Qobuz on legacy platform streamers

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

nbpf posted:

Nick Lees posted:

Synology>BubbleUPnP>Kazoo here. Very, very occasionally I get the track skip-to-next. ...

I have come across a post at page 4 of a "Qobuz skipping" thread on the Linn forum in which a contributor has reported frequent track skipping issues. In his case, it turned out that latency problems were responsible for the jumps. He finally managed to avoid the issues by replacing the default domain on his router with Google's public DNSs. I am just trying the same approach.

That really doesn't make much sense - once a stream has initiated the DNS has sone its stuff - and its strictly IP addresses from that point on.... latency is more about internet roundtrip latency between the server and your host - I get jumps on my NDX sometimes - but so far not on my Pi - where I assume it has larger transport segment buffers - and I am using a RPi2 with its larger IO bandwidth.

You are right, it seems that the jumps are just due to failures to read the current track to the end:

May 13 19:48 : player: played "http://192.168.178.31:49149/qobuz/track?version=1&trackId=47572577"
May 13 20:01 : curl: curl failed: transfer closed with 6255341 bytes remaining to read
May 13 20:01 : flac: FLAC__STREAM_DECODER_ABORTED
May 13 20:02 : player: played "http://192.168.178.31:49149/qobuz/track?version=1&trackId=47572578"

Luckily Quboz is fully integrated on LMS and so can be accessed with Liv/Innous Zen players as can both Tidal and Spotify. I tried the free trial on Quboz and really enjoyed it although sound wise I couldn't find any difference between it and Tidal both at 16/44 sounded inferior to CD Rips.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

You can also run LMS on a Synology NAS (and maybe others) and use this to stream. I’ve done this to try the Radio Paradise FLAC stream to my NDX. I imagine it would work with the Qobuz plugin too. 

True, at least for Tidal, though, LMS via the iPeng app does not offer the “my music” section but only allows to browse the Tidal library “generically”, that is why I went for the DLNA option with mconnect which has “more” of the dedicated Tidal app functionality built in (i.e. the “my music” section). Ditto for Qobuz (except the all important -especially for classical fans- booklets...)

And with BullbleUPnP using the LUMIN control point, one gets the regular Tidal functionally including my music playlists, with associated art.

nbpf posted:

May 13 19:48 : player: played "http://192.168.178.31:49149/qobuz/track?version=1&trackId=47572577"
May 13 20:01 : curl: curl failed: transfer closed with 6255341 bytes remaining to read
May 13 20:01 : flac: FLAC__STREAM_DECODER_ABORTED
May 13 20:02 : player: played "http://192.168.178.31:49149/qobuz/track?version=1&trackId=47572578"

Interesting, your log shows your internal private address on your home network, no doubt to your BubbleUPnP proxy... so is not telling much where the issue might be. You want to compare logs on the inside of your proxy(as here) with the outside of your proxy, that is between BubbleUPnP and Tidal... those addresses will be public internet addresses. 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

nbpf posted:

May 13 19:48 : player: played "http://192.168.178.31:49149/qobuz/track?version=1&trackId=47572577"
May 13 20:01 : curl: curl failed: transfer closed with 6255341 bytes remaining to read
May 13 20:01 : flac: FLAC__STREAM_DECODER_ABORTED
May 13 20:02 : player: played "http://192.168.178.31:49149/qobuz/track?version=1&trackId=47572578"

Interesting, your log shows your internal private address on your home network, no doubt to your BubbleUPnP proxy... so is not telling much where the issue might be. You want to compare logs on the inside of your proxy(as here) with the outside of your proxy, that is between BubbleUPnP and Tidal... those addresses will be public internet addresses. 

I am not very proficient in using network tools but it does not seem to be completely trivial to find out the IP adress of the Qobuz server from which one is currently streaming. The log above was from MPD. The Qobuz interface that I use is provided by upmpdcli, I was not using BubbleUPnP. upmpdcli used MPD as a backend and, as stated in the documentation, its Qobuz interface "is based on the service API from the Kodi add-on, by Joachim Basmaison and Cyril Leclerc". But Qobuz streaming via BubbleUPnP does not yield much different results, in my case. I have used Tidal in the past without any issue and the track skipping events during Qobuz streaming have come up only recently. Thus, it is conceivable that this is a fairly undocumented issue. It seems to also affect a very small minority of ultraRendu users. Thus, in the end, it might be a problem that is very weakly related with endpoint software.

With guidance from Richard, and Simon above, I’ve loaded bubble and got Qobuz working. The sound is better than using mconnect, in that it’s more natural and real. I’m using the Linn Kazoo app, which seems easier to use than Lumin. Once I knew what to do, putting bubble on the Qnap was pretty easy. I was a bit silly to be nervous of it before, but better late than never. 

Hungryhalibut posted:

With guidance from Richard, and Simon above, I’ve loaded bubble and got Qobuz working. The sound is better than using mconnect, in that it’s more natural and real. I’m using the Linn Kazoo app, which seems easier to use than Lumin. Once I knew what to do, putting bubble on the Qnap was pretty easy. I was a bit silly to be nervous of it before, but better late than never. 

Thanks for this, I may give Qobuz a go. Assuming you have been using Tidal to date, how would you comapre the SQ, usability and catalogue of Qobuz vs Tidal.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I use BubbleUPnP running on a RPi to play Qobuz and Tidal streams... BubbleUPnP automatically discovers my legacy streamer, NDX, and allows you to assign it as a OpenHome renderer... and away you go.. and I use the free Lunin app on my iPad as the control point. All in all took about 10 minutes to setup..

Bloomin’ fantastic... the SQ, master permitting, is superb... and no real issue with dropouts... on my 3.8 Mbps ADSL access.. ( though we are actually now on the plan for FTTP)

Simon,

what you are running is not BubbleUpnp , but Bubbleupnpserver. Bubbleupnp is something else and is a control point available only on Android , and written
by the same developer.

BubbleupnpServer is not needed to stream Qobuz or Tidal. BubbleUpnp will do it on its own. It is needed for the openhome emulation. This openhome emulation is enabling the usage of Linn Kazoo and Lumin apps (available also on ios), 

I realize with this thread that many people have been unable to enjoy Qobuz because this information was little known on this forum. It is sad
because it was posted a long time ago by Dupree. I have used those two tools for years with my unitilite and my nd5xs
https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...al-to-naim-streamers
Thanks to HH , for creating this thread

Simon M.

nigelb posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

With guidance from Richard, and Simon above, I’ve loaded bubble and got Qobuz working. The sound is better than using mconnect, in that it’s more natural and real. I’m using the Linn Kazoo app, which seems easier to use than Lumin. Once I knew what to do, putting bubble on the Qnap was pretty easy. I was a bit silly to be nervous of it before, but better late than never. 

Thanks for this, I may give Qobuz a go. Assuming you have been using Tidal to date, how would you comapre the SQ, usability and catalogue of Qobuz vs Tidal.

I have not used Tidal for over a year. At the time I was really unhappy with the SQ, but that may have improved with the new firmware and I haven’t done a direct comparison. As to the catalogue I’d suggest that you simply have a look at their website, as you are very likely looking for different music to me. 

It’s certainly very easy to use with the Kazoo app. Why not do what I did and try it free for a month - there is nothing to lose. 

Just from my experience:

Qobuz/UPnP -->BubbleUPnP Server (on RPi)-->272 and using Lumin/Kazoo. It does work, but..it works for 90% of what I was accustomed to (Naim app/Tidal). If you pause the music and want to resume, both apps will start playing from the start. Fast forward doesn't work. If you press the stop button on the Naim remote, no luck, next track will start playing, you can only pause. Music wise very good, to me comparable with Tidal. Switched back to Tidal because of native integration in the Naim app.

Mconnect stores the playlist on the device, so I you leave the house and are out of reach of your home network, music will stop. You do have MQA in Tidal, that 's nice. SQ I could not really hear difference with the Tidal flac. Mconnect has too many pages to flip. I don't know if you now can combine Tidal/Qobuz playlist together with UPnP. This company also has a hardware module, to integrate into players, maybe something for Naim to investigate. It has Tidal/Qobuz support and also Roon ready, deezer, spotify. I hope I did not violate forum rules now, otherwise, remove this last part.

Hungryhalibut posted:

With guidance from Richard, and Simon above, I’ve loaded bubble and got Qobuz working. The sound is better than using mconnect, in that it’s more natural and real. I’m using the Linn Kazoo app, which seems easier to use than Lumin. Once I knew what to do, putting bubble on the Qnap was pretty easy. I was a bit silly to be nervous of it before, but better late than never. 

Congrats Nigel... yes all the vernacular can  make it sound more complicated that it is... I might look at Kazoo as the control app 

Simon M (@Stringerbell) I was trying to cut down the jargon... they key thing is I am running BubbleUPnPServer service as a proxy on my media server.. this is important from a SQ point of view... it is also decoupled from control pointsoftware from a point of view of media streaming... again very important from a SQ point of view with the analysis I have performed on inter Ethernet frame timing consistency... it is also this property that the proxy server addresses and provides a SQ improvement over direct internet streaming (from Tidal, Qobuz etc) 

nbpf posted:

I am not very proficient in using network tools but it does not seem to be completely trivial to find out the IP adress of the Qobuz server from which one is currently streaming....

Hi, yes unless you have good application logs you will need to use Wireshark or similar to sniff the network between your media server / proxy and Qobuz, and it will become clear... and you may also see why the socket/session is being closed... I suspect is probably due to TCP segment timing / PDU reconstruction  issues due to too smaller buffers for the latency on the end point or less likely on the proxy

RikkieB posted:

Just from my experience:

Qobuz/UPnP -->BubbleUPnP Server (on RPi)-->272 and using Lumin/Kazoo. It does work, but..it works for 90% of what I was accustomed to (Naim app/Tidal). If you pause the music and want to resume, both apps will start playing from the start. Fast forward doesn't work. If you press the stop button on the Naim remote, no luck, next track will start playing, you can only pause. Music wise very good, to me comparable with Tidal. Switched back to Tidal because of native integration in the Naim app

If you let bubbleupnpserver transcode the qobuz stream to wav on the fly, it sounds a little bit clearer, at least on my uniti1 with streamin board v3. Also I am able to seek inline the track with a new beta version of the server by switching to the naim app. So I think the next official version will work, too.

If you stop a track on the streamer side with the naim app or normal remote, bubbleupnpserver thinks that it has finished playing and offers the streamer the next track to play. So you need to stop using the lumin/kazoo app. This way the BUServer knows that the music is stopped.

pausing and resuming a track with the lumin app indeed does not work. But using the naim app or remote does work. After a while I have got used to it. It is not perfect but works quite good for me.

Could I ask how you get bubble to transcode to flac? I couldn’t see that option anywhere. 

Wouldn't you want Bubble to transcode from flac to wav as this is the preferred format for Naim streamers?

Hungryhalibut posted:

Could I ask how you get bubble to transcode to flac? I couldn’t see that option anywhere. 

Isn’t transcoding only for Chromecast?

nigelb posted:

Wouldn't you want Bubble to transcode from flac to wav as this is the preferred format for Naim streamers?

Sorry, that’s what I meant. It’s getting late. If someone could tell me how to do it that would be great. 

nbpf posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

...

Bloomin’ fantastic... the SQ, master permitting, is superb... and no real issue with dropouts... on my 3.8 Mbps ADSL access.. ( though we are actually now on the plan for FTTP)

True, no single dropout in months! Still, there seems to be an issue: sometimes, in the middle of a track, replay skips to the next track. If on the last track, it skips to the end. This does not happen very frequently but frequently enough to be very annoying. Perhaps once every few hours but, sometimes, also twice in the same album!

The issue has been discussed in a "Help Trouble Shooting Skip-to-next-track problem in my Streaming setup" thread in the CA forums and I have opened a ticket on the Open Source Projects system for upmpdcli-qobuz. It also seems to affect replay when Qobuz is accessed via BubbleUPnP server.

For those using upmpdcli: this is most likely an MPD problem that affects both Qobuz and Tidal streaming. I can be alleviated by changing the default values of audio_buffer_size and buffer_before_play to 2048 and 20%, respectively. If you are not using upmpdcli or MPD, no need to worry.

Hungryhalibut posted:

Could I ask how you get bubble to transcode to flac? I couldn’t see that option anywhere. 

The setting is in the renderer tab where you can enable the openhome proxy for a renderer. I think it is a quite new option so you have to have the latest version of BubbleUPnPServer (BUS) installed.

If your installation does not offer you an update (like it was the case on my Synology NAS) you might have installed a former version that has an update-detection bug. In this case you have to uninstall and reinstall BUS to get the most recent version.

If the transcoding option is greyed out you either do not have ffmpeg installed or the version that comes e.g. with synology is missing some options. I have installed the OptwareNGs ffmpeg version for this reason. You can find details on the BUS web page ("Synology NAS").

Quick update: Using BubbleUPnPServer I have been comparing Tidal and Qobuz - and to my ears Qobuz consistently sounds better and so I have decided to cancel my Tidal subscription and switch back to Qobuz... Qobuz also seems to have a better selection of EPs which I find surprising but pleased about.

Very interesting Simon, and thanks for the update. I assume I can install BubbleUPnPServer on my QNAP but will have to access the Qobuz external stream and locally stored music via the Bubble app rather than being embedded in the Naim app as Tidal is. Is that right?

Seems we have an alternative if Tidal goes pop.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Quick update: Using BubbleUPnPServer I have been comparing Tidal and Qobuz - and to my ears Qobuz consistently sounds better and so I have decided to cancel my Tidal subscription and switch back to Qobuz... Qobuz also seems to have a better selection of EPs which I find surprising but pleased about.

Can I assume that you are not playing Tidal masters? IMO, it is a step up in SQ with respect to 44.1/16.