Qobuz on Sonos - that's more like it!
Discussion
barchetta_boy said:
Let me expand a little... we did this test before the existence of Spotify.
We took a test track on CD and ripped it ourselves into Lossless, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis of varying bit rates. We used the best encoders we could find - can't remember what the Ogg Vorbis one was but the MP3 was done via LAME. Then we made a new red book CD and played that through an old, but decent quality hi-fi set up (Roberts amp and Wharfedale speakers). It certainly wasn't night and day and at 160KBps on Ogg Vorbis the quality was almost indistinguishable from CD.
Would be intrigued to hear others' experiences - not just streaming services which I agree all sound crap.
I am by no means an expert but I recently bought a collection of remastered "Smiths" records. As well as a very nice physical collection you were able to download a high quality mp3s as well as the usual ones. You can also listen on spotify.We took a test track on CD and ripped it ourselves into Lossless, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis of varying bit rates. We used the best encoders we could find - can't remember what the Ogg Vorbis one was but the MP3 was done via LAME. Then we made a new red book CD and played that through an old, but decent quality hi-fi set up (Roberts amp and Wharfedale speakers). It certainly wasn't night and day and at 160KBps on Ogg Vorbis the quality was almost indistinguishable from CD.
Would be intrigued to hear others' experiences - not just streaming services which I agree all sound crap.
I can't really tell the difference on my play 3 which is sort of stuck in the corner of the kitchen but on the system that is properly set up with the speakers actually pointing vaguely in the correct direction you can definitely tell the difference, as you can on a phone with decent headphones.
barchetta_boy said:
Let me expand a little... we did this test before the existence of Spotify.
We took a test track on CD and ripped it ourselves into Lossless, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis of varying bit rates. We used the best encoders we could find - can't remember what the Ogg Vorbis one was but the MP3 was done via LAME. Then we made a new red book CD and played that through an old, but decent quality hi-fi set up (Roberts amp and Wharfedale speakers). It certainly wasn't night and day and at 160KBps on Ogg Vorbis the quality was almost indistinguishable from CD.
Would be intrigued to hear others' experiences - not just streaming services which I agree all sound crap.
Interesting. However, my ears and my experience differs slightly. I've tried it on a mate's old system which consisted of a Bryston player, amps and PMC EB's, as well as my far more modest Pioneer amp and PMC OB's with an Oppo 95 doing the Cd player bit and we could tell the difference between MP3 straight from the laptop, 320kbps streaming and CD, as well as trying a Blu Ray of the same live track that was in full DTS-HD sound. We took a test track on CD and ripped it ourselves into Lossless, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis of varying bit rates. We used the best encoders we could find - can't remember what the Ogg Vorbis one was but the MP3 was done via LAME. Then we made a new red book CD and played that through an old, but decent quality hi-fi set up (Roberts amp and Wharfedale speakers). It certainly wasn't night and day and at 160KBps on Ogg Vorbis the quality was almost indistinguishable from CD.
Would be intrigued to hear others' experiences - not just streaming services which I agree all sound crap.
No double blind testing, but it was evident, especially on my mate's ridiculously good system.
StuH said:
Proper high quality music streaming 
No it's not - it's the same as Spotify via Sonos @ 320k just with a smaller music catalogue and an extra £10 per month subscription chargeAll this pontificating about audio quality is irrelevant unless you hook your amp directly into your PC to listen to Qubuz via their desktop app
foliedouce said:
No it's not - it's the same as Spotify via Sonos @ 320k just with a smaller music catalogue and an extra £10 per month subscription charge
All this pontificating about audio quality is irrelevant unless you hook your amp directly into your PC to listen to Qubuz via their desktop app
Wrong! All this pontificating about audio quality is irrelevant unless you hook your amp directly into your PC to listen to Qubuz via their desktop app
FLAC streaming service on Sonos (16 bit /44.1 kHz FLAC) on the HIFI subscription. It's 320k MP3 on the PREMIUM subscription.
I stream SONOS into a Naim DAC and onto my main amp and speakers. So your point is?
StuH said:
Wrong!
FLAC streaming service on Sonos (16 bit /44.1 kHz FLAC) on the HIFI subscription. It's 320k MP3 on the PREMIUM subscription.
I stream SONOS into a Naim DAC and onto my main amp and speakers. So your point is?
I'm pleased to be corrected, so please explain (in simple terms to a non techie) why when logged onto Qobuz with a HiFi subscription (which I have) and you switch on Hi Fi / Lossless mode it says;-FLAC streaming service on Sonos (16 bit /44.1 kHz FLAC) on the HIFI subscription. It's 320k MP3 on the PREMIUM subscription.
I stream SONOS into a Naim DAC and onto my main amp and speakers. So your point is?
"This option is reserved for the Qobuz Hi-Fi subscribers using Qobuz Desktop"
As soon as you integrate Qubuz into Sonos, you are no longer using the Desktop hence that infers that you are no longer getting lossless quality via the Sonos.
If this is wrong, then great it's worth the extra cash, just keen to understand why Qubuz themselves are stating the need to use the Desktop app to get lossless
tmutimer said:
Really bad customer service with Qobuz! They stole my money and refused to refund.
Seriously?? I bought something on there that was priced as an album and found it was a single when I checked. I wrote them a message about it and they came back to me within the hour, crediting the money to my account and telling me to keep the single. My only gripe with Qobuz is that they have far too much good stuff on there and it's costing me a bomb to buy it all.
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