I am taking part in the public beta of Qobuz. Detailing my thoughts here as I discover what the service offers.
Qobuz is a streaming service out of France, primarily serving the EU and UK. They have recently worked on entering the US market, and have hired some major talent to get it launched, including audiophile legend David Solomon, who was originally part of Peachtree.
Their claim to fame is that they not only offer lossless CD-resolution streaming, they also offer the Internet's largest selection of high-resolution streaming files, up to 24-bit, 192kHz. As of this writing, they have over two million hi-res titles available both for streaming and for sale. Tidal is the only close competitor, yet the quality of many of their lossless files is suspect, and they have also been distributing MQA-encoded files, a highly controversial and polarizing lossy high-resolution format (an oxymoron) that is proving to be pretty much a stillborn technology.
As part of the audiophile connection, Qobuz (with David Solomon's obvious influence) has worked with such cutting edge software companies like Roon Labs, who has just announced that the latest version of Roon now supports Qobuz. Since many audiophiles have bought into Roon, they will be more willing to give Qobuz a try. (The way Roon works is that it integrate's a person's own music library with that of Qobuz, so that music is easy to discover and play back. The Roon controller can then send the music to whichever supported device in the home the person chooses.)
I'm using the mconnect app so I can stream via DLNA. Here are some screenshots showing the player and part of a selection of albums. (An overlay shows the resolution you are streaming at.) Click to enlarge.
This is from the official Qobuz app. Left to right--album listing, album player, track queue, and a sample of an artist overview written by Qobuz staff. Note here, too, the "Hi-Res" badges beneath some of the album listings.
Finally, here is the desktop application, which lets you choose which audio device to stream to on your computer, or choose a Chromecast-audio-capable device anywhere on your network.
Initial impressions are that it sounds pretty good, better than Tidal's lossless. I need to shift around a few things to make a proper comparison.
Qobuz is a streaming service out of France, primarily serving the EU and UK. They have recently worked on entering the US market, and have hired some major talent to get it launched, including audiophile legend David Solomon, who was originally part of Peachtree.
Their claim to fame is that they not only offer lossless CD-resolution streaming, they also offer the Internet's largest selection of high-resolution streaming files, up to 24-bit, 192kHz. As of this writing, they have over two million hi-res titles available both for streaming and for sale. Tidal is the only close competitor, yet the quality of many of their lossless files is suspect, and they have also been distributing MQA-encoded files, a highly controversial and polarizing lossy high-resolution format (an oxymoron) that is proving to be pretty much a stillborn technology.
As part of the audiophile connection, Qobuz (with David Solomon's obvious influence) has worked with such cutting edge software companies like Roon Labs, who has just announced that the latest version of Roon now supports Qobuz. Since many audiophiles have bought into Roon, they will be more willing to give Qobuz a try. (The way Roon works is that it integrate's a person's own music library with that of Qobuz, so that music is easy to discover and play back. The Roon controller can then send the music to whichever supported device in the home the person chooses.)
I'm using the mconnect app so I can stream via DLNA. Here are some screenshots showing the player and part of a selection of albums. (An overlay shows the resolution you are streaming at.) Click to enlarge.
This is from the official Qobuz app. Left to right--album listing, album player, track queue, and a sample of an artist overview written by Qobuz staff. Note here, too, the "Hi-Res" badges beneath some of the album listings.
Finally, here is the desktop application, which lets you choose which audio device to stream to on your computer, or choose a Chromecast-audio-capable device anywhere on your network.
Initial impressions are that it sounds pretty good, better than Tidal's lossless. I need to shift around a few things to make a proper comparison.
