[Left Channel]

Qobuz is not available in my country. Is there a way to get the service through a VPN or will no be allowed because of the recurring payment (PayPal/Visa)? I have Tidal but would love to try Qobuz.

I did that a long time ago, but at this point they seem to have figured out how to verify your billing address directly with PayPal or your credit card provider.

 

[weexisttocease]

I did that a long time ago, but at this point they seem to have figured out how to verify your billing address directly with PayPal or your credit card provider.

That's what I thought. Thanks.

 

[Luke Skywalker]

Not entirely related to your question my friend however I can confirm that Qobuz does not block you if you're using VPN. I've run into some other services that screw with me on that. *cough Netflix*

 

[streamline]

I was not expecting much last night. I've been a TIDAL customer for 2 or 3 years, and I would still be on TIDAL except I misplaced my CC last month and had to cancel it and forgot/ignored TIDAL's nag emails. I had not had a serious listening session in a while, punched up TIDAL and hey, oh yeah. On a whim I signed up for the Qobuz 30 day free trial, started listening, and I have to say I was floored at how good it sounded. Either that or my ears have de-acclimated. I kind of want to start up TIDAL again just to compare.

The Qobuz app is junk though. I'm super happy that USB Audio Player Pro has Qobuz support. That app continues to be the best $11 I've ever spent on audio. UAPP => Essential PH-1 => Yggdrasil Analog 2. It's that good.

 

[judson_w]

I was not expecting much last night. I've been a TIDAL customer for 2 or 3 years, and I would still be on TIDAL except I misplaced my CC last month and had to cancel it and forgot/ignored TIDAL's nag emails. I had not had a serious listening session in a while, punched up TIDAL and hey, oh yeah. On a whim I signed up for the Qobuz 30 day free trial, started listening, and I have to say I was floored at how good it sounded. Either that or my ears have de-acclimated. I kind of want to start up TIDAL again just to compare.

The Qobuz app is junk though. I'm super happy that USB Audio Player Pro has Qobuz support. That app continues to be the best $11 I've ever spent on audio. UAPP => Essential PH-1 => Yggdrasil Analog 2. It's that good.

It is good to know that UAPP supports Qobuz... Whenever I upgrade my phone, I will try UAPP again. (Currently I have a Huawei that for some reason does not play well with UAPP and audio out over USB).

 

[Taz777]

If only UAPP did TIDAL and Qobuz offline. I mainly use UAPP with my DAP but have to resort to the TIDAL or Qobuz apps when I have no internet connection for offline music playback.

 

[Luke Skywalker]

I was not expecting much last night. I've been a TIDAL customer for 2 or 3 years, and I would still be on TIDAL except I misplaced my CC last month and had to cancel it and forgot/ignored TIDAL's nag emails. I had not had a serious listening session in a while, punched up TIDAL and hey, oh yeah. On a whim I signed up for the Qobuz 30 day free trial, started listening, and I have to say I was floored at how good it sounded. Either that or my ears have de-acclimated. I kind of want to start up TIDAL again just to compare.

The Qobuz app is junk though. I'm super happy that USB Audio Player Pro has Qobuz support. That app continues to be the best $11 I've ever spent on audio. UAPP => Essential PH-1 => Yggdrasil Analog 2. It's that good.

Totally agree dude on UAPP. The only downside for me there is that I can't store offline Qobuz music (or Tidal for that matter) and my HiBy R6 Pro doesn't have cellular

Interestingly the Qobuz app on iOS is perfect. I've never had a single issue with it. The one thing I do wish it had though was the ability to automatically download any tracks/albums you add to your collection. Tidal has that and it's pretty pimp

 

[ChrisR1]

I've been using Qobuz (USA) very heavily for about 6 weeks now, more than I normally would due to being home from work awaiting COVID-19 to pass. Coming from CD's as a source for my system, I am really enjoying the increased realism permitted by the higher resolution files. As for music offerings, I have spent many hours trying to find albums which I own in CD format that are not available on Qobuz with virtually no "success." Far from discovering missing albums, I am instead excited to learn through this search how much more music not already in my physical collection is available from favorite artists.

I have scoured Qobuz's available offerings in most all genres, but admittedly very little modern pop/hip-hop (but don't worry, Dua Lipa's catchy new album is on there!). The word on the street seems to be that Qobuz is only for you if you listen to just classical or jazz. But the collection of music available in Rock, alternative, indie, world, etc. is flawless from my humble (but demanding) perspective. Grateful Dead, Foo fighters, Nirvana, Wilco, Wax Tailor, Bassnectar, Daft Punk, Tiesto, are a few of the artists I have been exploring through qobuz and have found all the albums I own plus all the others I already knew of but don't own plus many other albums that I didn't already know of. AND many of these albums are available in much higher resolution formats than CD quality. Even within the above-mentioned non-classical groups, probably at least 1/4 of their offerings are "hi-res"--higher than CD. If you have a decent system to send these files to, you are going to enjoy the improved sound of these higher than CD tracks. (for reference, my chain: Denafrips Ares II DAC>bottlehead crack amp with quality vintage tubes>Sennheiser 800S).

I'm thinking of boxing my CD transport and putting it in storage now that I have qobuz. It's that overwhelming. Furthermore, the qobuz iphone app is great and now that I can listen to any albums I was listening to before on the go (parties, boat, more popular music when hanging with friends, etc.) but now in CD quality, I have canceled my Apple Music account.

For the cost of a CD or two per month, and minus the cost of apple music, I am truly pleased with Qobuz and would have to give a nearly unqualified recommendation to any and all. Nearly because the computer based software is not flawless. I sometimes have to close qobuz and reopen when it suddenly malfunctions. Sometimes, a track plays in a very "damaged" way -- something equivalent to a scratched cd. Or, a track will display as playing, but no sound is coming out of the speakers. To be fair, this might be in part due to the computer, not the streaming software. But closing and reopening usually fixes this. I would have to use a quality macintosh computer as the streaming source for awhile to know if it is just my often glitchy albeit nearly new Dell computer that is causing these problems.

Also, I emailed the qobuz technical team email address a simple one paragraph question about a network streamer without onboard DAC's that they would recommend/partner with 2 weeks ago and have yet to receive a response. I did have better luck with a different question which I posted to their facebook page, but even that took a week to respond (they did apologize for the delay, but still...)

I should also mention that qobuz is very good at helping me to discover new music through its music suggestions and its "discover" category.

I can't compare to the obvious competitor Tidal, but as I am a cellist and love classical music, all indicators are that Tidal's current meager classical offerings would severely disappoint me...even though their technology that is supposed to remove the ubiquitous ringing recording artifact intrigues me.

In conclusion, once the hi-fi consumer market discovers how great Qobuz is now, I expect it to really dominate. I am thrilled with it thus far and plan to design an audio system for my livingroom with Qobuz as my primary music source.

 

[robm321]

Qobuz has the best SQ IMO. Tidal was very good as well. It's MQA sounds very nice but is a lossy format if that matters. Amazon just sounded bad to me. I'm not sure if that's improved or what. Tidal also forces hip hop down your throat while Qobuz seems geared towards audiophiles. Both are solid choices, but Qobuz was the winner for me. I never looked back. Plus it was $5 less per month at the time.

 

[MacedonianHero]

Qobuz has the best SQ IMO. Tidal was very good as well. It's MQA sounds very nice but is a lossy format if that matters. Amazon just sounded bad to me. I'm not sure if that's improved or what. Tidal also forces hip hop down your throat while Qobuz seems geared towards audiophiles. Both are solid choices, but Qobuz was the winner for me. I never looked back. Plus it was $5 less per month at the time.

Same goes for me. Amazon was the worst (by a huge margin actually). Qobuz is da bomb!

 

[jlbrach]

I agree with my man peter again I find quoboz the best by a fair margin and amazon not worth my time which I must admit caught me by surprise I expected better

 

[gerelmx1986]

My first experience of buying lossless music on Qobuz:

All songs in 2 albums have cut-offs. Simply lossy files upconverted to FLAC. Not sure if it's an intended fraud or an absence of QC.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/review-of-classical-music-download-sites.931207/

 

[SteveM324]

Count me as another that likes Qobuz over Tidal. I haven’t tried Amazon but based on the comments above, I won’t waste my time.

 

[Luke Skywalker]

Coming from someone who has Tidal and Qobuz... If you like Classical and Opera kind of music, there's no comparison. Qobuz crushes Tidal... I should probably cancel Tidal but I do have some MQA devices (iFi xDSD and HiBy R6 Pro) and I have quite a lot of music downloaded to my Hiby and my iPhone.

I did some across some sort of App or service a while back that sync's your Qobuz library with Tidal somehow (assuming the tracks are available in both places obviously).

 

[Left Channel]

I did some across some sort of App or service a while back that sync's your Qobuz library with Tidal somehow (assuming the tracks are available in both places obviously).

Soundiiz https://soundiiz.com/