Qobuz Lossless Streaming Service Thread

[DesignTaylor]

Started with Spotify (as many do). Then to Tidal which I did not enjoy and had a lot of technical difficulties with. Now onto Qobuz for about a month. In my experience, Qobuz has the best sound quality and makes it easy to switch outputs (even between multiple DACs) on the fly. The desktop and mobile apps are pretty bad compared to the competition, they need to invest in better user experience design. Also lacking is their recommendation engine. No matter what I listen to it thinks the next best choice is Metallica. Spotify still has the best recommendation engine, by far, just spot on at helping me find new music I like. Spotify Connect also makes it much easier to stream to some of my other devices (Cambridge CXN / Node 2).

So, for now, it's Qobuz for high-quality listening and Spotify for discovery and convenience.

Really wish I could get it all in one place.

 

[Tooros]

Started with Spotify (as many do). Then to Tidal which I did not enjoy and had a lot of technical difficulties with. Now onto Qobuz for about a month. In my experience, Qobuz has the best sound quality and makes it easy to switch outputs (even between multiple DACs) on the fly. The desktop and mobile apps are pretty bad compared to the competition, they need to invest in better user experience design. Also lacking is their recommendation engine. No matter what I listen to it thinks the next best choice is Metallica. Spotify still has the best recommendation engine, by far, just spot on at helping me find new music I like. Spotify Connect also makes it much easier to stream to some of my other devices (Cambridge CXN / Node 2).

So, for now, it's Qobuz for high-quality listening and Spotify for discovery and convenience.

Really wish I could get it all in one place.

I wish Qobuz had an equivalent to Tidal’s “Go to track radio” function.
That’s the best feature of Tidal IMHO.

 

[Luke Skywalker]

I wish Qobuz had an equivalent to Tidal’s “Go to track radio” function.
That’s the best feature of Tidal IMHO.

Yeah I agree... Tidal App opens instantly on my HiBy R6 Pro, but the Qobuz one takes forever. I also like the feature on Tidal to just add every single thing in your offline storage. Kind of a pain to figure out how to do that with Qobuz

But Qobuz seems to have a lot better selection of classical and the 24/192 tracks sound awesome

 

[Taz777]

I wish Qobuz had an equivalent to Tidal’s “Go to track radio” function.
That’s the best feature of Tidal IMHO.

I've only ever used the My Mix feature on TIDAL. Trying out the Track Radio feature now. I'm trying to understand how it differs from My Mix. That being said, TIDAL is streaks ahead of Qobuz from a relevant music discovery point of view. I often use TIDAL to find new music and then search for the same track on Qobuz as I prefer the sound quality on Qobuz.

 

[DesignTaylor]

Yeah, I'm often playing that same game. I ues Spotify, Bandcamp, and some podcasts to find new music and then cross my fingers that Qobuz will have it. Kind of a pain but after A/B comparing Spotify and Qobuz audio quality there is no going back. #firstworldproblems

 

[Tooros]

I've only ever used the My Mix feature on TIDAL. Trying out the Track Radio feature now. I'm trying to understand how it differs from My Mix. That being said, TIDAL is streaks ahead of Qobuz from a relevant music discovery point of view. I often use TIDAL to find new music and then search for the same track on Qobuz as I prefer the sound quality on Qobuz.

I guess the main difference is that it’s on an ad hoc basis. Whatever you are listening to you can find similar. ‘’My Mix’ follows your trends and can take a while to create new ones.

 

[Luke Skywalker]

I've thought about trying the new Amazon 24/192 "ultra hd" or whatever they call it but probably the last thing I need is a 4th music subscription... Tidal, Qobuz and Pandora

 

[Taz777]

I've thought about trying the new Amazon 24/192 "ultra hd" or whatever they call it but probably the last thing I need is a 4th music subscription... Tidal, Qobuz and Pandora

To the best of my knowledge, Amazon calls CD-quality 16-bit 44.1kHz HD and 24-bit 44.1kHz upwards Ultra-HD. The bar is set low! The app is awful, and the customer service is even worse than that of Qobuz. When I trialled it several months ago, the desktop app was unable to bypass the OS audio mixer and volume control to provide bit-perfect streaming like TIDAL is able to (I also believe that the Qobuz desktop app does not provide bit-perfect streaming but I am not 100% sure about that). That may have changed now, but I'm not sure it has. In my opinion, Amazon HD is a downgrade from TIDAL and Qobuz, and not much of an upgrade from Spotify.

More technical information here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=3022219031

 

[DesignTaylor]

I second that, I was excited when I heard about the Amazon offering but their interface design makes Qobuz look next level by comparison.

 

[theveterans]

I am leaving Tidal today after using it for a full year. I am fed up with how it peddles MQA. Before I tolerated it because it had better selection (still has a wider selection) but it was the last straw for me when I got Roon and kept trying to figure out how to do the 1st decoding via Roon or my streamer, and I realized midway that Qobuz having most to all of the songs I listen to. The selection of songs on Qobuz is growing and it will only get better.

Of course these are just my opinions.

Tidal is great, but for it to peddle MQA, encourage users to get MQA gear, stress people out about their gear suddenly becoming "obsolete" and basically just a money grab to sell music twice, gladly taking my money elsewhere and supporting Qobuz instead.

Here is my middle finger to all that 1st fold, 2nd fold BS. I no longer need to worry about that, sorry for the rant.

Why settle for a lossy hi-res format where most you can recover is only 17 bits? IMHO, the digital filters in your M-Scaler/DAVE rig far surpasses that of MQA that is being way too scammy in the way they market the format

 

[dgjl]

(I also believe that the Qobuz desktop app does not provide bit-perfect streaming but I am not 100% sure about that). 1

Qobuz is bit perfect if you select wasapi exclusive mode. It's a bit glitchy though.

 

[Taz777]

Qobuz is bit perfect if you select wasapi exclusive mode. It's a bit glitchy though.

I'm running Qobuz on a Mac. TIDAL allows 'Exclusive' access to the DAC and the ability to bypass the OS volume control. As far as I can see, Qobuz still goes through the macOS CoreAudio framework and I believe that this includes the OS sound mixer.

 

[dgjl]

I'm running Qobuz on a Mac. TIDAL allows 'Exclusive' access to the DAC and the ability to bypass the OS volume control. As far as I can see, Qobuz still goes through the macOS CoreAudio framework and I believe that this includes the OS sound mixer.

Mmm. I use a PC. If I select wasapi exclusive from the qobuz audio options (bottom right) my DAC gets what it should...

 

[DesignTaylor]

Taz777 you might be right, you can pick your DAC from the list of output options but OSX volume control is still in play which probably means the sound mixer is in the mix.

 

[Taz777]

Mmm. I use a PC. If I select wasapi exclusive from the qobuz audio options (bottom right) my DAC gets what it should...

If you are able to change the audio volume from within Qobuz then it is not bypassing the Windows audio mixer completely. On my Mac I can control the output volume from within the Qobuz desktop app (bottom-right of Qobuz app). This means that the macOS CoreAudio mixer is still being used. One other test for exclusive DAC access is whether or not you can play from another app to your DAC at the same time as Qobuz. If you can then you are going through the Windows audio mixer/volume control.

TIDAL has an addtional setting 'Force Volume' that sends a volume of 100% to the external DAC, bypassing the CoreAudio subsystem in macOS (in my case).

Give it a try - see if you can adjust the volume in Qobuz in Windows and whether or not you can send an audio signal from another music app to your external DAC at the same time as Qobuz. This 'issue' has been in Qobuz for a very long time on the macOS desktop app. As far as I can tell, TIDAL is 'purer'. I don't know the situation on Windows so it would be good to see if you can do the two tests mentioned earlier.