop client on my Windows laptop, to which my JDS Atom+ stack also is connected.

Also have the Qobuz app on my iPhone 12, but I rarely listen to music from my phone. Mainly podcasts while doing chores, instead. I have worked from home since 1994, so my commute is about 10 seconds.

Plus all of my cans need an amp, so mobile is a bit clumsy (especially since iPhone doesn't use USB), even with something like the excellent hip-dac.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Qobuz client app on PC and Android here. I use BT on Android so don't need UAPP.
Curios though, is it really that bad for Qobuz streaming?

 

[richierich]

I'm also trying out Apple Music on a trial and boy, you can't even sort tracks by date added on custom playlists. Wow huge fail.

I think I'll have to go back to Tidal at this point.

 

[streamline]

Qobuz client app on PC and Android here. I use BT on Android so don't need UAPP.
Curios though, is it really that bad for Qobuz streaming?

UAPP is super cheap though, and the additional parametric EQ (for like $1.49 extra or something like that) is solid too. One of my chains is Qobuz -> UAPP -> high bit rate BT LDAC -> ES100 - HD 6xx balanced. Really satisfying for when I'm doing chores around the house. The ES100 tops out at 48hz but the analog stage is great, and UAPP does a fine job of down-sampling. I prefer UAPP over the native Qobuz android client, even for BT. Kinda like the best $10 or so I ever spent.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

UAPP is super cheap though, and the additional parametric EQ (for like $1.49 extra or something like that) is solid too. One of my chains is Qobuz -> UAPP -> high bit rate BT LDAC -> ES100 - HD 6xx balanced. Really satisfying for when I'm doing chores around the house. The ES100 tops out at 48hz but the analog stage is great, and UAPP does a fine job of down-sampling. I prefer UAPP over the native Qobuz android client, even for BT. Kinda like the best $10 or so I ever spent.

Why do you need UAPP for BT LDAC, it's only to bypass USB output limitation?

 

[streamline]

Why do you need UAPP for BT LDAC, it's only to bypass USB output limitation?

UAPP has an option to use its own audio driver with BT, with the caveat that it "might not work on every device". You don't need it of course and can just send everything through Android audio. With the ES100 it sounded a little bit better to my ears.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

UAPP has an option to use its own audio driver with BT, with the caveat that it "might not work on every device". You don't need it of course and can just send everything through Android audio. With the ES100 it sounded a little bit better to my ears.

Do you have any details on this? How BT encoding is related to High-Res USB driver.
https://www.extreamsd.com/forum/thread-1023-post-2850.html#pid2850

UAPP doesn't do anything special when it comes to BT. What you can try is enable the developer options on your device (tap 7 times on the Build number in the Andrid settings About page), then open the developer options and see if there is a BT option where you can force a certain codec.

 

[Kingrex]

I use a Mojo Audio Deja Vu server and Mystique V3 DAC. My modem, router and Linear Solution switch are all powered with Linear PS. Those 3 supplies all feed by a medical line isolation transformer.

All power feeding my audio is on the same phase in my panel. I have 5 circuits feeding my audio. All power is 10 awg cabling with decent Hubbell 5362 receptacles.

Qubus is clearly better than Spotify. Files stored on my hard driver are even more so better than Qobuz over Spotify. Vinyl easily steps over digital on classical and jazz. If your into pop, rap, rock you may not notice what has shifted.

I have not tried the other streaming services. I do find Qobuz limited on its catalog. Every 6 months or so I find my playlist has dropped a song here and there, meaning the whole album is gone. Spotify has a much larger catalog. I play Spotify as background. Its predictive software is very good. I play Qobuz when I'm into a better streaming experience. If I really want to dig in and find superior sound I go to vinyl or 15 ips tape. Sometimes high rez album on my harddrive.
High rez, FLAC can have limitations. Your not wrong if you think wav sounds better than flac. Flac requires decompressing to get back to lossless. That takes a lot of intense processing. Processing in a computer when playing music is like revving a high performance car motor. Sure it has a lot of power. But power makes noise. Noise shunts sound quality. So you got more bits but can't hear them over the cpu working hard to process them.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

High rez, FLAC can have limitations. Your not wrong if you think wav sounds better than flac. Flac requires decompressing to get back to lossless. That takes a lot of intense processing. Processing in a computer when playing music is like revving a high performance car motor. Sure it has a lot of power. But power makes noise. Noise shunts sound quality. So you got more bits but can't hear them over the cpu working hard to process them.

Something is wrong with the system, ground loop most likely, if you can hear CPU working.
Performance footprint from FLAC decoding on modern multi core processors is negligible, encoding on the other hand is magnitudes larger.
CPU load from streaming alone is pretty high though. You can compare CPU load when playing offline FLAC vs live streaming.

 

[Zynthet]

Tested Tidal, Amazon Music and Apple Music.
Setup chain: iOS - Lightning/USB 3 adapter - Rotel RC-1590 preamp (no mqa compatible).

Amazon Music was the worst for me. From iOS it just locked my DAC at 192khz, no sample switch, sounded bad. Tested it with PC - it locks sample rate on which you set up on Windows audio settings. What a shame. Music library is big tho + good amount of tracks with more than cd quality.

Tidal - without mqa that would be the best streaming service for sure. Music library is not that big as on Amazon and Apple Music, but it's still solid, but there is still some tracks with low quality (pretty much rare). From iOS it properly switching sample rates. On PC you can enable wasapi exclusive mode for bit-perfect stream, but for an unknown reason Tidal sounded worse on PC compared to iOS-DAC chain. From iOS it sounds absolutely fine. My preamp is not compatible with mqa, but Tidal can do 1 unfold, so your non-compatible DAC can play 88.2khz / 96khz masters, which sounds slightly better than usual 44.1khz FLACs. It has good recommendation system also. Very good service overall, but MQA is the main downside.

Apple Music - probably the best music streaming service, huge library, 99% with cd+ quality. Hi-Rez tracks sounds amazing. The main downside - no app for Windows (you can stream via Itunes or web player, but only with 256 kbps quality) and also no bit-perfect for Mac. Also, don't know why, but when comparing the same songs from the same albums on Tidal and Apple Music (lossless tracks) I found that sometimes Tidal sounded better. I will investigate this closely later, maybe just a placebo or different masters on tracks.

Qobuz - didn't tested, this service has too big gaps in library for me unfortunately. But on PC it has the best app for sure - even ASIO drivers supported. But again, music library is empty in compare to Apple Music and even to Tidal. That's realy big downside.

So for me Tidal and Apple Music are the best ones.

 

[Kingrex]

Something is wrong with the system, ground loop most likely, if you can hear CPU working.
Performance footprint from FLAC decoding on modern multi core processors is negligible, encoding on the other hand is magnitudes larger.
CPU load from streaming alone is pretty high though. You can compare CPU load when playing offline FLAC vs live streaming.

Sorry, I disagree.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Sorry, I disagree.

Personal believes are very important.
WAV vs FLAC CPU usage

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Speaking of CPU load difference between live streaming and offline FLAC decoding.
Qobuz live streaming.

Qobuz Offline Content

JRMC (Jriver) offline FLAC decoding

 

[streamline]

Do you have any details on this? How BT encoding is related to High-Res USB driver.
https://www.extreamsd.com/forum/thread-1023-post-2850.html#pid2850

That might be outdated. Did you see this?

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/usb...ort-for-android.704065/page-297#post-16168878

I do go into developers option and force LDAC to high bit-rate and BT sampling rate to 96kHz.