Qobuz on Sonos - that's more like it!

[StuH]

Proper high quality music streaming

[PD1]

but French....

[VEX]

Interesting, got the email announcement this morning.

Will give it a go to see how it compares to Napster.

V.

[IforB]

At last!

A pity they feel the need to charge an extra tenner a month for decent quality though.

[g3rrd]

Been using it a while now. Annoying that we pay a extra £3.59 (£'s v €'s) monthly than the rest of Europe?

Hopefully Spotify will respond to a bit of competition and go down the higher quality music route and start a price war!

[OtherBusiness]

Out of interest is this better than Spotify set to 320 kbits/s (extreme)? I use that over Sonos and it seems alright.

Thanks

[Himself]

OtherBusiness said:

Out of interest is this better than Spotify set to 320 kbits/s (extreme)? I use that over Sonos and it seems alright.

Thanks

I can't hear a difference tbh, so it's not worth a £10 premium over Spotify imo.

[g3rrd]

Himself said:

I can't hear a difference tbh, so it's not worth a £10 premium over Spotify imo.

Night and day difference for me. So much so after running Spotify and Qobuz side by side I
cancelled one and joined the other sans délai .

[justin220]

I've just tried Qobuz through my Sonos system using the iPad app, but it only seems to be streaming MP3 quality? Is there any way to try the FLAC before actually paying for it?

[g3rrd]

I'm pretty sure the 1 month free trial is HiFi losless quality.

[barchetta_boy]

Has anyone actually ever conducted a proper blind test of codec quality? I have, and we found that using proper hi-fi amplification and speakers, we couldn't tell the difference above 128KBps.

[Himself]

barchetta_boy said:

Has anyone actually ever conducted a proper blind test of codec quality? I have, and we found that using proper hi-fi amplification and speakers, we couldn't tell the difference above 128KBps.

http://www.thedustbowl.net/9/post/2013/11/wav-vs-mp3-blind-test-go-on.html

[StuH]

barchetta_boy said:

Has anyone actually ever conducted a proper blind test of codec quality? I have, and we found that using proper hi-fi amplification and speakers, we couldn't tell the difference above 128KBps.

You don't need a blind test - just use your ears! Once you get above 320kb it's tough to tell on most low-fi/mid-fi kit like Sonos all-in-one units. But on a good system it's really night and day, MP3 just sounds flat and dead. I guess it all depends what you listen on and how sensitive you are to quality. My Mrs still can't tell HD from SD on a 65" plasma so who can say

[StuH]

PD1 said:

but French....

English now as well

[anonymous-user]

StuH said:

You don't need a blind test - just use your ears! Once you get above 320kb it's tough to tell on most low-fi/mid-fi kit like Sonos all-in-one units. But on a good system it's really night and day, MP3 just sounds flat and dead. I guess it all depends what you listen on and how sensitive you are to quality. My Mrs still can't tell HD from SD on a 65" plasma so who can say

Can I ask if the music selection is as wide as spotify?

[StuH]

desolate said:

Can I ask if the music selection is as wide as spotify?

No, some way short of Spotify's catalogue. But it's expanding rapidly.

You can get a free 1 month trial to see what you think though.

[anonymous-user]

barchetta_boy said:

Has anyone actually ever conducted a proper blind test of codec quality? I have, and we found that using proper hi-fi amplification and speakers, we couldn't tell the difference above 128KBps.

I did a small blind test with my wife (who's a bit more musical than me), she correctly arranged from 96k to lossless across 4 or 5 levels of compression. I think it was 96, 128, 256, 320, lossless.

Not exactly double blind and statistically significant though I agree

[IforB]

If you can't tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD, then you need your ears cleaning out or to stop listening to music through the speakers built in to your mobile phone!

I'll happily demo on my system the same tracks through a streaming service and a CD, I've done it myself numerous times to see what the difference was and i can assure everyone that it is really quite evident.

Like anything to do with data transmission, you put crap in, you get crap out. No matter how amazing your system, it cannot fill in gaps, it'll just make the most of what you give it.

[foliedouce]

But do you actually get lossless quality via Sonos?

I have subscribed and as far as I can see, you only get lossless via the desktop downloader on your PC. Sonos remains at 320kbs which is the same as Spotify.

Not great if that is the case. Well not for me anyway as I listen to my music via Sonos not via a PC.

[barchetta_boy]

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.