[ScubaMan2017]

I've read that Google Music deals in 320kbps MP3. No idea if it converts/replaces music you upload to the service to that format/resolution.

Google does convert your music to MP3 when you upload it. I have my whole collection there for streaming on a phone but I also have the whole thing backed up on MS Onedrive as full FLAC files.

Thanks for the musings, @RickB & @Robert Wortman . Re: Google uploading and re-coding it to 320 Kbps MP3. That makes sense. It can play on almost any player (unlike ALAC & FLAC). Other than the odd pop & ping (from flaky internet-and-or WiFi), it sounds bourbon-smooth when I stream it off my Google account. It's good enough for SCUBA-ravaged ears. While my music's backed up on local/off-site external drives, @Robert Wortman 's suggestion makes sense.

It never hurts to have ones' music backup in >1 place, eh.

 

[Robert Padgett]

Thanks for the musings, @RickB & @Robert Wortman . Re: Google uploading and re-coding it to 320 Kbps MP3. That makes sense. It can play on almost any player (unlike ALAC & FLAC). Other than the odd pop & ping (from flaky internet-and-or WiFi), it sounds bourbon-smooth when I stream it off my Google account. It's good enough for SCUBA-ravaged ears. While my music's backed up on local/off-site external drives, @Robert Wortman 's suggestion makes sense.

It never hurts to have ones' music backup in >1 place, eh.

Thanks that is a cool solution.
If Amazon Music is doing something other than 320 MP3 I would be surprised, they said that their offerings were VBR up to 256, but that was in 2015. I know that sounds like a flac file, streaming Bluetooth to my Sprout100 into HPs from the Sprout HP stage and it sounds great. $7.99 a month. I am still predicting that Amazon will, in the end, gobble up Deezer and Qobuz, and offer "CD-quality 16/44 Flac for $15/month. Bezos has more cash than any other streaming entity, and they are on life-support if what I read is correct.

 

[Charente]

... I am still predicting that Amazon will, in the end, gobble up Deezer and Qobuz, and offer "CD-quality 16/44 Flac for $15/month. Bezos has more cash than any other streaming entity, and they are on life-support if what I read is correct.

Bezos may have more cash ... does he have the ambition to produce a quality audio service ? I've been a QOBUZ user for some time and the service, curation, journalism and sound quality of their offering is superb (IMO), especially through Audirvana. That's why I stick with them. If Bezos compromises on those service levels, then I'm out of there in the blink of an eye.

 

[Robert Padgett]

Bezos may have more cash ... does he have the ambition to produce a quality audio service? I've been a QOBUZ user for some time and the service, curation, journalism and sound quality of their offering is superb (IMO), especially through Audirvana. That's why I stick with them. If Bezos compromises on those service levels, then I'm out of there in the blink of an eye.

Well, everything about Amazon reeks of logistics and efficiency. If they take on the streaming of CD-quality Flac, I wonder if the others will sustain--I mean Tidal/MQA has it's fans, so having never been a QOBUZ client I don't know about all the attributes of their level of service. I like competition, but that doesn't mean my opinion of Amazon isn't without questions also. I am happy at $7.99 with what they are doing right now, so maybe I ought to stop predicting the future if it is going to cost me more money

 

[Charente]

... so maybe I ought to stop predicting the future if it is going to cost me more money

Your prediction may very well be true, and continue with them by all means !! I like to see competition ... here in Europe there is another service, highresaudio.com (not sure if it's available in the USA) that I was tempted by. It's currently not quite up to the QOBUZ levels (playlist curation and album choice) but it's an up and coming service (also available thru Audirvana) and deserves to succeed.

 

[Robert Padgett]

Your prediction may very well be true, and continue with them by all means !! I like to see competition ... here in Europe there is another service, highresaudio.com (not sure if it's available in the USA) that I was tempted by. It's currently not quite up to the QOBUZ levels (playlist curation and album choice) but it's an up and coming service (also available thru Audirvana) and deserves to succeed.

yes they sell internationally, and even have a download manager for Linux...that is better than Linn which had only Win and I had to use a win-emulator to download from Scotland, I suspect.

 

[the finisher]

I like Qobuz much more than Tidal, I compared for 2 weeks and I like the SQ better.
Especially notable is the difference between real high res FLAC vs MQA.

The catalog is somewhat lacking however.
I keep Amazon prime for more discovery.
SQ is good.

 

[rkw]

I like Qobuz much more than Tidal, I compared for 2 weeks and I like the SQ better.
Especially notable is the difference between real high res FLAC vs MQA.

I have a Tidal subscription, and also listening to Qobuz for the past month with a preview subscription. I like the Qobuz SQ better as well. With lossless high res streaming on Qobuz, the concept of MQA becomes completely pointless.

However, the Qobuz desktop apps (both Mac and Windows) have serious bugs, and the search function is even worse than Tidal's.

 

[the finisher]

I have a Tidal subscription, and also listening to Qobuz for the past month with a preview subscription. I like the Qobuz SQ better as well. With lossless high res streaming on Qobuz, the concept of MQA becomes completely pointless.

However, the Qobuz desktop apps (both Mac and Windows) have serious bugs, and the search function is even worse than Tidal's.

I have no more software issues with Qobuz than Tidal.
Both need work IMO.

Qobuz desperately needs a dark theme.
Seach is lame but Tidal is not great.

The servers are much faster with Qobuz but no public load on them yet in the early days.
In the early days of Tidal I routinely has no or spotty service at busy times, like weekend nights and holidays.
I thought of dumping Tidal every month I had it.
If I had to pay for Qobuz now I might feel the same way.
I am hoping it improves before that happens.

My experience has taught me the real failure of MQA is solving a non-existent problem.
And sounds essentially the same as the non MQA 16 bit stream.

Qobuz high resolution is superior, no doubt in my mind.

 

[rkw]

I have no more software issues with Qobuz than Tidal.
Both need work IMO.

Here are a few problems I've encountered on Qobuz. These are clearly software bugs and more severe than anything I've encountered on Tidal.

• While playing music, I see Qobuz running 3 processes that consume a total of 20-30% of the CPU on both Mac and Windows. This is much higher than Tidal, Spotify, or Google. Worse of all, after the current play queue has finished playing, Qobuz continues to consume 20-30% CPU even though nothing is playing. It continues doing this until I clear the play queue, then the Qobuz CPU usage drops to about 1%. The Qobuz Android app also consumes CPU while nothing is playing.
• Occasionally (averaging about once every couple of days), a track may suddenly stop playing in the middle and a busy spinner is displayed, indicating that it is trying to download/queue more data. However, it hangs forever and never recovers. The workaround is to start playing a different track, then delete the stuck track from the cache (a track option), and play the stuck track again — it will re-download the entire track and play correctly.
• This is the weirdest one. It happened to me twice randomly but I can't reproduce it. I paused the music and went away for awhile. Later I came back and resumed playing. It begins to play two streams simultaneously (mixed together)! One stream resuming from the paused point and the other stream from the beginning of the track. Really weird effect. The play/pause button works for one of the streams but the other stream continues playing.

As far as connectivity with the server, I haven't had much problem with either Tidal or Qobuz.

 

[the finisher]

Software

I never noticed the cpu usage as I use overpowered desktops, I will look.

Edit: I looked, I go from 1 to 2% at idle, start the app and goes to 5%
Playing high res 8%, stop playing back to 5%.YMMV apparently

Now 3 dozen Chrome tabs and Qobuz playing 16 bit and 3 to 5% CPU using 8 gigs of RAM mostly Chrome.

We should send complaints to them so they can fix this stuff, even if they know this can help.

Pretty good, complaints from non-paying customers

 

[Robert Wortman]

I agree about MQA and a nonexistent problem. It packs a hi rez file into a medium rez container when the hi rez container is widely available and any home that can stream HD video which is almost everyone, can stream HD audio. That audio reviews that claim it can somehow create things that were supposed to be in the original file but weren't are just wrong. There is no connection back to the original recording for this to occur and anything added to the recording without that connection IMO is a distortion. I haven't yet signed up for either service. I always end up calculating how much music I can own for the same or not much more money. Maybe someday. Tidal is out for me unless it changes owners because I am not giving a dollar of my money to any rap nitwits Qobuz is a maybe but they haven't talked me into it yet

 

[MWSVette]

Merry Christmas to Jason, Mike and the rest of the Schiit crew...

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

Merry Christmas to Jason, Mike and the rest of the Schiit crew...

And to us and to you....

 

[Robert Padgett]

Software

I never noticed the cpu usage as I use overpowered desktops, I will look.

Edit: I looked, I go from 1 to 2% at idle, start the app and goes to 5%
Playing high res 8%, stop playing back to 5%.YMMV apparently

Now 3 dozen Chrome tabs and Qobuz playing 16 bit and 3 to 5% CPU using 8 gigs of RAM mostly Chrome.

We should send complaints to them so they can fix this stuff, even if they know this can help.

Pretty good, complaints from non-paying customers

I don't know what causes that CPU usage, but I have noticed the same kind of thing happening when I have loaded a playlist in the Raspberry Pi. The Audacious music player usually flickers between 1-3% CPU usage while playing a file...pretty efficient. But if I load a different playlist, or do just about anything other than listening, the CPU usage will stay at close to 15 %. If I reboot the RasPi and restart playing audacious, it stays at 1-3%. Curious.