Streaming: Qobuz, DLNA, UPnP etc
- Thread starter Tony L
- Start date
When I installed my Ubiquiti router it didn't affect the Bufferbloat and Cloudflare results "out of the box".
The key, for me, was turning on the QoS functionality and putting values in the Upload and Download limits that were around 10% less than the available bandwidth... I think that's what keeps latency down when there are bursts elsewhere on the network.
Worth having a look at these at some point.
Chris
Tony L
Administrator
Yes, I will certainly have a deep-dive into that at some point.
The problem I have is not knowing exactly what is causing the DSX to drop on Qobuz, nor where the threshold is. It is so random; some days it works flawlessly for many hours (the whole dayās use), other times it can barely get through a song. Iām wondering in vacuum_tubes is onto something and it isnāt a speed/latency thing, more an inability to deal with a missing or corrupted TCP session command. Though again that doesnāt explain the randomness. It doesnāt seem to be connected to a specific track or album either. It can drop stuff it has played perfectly previously.
My next step is just to test Tidal for a few weeks. If I can localise the issue to Qobuz, or just find the better of the two, then that is useful information. Iād like a lot more information about the Stream700 front-end too, though I suspect the implementation will differ substantially brand to brand. There is remarkably little technical information on the Chord in the public domain. As @vacuum_tubes has suggested above it will likely take some proper network analysis to really get to the bottom of it.
That said I feel I should be getting better network results from this package than currently so Iāll certainly try implementing QoS at some point.
PS Iāve now unsubscribed from Qobuz, though Iāll likely go back if Tidal is no better. The user interfaces are so different I donāt know which I prefer yet!
beammeup
pfm Member
Tony L
Administrator
No, I tested this upthread. MConnect effectively sends the DLNA renderer an instruction and source location and then the device streams from there until it needs another instruction. I proved this by starting a track and then sticking the iPad in āAirplane modeā (all WiFi off) and even closing MConnect. The track played right until the end and then the DSX stopped. About 7 minutes IIRC. This is an aspect I really like about UPnP/DLNA. The tablet or phone is just a control surface, it isnāt in the data path the way of say Apple Airplay. This may also explain why Iāve always felt AirPlay streaming sounds poor (though there are other reasons, e.g. resampling).
gavreid
Pretty Words...
These 'technicalities' can be tremendously confusing and with multiple devices in play.
beammeup
pfm Member
OK that sounds pretty good. In that case I will dig out my well engineered and ancient (in the technical timeline) Marantz NA7004 giving this a go myself.
Tony L
Administrator
I think that is even older than the DSX! Iāll be interested to see how you get on as it should be pretty good. As I understand it UPnP/DLNA has been around for a long while now so really a DLNA renderer should just be a DLNA renderer. It should just do what it should do regardless of age. I think the things that have been refined over the years relate more to file formats, gapless play etc. Is it firmware upgradable? Definitely worth checking.
The DSX is orphaned now; it canāt find the server it looks to for to check firmware. It is running firmware dating from August 2015 (version 17.0.4.12) which I suspect was its final update. I should really check with Chord just in case there is anything later.
The streaming formats probably deserves a thread in its own right, some odd stuff out there e.g. a lot of stuff seems to be 24/44.1, and increasing the bit depth but not the sampling rate over CD makes no sense to me. The sampling rate was the limitation!
PS Tidal is doing remarkably well so far. Iāve had at least five hours without issue by now.
Stuart Frazer
pfm Member
I would definitely check with Chord Tony. There might be an update or some advice they can give to help.
Tony L
Administrator
Iām tempted to say Tidal is fine. It just seems to be working without issue. I suspect there is something about Qobuz the DSX doesnāt like. As such it will be making my decision for me as to which service to take on.
The differences between the services are interesting. I havenāt figured out those differences fully yet, but my suspicion is Qobuz has more high-res content. Iām seeing some stuff in Tidal that identifies as MQA, which is disappointing, though seems to play fine.
The various formats are baffling, I need to go and read some stuff as I canāt see what point there is to 24/44.1 (CD sampling rate, but 24 bit), yet a lot of stuff is served up in that format. Is this some attempt to level-shift? That said there is still a lot of standard 16/44.1 stuff, so it canāt be that. Iām reading Tidalās āEā and āMā badges on cover art as āexplicitā and āmaster qualityā, but the latter not necessarily MQA, and a lot of recent high-res stuff isnāt badged. In most cases I have to start playing something to see what it is. Maybe Iām missing stuff, especially when using the MConnect app which is very basic compared to the full Tidal (or Qobuz) app. I quite like the exploration features in Tidal, e.g. it seems easier to go hunting new releases by genre etc, and that is exactly what I want this stuff for. Not much in it though, I thought the Qobuz picks were very good.
The differences between the services are interesting. I havenāt figured out those differences fully yet, but my suspicion is Qobuz has more high-res content. Iām seeing some stuff in Tidal that identifies as MQA, which is disappointing, though seems to play fine.
The various formats are baffling, I need to go and read some stuff as I canāt see what point there is to 24/44.1 (CD sampling rate, but 24 bit), yet a lot of stuff is served up in that format. Is this some attempt to level-shift? That said there is still a lot of standard 16/44.1 stuff, so it canāt be that. Iām reading Tidalās āEā and āMā badges on cover art as āexplicitā and āmaster qualityā, but the latter not necessarily MQA, and a lot of recent high-res stuff isnāt badged. In most cases I have to start playing something to see what it is. Maybe Iām missing stuff, especially when using the MConnect app which is very basic compared to the full Tidal (or Qobuz) app. I quite like the exploration features in Tidal, e.g. it seems easier to go hunting new releases by genre etc, and that is exactly what I want this stuff for. Not much in it though, I thought the Qobuz picks were very good.
Tony L
Administrator
Iām now declaring Tidal bomb-proof. It just works flawlessly, so becomes my streaming choice by default. I donāt understand quite why the DSX doesnāt like Qobuz, but it doesnāt seem to. In this case it gets to choose!
FWIW I think Qobuz is the better service when it comes to file quality. Far too much on Tidal is still MQA, so basically lossy sub-CD quality unless you have a now obsolete MQA DAC. Still sounds fine, and is more than adequate for exploring new stuff, which is my goal here, but Iād bear that in mind if making a decision. The older the stuff you want to listen to the more MQA will show up.
FWIW I think Qobuz is the better service when it comes to file quality. Far too much on Tidal is still MQA, so basically lossy sub-CD quality unless you have a now obsolete MQA DAC. Still sounds fine, and is more than adequate for exploring new stuff, which is my goal here, but Iād bear that in mind if making a decision. The older the stuff you want to listen to the more MQA will show up.
I think youāre correct, I think Qobuz sounds better but if it gives you issues whatās the point.
vinylslug
pfm Member
Iāve been trialling Qobuz for a few days now. The sound quality is undeniably better, but - guess what? Dropouts. IPeng flagging up something about āRebuffering failedā. Iām not gonna rush to blame Qobuz as thereās a Mac Mini (hosting the LMS server) in the chain, which could be the culprit? But LMS on the āMini has been rock solid to date. I didnāt notice any such dropouts when trialling Tidal.
beammeup
pfm Member
Well @Tony L the Marantz NA7004 is working with mconnect and does indeed act as a control to stream Qobuz directly from the Internet.
The sad thing is that mconnect cannot stream a whole album with one instruction - just one song at a time - main thing however is that the music is coming from the cloud rather than from the iPhone.
Mucking about further I thought I would try the JPlay IOS app which is 'supposed' to sound better, on a 14 day trial - but it does not work with the Marantz renderer ?? MConnect is stable, JPlay doesn't want to know the Marantz (it can find it as a renderer, but it attempts to play the song for a few seconds without sound and then jumps to the next song etc etc - weird). This is when using the Qobuz app on JPlay.
The sad thing is that mconnect cannot stream a whole album with one instruction - just one song at a time - main thing however is that the music is coming from the cloud rather than from the iPhone.
Mucking about further I thought I would try the JPlay IOS app which is 'supposed' to sound better, on a 14 day trial - but it does not work with the Marantz renderer ?? MConnect is stable, JPlay doesn't want to know the Marantz (it can find it as a renderer, but it attempts to play the song for a few seconds without sound and then jumps to the next song etc etc - weird). This is when using the Qobuz app on JPlay.
Tony L
Administrator
That makes sense. My understanding is a DLNA renderer is pretty dumb. It wants an instruction and location. Go here, play this. It wouldnāt have a clue what an album was. Early ones couldnāt even cope with gapless and glitched, paused or popped if given what I assume is an immediate āplayā instruction and location for the next track. MConnect has a āgapless to rendererā option that the DSX understands fine. I think this is a pretty neat solution as it means the control surface isnāt in the data loop, it only monitors and sends follow-up commands.
John Phillips
pfm Member
I get similar all-but-perfect Qobuz reliability here. But only after I set up my streamer's HTTP/HTTPS stack, underlying a third-party Qobuz app, to deal with unreliable HTTP(S). It's not a general setting though (I think), just available on my particular installation.
Enough people are having intermittent problems that a plausible guess is that Qobuz is sailing close to the wind with their streaming protocol capacity. Very sensible for sustaining the business but it does look like Qobuz clients need to have some better-than-standard smart performance to deal with occasionally flaky connections. I sometimes use the official clients on PC and iPhone and they haven't glitched yet. Perhaps they have had the right smarts built in by Qobuz.
Pointing a finger at Qobuz servers doesn't help cure the problem, though. In practice it seems to be about finding a client that does better in applying the "be liberal in what you receive" end of the robustness principle. Either that or switch to a service that is more robust at it's end (as Tidal appears to be from the report above).