I just purchased an album from Qobuz the other day that I could not find elsewhere in 16/44.1 FLAC (which is all I need, frankly). Price was excellent, process was easy. I do not require anything above 16/44.1. I’ll certainly be annoyed if that choice goes away.
At least they made the subscription tier change permanent to $14.99/month and got rid of mp3 so now it’s all full CD quality resolution and higher.
Just picked up Bernstein’s recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 on Sony Classical for £3.49, CD resolution along with the Karajan Gold double album significantly cheaper than the CD on Amazon. Also picked up my favourite recording of Faure’s Pavane (gone through two CDs over the year) in Hi-res for £1.99, which sound fantastic via my Sony hi-res Walkman. Qobuz is going to start costing me some serious money! Same here in UK now:
I never responded to Qobuz' uptrade offer, so my service continues to be about $10 per month, and each track is MP3. I didn't upgrade because I cannot hear much difference, if any.
Same here in UK now: Yes the Qobuz plans in the UK now are like the USA with just two tiers to chose from the lower of which is £14.99/month. Great thing the lowest resolution is now full CD quality. Death to the MP3! Hopefully Qobuz brings it to the rest of their markets soon as well as to new ones for them.
Recent post from Qobuz says a family plan should be available this summer. Official Qobuz Issues Thread
Qobuz held a livestream Q&A with their CEO a couple of days ago. You can rewatch it here: Qobuz - USA
Assuming you mean Studio and Sublime+ as Qobuz has revamped their plans slightly. No just make sure you go into the menu setting and select the streaming quality you want. The only difference now is with Sublime+ you get the ability to buy downloads at a discounted price.
Thanks for that. Trialing Qobuz after having had Tidal for a year or two. Prefer the UI on Tidal but think do detect a difference in sq between the 2, even when comparing exactly like for like (CD quality level for sake of convenience). Qobuz sounds a tad more natural and "real" for want of a better term. I'm that bit more emotionally connected to the music. Which is not to say I find Tidal poor in the sq dept - it's excellent too but feel Qobuz may have an edge.
Yes Qobuz is just that bit better than Tidal in the sound quality that you describe. Qobuz also gives you true high resolution without that scam mqa nonsense b.s. and also costs less than Tidal. User interface is a personal preference and a user gets used to different ones in time not to mention the companies constantly fiddle(make changes) to their user interfaces over time so something else to take into consideration. Tidal does some things slightly better with it’s user interface currently but Qobuz offers more information/metadata. If a user wants the best sound quality then Qobuz wins. Otherwise it’s more like a tie depending on one’s preferences I think. Contact the customer service departments and keep asking for the changes/features you want. They like the feedback and want to keep their customers from jumping ship and to attract new customers so they will listen over time. Deezer and Qobuz seem a little better in dealing with their customers at the moment. Less rubber stamped responses than say Spotify or Tidal it seems. Of course that also may come down to personal experiences as well.
I dumped Tidal for Qobuz because of cost and mainly no mqa. I like Tidal's mobile app, though, and their playlists, recommendations, and radio type auto playlists, etc. Qobuz says they are working on some of this, but they don't seem to have the same level of software expertise as Tidal so we'll see. Hope it's coming soon.
I'm trying Qobuz Studio now, and I've been a happy Tidal user for the last 4 years or so. I thought I felt some difference, but then I tried a blind test and... it turned out I don't. I don't even perceive any difference between the same album in Tidal mqa vs Qobuz hi-res, if it's the same mastering, of course. And I don't have a mqa dac, I listen mostly with Audirvana but connected to a no mqa dac. I love Qobuz for classical music and because they have more hi-res albums in the genres and bands I listen to. Tidal is a mess when it comes to track order in classical music (where there are many ways to tag an album: main performer, composer, orchestra, director, etc.), specially in albums with several records. Qobuz has booklets in many albums too, and the discount for the Sublime plan is great.
Bumping this. I came to see if anyone had posted about Qobuz giving 100% of download revenue to the rightsholders for the next three days (ends 4/26). I didn't want to start a whole new thread, but I do want recommendations of lesser knows artists to support. I've been trialing the service and sticking to mainstream releases because I avoid streaming 'less-streamed' artists knowing that they will see little in return. I will test things out and then buy as directly as possible from more independent artists. Well, now Qobuz is letting us pay direct! Who should I listen to? No restrictions. What have you discovered out Qobuzzing?
How good are the playlists built up on Qobuz? One thing I like about Spotify is all the random playlists that you can listen to. An abundance of well curated stuff to choose from. I feel like Im okay with sacrificing some some sound quality for a more robust offering in that regard.
That's the main weakness of qobuz. They don't have auto playlists, stations, or anything like that. All their playlists are hand curated. They say they are working on it. If you use roon as the front end app it does all that, but that doesn't help for mobile.
Did anyone ever solve the problem of tracks on Qobuz only playing for a 30 section? This is happening to me now in the UK. I'm on a Qobuz trial. This didn't happen as badly at first in the Qobuz trial. I cancelled my membership after a few days - but not sure whether that had anything to do with the change to 30 second bursts of tracks instead of it playing full tracks. Also now I get what my MConnect Player HD app (into a Naim 272) calls MP3 files at 16/44.1 Previously it was sending me hires FLAC. Heeelp!
