Qobuz-I wish I'd never started

[AndyU]

While I remember, why can't you combine playlists in Qobuz? Surely a simple copy paste between lists should be possible. I'm also not sure you can easily re-order the playlist (I'll have to check that one again).

You can combine playlists. Play the first one. Add the second one to the currently playing. Go into that and save the lot as a new playlist.

You can reorder a playlist. Just edit it and move tracks up or down or delete them to suit.

 

[timola]

There is a bug with Qobuz and an ASIO driver causing it to get the speed and pitch wrong - the higher the sample rate, the lower the pitch and the slower the playback.

Use the WASAPI Exclusive Mode output and you should be fine.

Thanks for this. It almost does fix it...but just not quite, 24/96 still sounds a very small amount slower than the 16/44. But a huge improvement (almost listenable).

I don't really know how (just a lot deleting and reloading Anamaro drivers..3 hours of messing around with my notebook), but I seem to get the option for Anamaro WASPI drivers:
WASAPI
WASAPI exclusive
Direct Stream

So I chose the 'WASAPI exclusive'. After a lot of listening, initially I thought the 'speed' thing was solved, but I'm now sure it's still not quite right (a very small bit slow). Still a big improvement over ASIO. This just lurched me into another problem: as soon as I do a remote desktop from my ipad, the music switches to local and starts playing on the ipad...can't see why.

Thanks for the pointers. It is something to do with drivers, I'm now sure.

You can combine playlists. Play the first one. Add the second one to the currently playing. Go into that and save the lot as a new playlist.

You can reorder a playlist. Just edit it and move tracks up or down or delete them to suit.

Yes, I've managed to do this. It's a little clunky but it works as you said.


Next weekend I'll try Audirvana see if that helps. (I can't take any more messing around with software untill then).

 

[AndyU]

Thanks for this. It almost does fix it...but just not quite, 24/96 still sounds a very small amount slower than the 16/44. But a huge improvement (almost listenable).

I don't really know how (just a lot deleting and reloading Anamaro drivers..3 hours of messing around with my notebook), but I seem to get the option for Anamaro WASPI drivers:
WASAPI
WASAPI exclusive
Direct Stream

So I chose the 'WASAPI exclusive'. After a lot of listening, initially I thought the 'speed' thing was solved, but I'm now sure it's still not quite right (a very small bit slow). Still a big improvement over ASIO. This just lurched me into another problem: as soon as I do a remote desktop from my ipad, the music switches to local and starts playing on the ipad...can't see why.

Thanks for the pointers. It is something to do with drivers, I'm now sure.



Yes, I've managed to do this. It's a little clunky but it works as you said.


Next weekend I'll try Audirvana see if that helps. (I can't take any more messing around with software untill then).

Your problem with Remote Desktop (RD Client) initiated playback playing on your iPad is a Remote Desktop setting issue. One the main RD screen, before you actually select your laptop, there is an icon representing your laptop, and that icon should have three wee dots at the bottom right hand corner. Touch the three dots, and you should get an option to “Edit”. Select that, then select “Additional settings” and you will see a “Sound” option where you can select “Play on remote pc”, “Play on device “ or “No sound”. “Play on remote pc” is what you are looking for.

Have to say using Remote Desktop and Qobuz can be irritating and laggy, mostly down to RD. I find it easier to set up playlists on the Qobuz iPad app, then get off my arse and select that playlist on my pc (or do the same through RD client). I sometimes also use iPeng and a Squeezebox Touch.

As far as your suspicion that 24/96 plays slower than 16/44 what makes you say this? Have you timed two tracks that should be the same length and found them to be different? Could you give an example of a 24/96 track that is slow?

I have compared track 9 of Murray Perahia playing Bach French Suites on Qobuz at 24/96, on Qobuz at 16/44 and from a rip of a cd at 16/44. Neither I nor my wife who is a classically trained musician can hear any difference in pitch, and I can’t measure any difference in speed.

I tried Audirvana on my iMac. Wasn’t overwhelmed, but it does integrate your own music with Qobuz and the remote app isn’t awful. Have not bothered with it on my windows pc because according to the website the iPad remote app does not work with the Windows version.

 

[timola]

Your problem with Remote Desktop (RD Client) initiated playback playing on your iPad is a Remote Desktop setting issue. One the main RD screen, before you actually select your laptop, there is an icon representing your laptop, and that icon should have three wee dots at the bottom right hand corner. Touch the three dots, and you should get an option to “Edit”. Select that, then select “Additional settings” and you will see a “Sound” option where you can select “Play on remote pc”, “Play on device “ or “No sound”. “Play on remote pc” is what you are looking for.

Have to say using Remote Desktop and Qobuz can be irritating and laggy, mostly down to RD. I find it easier to set up playlists on the Qobuz iPad app, then get off my arse and select that playlist on my pc (or do the same through RD client). I sometimes also use iPeng and a Squeezebox Touch.

As far as your suspicion that 24/96 plays slower than 16/44 what makes you say this? Have you timed two tracks that should be the same length and found them to be different? Could you give an example of a 24/96 track that is slow?

I have compared track 9 of Murray Perahia playing Bach French Suites on Qobuz at 24/96, on Qobuz at 16/44 and from a rip of a cd at 16/44. Neither I nor my wife who is a classically trained musician can hear any difference in pitch, and I can’t measure any difference in speed.

I tried Audirvana on my iMac. Wasn’t overwhelmed, but it does integrate your own music with Qobuz and the remote app isn’t awful. Have not bothered with it on my windows pc because according to the website the iPad remote app does not work with the Windows version.

I will definetly try the RD Client fix you have suggested, it sounds like I'll be able to fix that one too...thanks!

I did not time the tracks to see if they were the same lenght...although this sounds like a very sensible/logical way to test it (I'll give it a go). The way I was doing this was to play the low-res and hi-res versions of the same track for a couple of minutes each and follow the bass lines (the vocal too as it comes in).

The track I was using is from: Artist: Pumarosa, Album: The Witch, track: Priestess, This album is on Qobuz in both 16//44 and 24/96. I find that the 16/44 is very slightly faster and hence more enjoyable to listen too. My apologies as this type of music may not be to your liking. I will also have a listen to track 9 by Murray Perahia playing Bach French Suites in both formats.

Thanks for the heads-up on Audirvana.

 

[timola]

Your problem with Remote Desktop (RD Client) initiated playback playing on your iPad is a Remote Desktop setting issue. One the main RD screen, before you actually select your laptop, there is an icon representing your laptop, and that icon should have three wee dots at the bottom right hand corner. Touch the three dots, and you should get an option to “Edit”. Select that, then select “Additional settings” and you will see a “Sound” option where you can select “Play on remote pc”, “Play on device “ or “No sound”. “Play on remote pc” is what you are looking for.

Have to say using Remote Desktop and Qobuz can be irritating and laggy, mostly down to RD. I find it easier to set up playlists on the Qobuz iPad app, then get off my arse and select that playlist on my pc (or do the same through RD client). I sometimes also use iPeng and a Squeezebox Touch.

As far as your suspicion that 24/96 plays slower than 16/44 what makes you say this? Have you timed two tracks that should be the same length and found them to be different? Could you give an example of a 24/96 track that is slow?

I have compared track 9 of Murray Perahia playing Bach French Suites on Qobuz at 24/96, on Qobuz at 16/44 and from a rip of a cd at 16/44. Neither I nor my wife who is a classically trained musician can hear any difference in pitch, and I can’t measure any difference in speed.

I tried Audirvana on my iMac. Wasn’t overwhelmed, but it does integrate your own music with Qobuz and the remote app isn’t awful. Have not bothered with it on my windows pc because according to the website the iPad remote app does not work with the Windows version.

I couldn't wait...so I've just fixed my RD Client issue exactly as you suggested and it works. I hadn't noticed those three little dots...thanks again.

And I looked up Murray Perahia playing Bach French Suites 24/96. I actually played track 6 French Suite No.2 in C Minor (a lovely piano piece, really relaxing). I switched between 24/96 and 16/44 from the bar at the bottom of the Qobuz window.

I thought I could hear a difference in speed, so I decided to measure it using the stopwatch on my Casio watch....and OMG!....On the bottom bar there is an icon of the album cover art and the length of the track, in this case 02:50 and above it is the time you are playing. With the 24/96 this very quickly gets out of synchronization with my stopwatch and by the end of the track which should be 02:50 my stopwatch was reading 03:00, that is a full 10 seconds longer than it should be! I then switched to 16/44 on the selector at the bottom of the Qobuz window and played this track again...it was completely in synchronization throughout the track and my stopwatch and the Qobuz timer were in full agreement, i.e. no time difference.

At least I feel vindicated that I'm not an old fart that can't hear a pitch difference. But I'm dismayed that this should happen. Your test method suggetion was genius. I was going too far by using different issues of the same album and never thought of the stopwatch idea.

Would you please do a similar test sometime and see if a stopwatch keeps up with the Qobuz timer on 24/96 recordings....I'd be very interested.

 

[AndyU]

I couldn't wait...so I've just fixed my RD Client issue exactly as you suggested and it works. I hadn't noticed those three little dots...thanks again.

And I looked up Murray Perahia playing Bach French Suites 24/96. I actually played track 6 French Suite No.2 in C Minor (a lovely piano piece, really relaxing). I switched between 24/96 and 16/44 from the bar at the bottom of the Qobuz window.

I thought I could hear a difference in speed, so I decided to measure it using the stopwatch on my Casio watch....and OMG!....On the bottom bar there is an icon of the album cover art and the length of the track, in this case 02:50 and above it is the time you are playing. With the 24/96 this very quickly gets out of synchronization with my stopwatch and by the end of the track which should be 02:50 my stopwatch was reading 03:00, that is a full 10 seconds longer than it should be! I then switched to 16/44 on the selector at the bottom of the Qobuz window and played this track again...it was completely in synchronization throughout the track and my stopwatch and the Qobuz timer were in full agreement, i.e. no time difference.

At least I feel vindicated that I'm not an old fart that can't hear a pitch difference. But I'm dismayed that this should happen. Your test method suggetion was genius. I was going too far by using different issues of the same album and never thought of the stopwatch idea.

Would you please do a similar test sometime and see if a stopwatch keeps up with the Qobuz timer on 24/96 recordings....I'd be very interested.

The two Perahia tracks last the same length of time for me, as near as I can measure. There must be something wrong somewhere with your set up. What happens if you avoid your DAC and it’s drivers and play to the headphones or internal speakers of your pc?

The Priestss track sounded surprisingly better in 24/96 to me, as did the following track .. I don’t normally bother to A/B these kind of things, I am just grateful to get music in the original resolution, if only because it is less likely that some clown has messed it up. The CD res Pumarosa tracks sounded more compressed, this makes the cymbals sound tishier to me, and you might regard that as “speed”. All I meant by speed is playing time, so we might mean different things.

 

[zippy]

I've had Qobuz for several weeks now and find the interface rather irritating too.

....
Initially I was convinced that my local HDD stored flac files sounded more dynamic and involving than the Qobuz offering, but I'm now tending to support the idea that the mastering/recording may be different, as I have found some tracks that sound better from Qobuz than my local files.

I also don't know how best to control it.
....
I'm persevering with it for now. I guess I'm an old fart, but I really think that people that design these things have no idea how an old fogey might want to use it. They just rush out stuff without careful thought.

- Almost every track I've played so far has been labelled as remastered so that may indeed account for not-so-good sound although I find the sound perfectly OK.
(That means the year of release represents the remastering year NOT the actual release date:: kind of annoying).

- I'm using Bubble UPnP on my android tablet, which is casting the sound to my StreamX streamer.

I too am an old fart, but have worked on PC's since they were invented so the technicalities are fine for me. I do sympathise with others though as streaming on any sort seems to be an order of magnitude more complex than just 'bunging on a CD' !

Despite my initial thoughts I'm finding Qobuz a useful thing. I'll reconsider when my free month is up...

 

[timola]

The two Perahia tracks last the same length of time for me, as near as I can measure. There must be something wrong somewhere with your set up. What happens if you avoid your DAC and it’s drivers and play to the headphones or internal speakers of your pc?

The Priestss track sounded surprisingly better in 24/96 to me, as did the following track .. I don’t normally bother to A/B these kind of things, I am just grateful to get music in the original resolution, if only because it is less likely that some clown has messed it up. The CD res Pumarosa tracks sounded more compressed, this makes the cymbals sound tishier to me, and you might regard that as “speed”. All I meant by speed is playing time, so we might mean different things.

Another very interesting suggestion, switching output to my notebook's internal speakers there is no delay or speed difference at 24/96. Which means you have diagnosed my probem to the DAC (Ciunas Audio ISODAC) or it's Anamero drivers. Out of interest I tried the ASIO driver for the DAC at 24/96 and the difference was over 100 seconds on the 02:50 minute track (suffice to say it was unrecognizable). I'll ask John Kenny (of Ciunas Audio) if he's come accross this issue.

Another very minor and unexpected issue has arisen with just track 6; I cannot play the last 5 seconds of the track and playback abruptly stops and the play button turns into a rolling circle (which I guess means waiting fo data) and it will not move onto the next track. But this is not the case for any other track on that album, I can play them to their ends and playback moves on as expected. I guess it's telling me to go away and play something different...it might be useful.

 

[timola]

- Almost every track I've played so far has been labelled as remastered so that may indeed account for not-so-good sound although I find the sound perfectly OK.
(That means the year of release represents the remastering year NOT the actual release date:: kind of annoying).

- I'm using Bubble UPnP on my android tablet, which is casting the sound to my StreamX streamer.

I too am an old fart, but have worked on PC's since they were invented so the technicalities are fine for me. I do sympathise with others though as streaming on any sort seems to be an order of magnitude more complex than just 'bunging on a CD' !

Despite my initial thoughts I'm finding Qobuz a useful thing. I'll reconsider when my free month is up...

There does appear to be a beta version of UPnP on Qobuz but it does warn that this is not fully tested yet and users can try it without any guarantees. I personally wouldn't know what to do with it, I also don't currently have an android tablet (I've got my eye on a Samsung Tab A...maybe soon).

As a fellow old fart I'm in need of your sympathy (thanks), computers and HiFi should never be mixed, unless you have mountains of time, patience and perseverance. Wherever computers are added they become the bane for all users, they're in cars in a small way now but god help us when they start driving them.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

I am also having problems with playback speed on Qobuz on both of my UK systems. In my bedroom, Qobuz is playing from a 2011 Mac Mini, via a HiFace 2 USB to Coax converter and re-clocker to an Audiolabs M-DAC, with John Westlake upgraded firmware (and thence to a Naim Nait 5i-2 and Piega Ace 30 speakers). I quite often find playback speed is doubled, so it sounds like the Pinky and Perky Orchestra. It also happens on my main system which is an M1 Mac Mini outputting to a Benchmark Media DAC2-L (and then to a Krell Vanguard and ATC speakers). This happens more frequently with 96/24 streams than the standard 44.1/16 streams. I normally have to shut down Qobuz player com and restart it to clear this problem. I was running Amarra SQ+ on my main system but sadly they have been too dilatory to update their software to work on M1 Macs. Before I upgraded to an M1 Mac, I could not play 96/24 streams via Amarra SQ+ at all, as it doubled the play back speed every time. Qobuz were less than helpful and just said talk to Sonic Studio (the makers of Amarra). They in turn passed the buck straight back to Qobuz - "not our fault guv - talk to Qobuz".

 

[the_bat]

Just a note to the couple of people who've mentioned Audirvana. There's a major new version coming out this Sunday (16th May), so it might be worth holding off for that.

 

[nostromo]

I am also having problems with playback speed on Qobuz on both of my UK systems. In my bedroom, Qobuz is playing from a 2011 Mac Mini, via a HiFace 2 USB to Coax converter and re-clocker to an Audiolabs M-DAC, with John Westlake upgraded firmware (and thence to a Naim Nait 5i-2 and Piega Ace 30 speakers). I quite often find playback speed is doubled, so it sounds like the Pinky and Perky Orchestra. It also happens on my main system which is an M1 Mac Mini outputting to a Benchmark Media DAC2-L (and then to a Krell Vanguard and ATC speakers). This happens more frequently with 96/24 streams than the standard 44.1/16 streams. I normally have to shut down Qobuz player com and restart it to clear this problem. I was running Amarra SQ+ on my main system but sadly they have been too dilatory to update their software to work on M1 Macs. Before I upgraded to an M1 Mac, I could not play 96/24 streams via Amarra SQ+ at all, as it doubled the play back speed every time. Qobuz were less than helpful and just said talk to Sonic Studio (the makers of Amarra). They in turn passed the buck straight back to Qobuz - "not our fault guv - talk to Qobuz".

Try switching USB ports on both Mac Mini systems. It's an easy experiment. It may have something to do with USB2 vs USB3.
Simply switch the plugs to the mini and try.

Good luck.

 

[Andrew C!]

Qobuz via Roon on the main rig, and throughout the house. No issues. I also like the iPhone app - I have about 25 Lp's offline on that that I Bluetooth to my car stereo - works fine.

I do get what contributors say re software, but I'd suggest we all get used to one interface and when we change it to another, then that takes a bit of getting used to?

 

[Ian G]

I access quobus through orange squeeze on my vortex box, far better interface than using it on my phone or tablet

 

[Rosewind]

Audirvana has cured all the play-back issues I had with JRiver and the Windows Qobuz app through my Nuforce U192S usb to spdif converter. Now everything plays seamlessky. I can even switch between my NAS library and Qobuz as sources without problems.

Now, should I buy the 3.5 app or wait for the Audirvana revolution on May 16th?

 

[AndyU]

Audirvana has cured all the play-back issues I had with JRiver and the Windows Qobuz app through my Nuforce U192S usb to spdif converter. Now everything plays seamlessky. I can even switch between my NAS library and Qobuz as sources without problems.

Now, should I buy the 3.5 app or wait for the Audirvana revolution on May 16th?

I’m using Roon at the moment, fairly happily, but I’m certainly going to give Audirvana Studio a go. Maybe it will have better searching and organising than Roon. It’s a good time to be a consumer, and I’ve got used to the renting model.