Qobuz High Res Downloads

Have you tried downloading in flac instead? That and WAV seem to be the formats most people use. That said, the Core should work with aiff according to the specifications, but it has to be worth trying flac. 

Hi WAV plays but then you have the Artwork issues. FLAC is not an option for sound quality reasons, if you compare the same recordings as AIFF, WAV and FLAC you hear clearly the difference on a good system. 

All my music is in flac but I use Asset to transcode to WAV. The Core, of course, cannot do that. It’s only Naim WAV rips that have metadata stored in a funny way - downloads should be fine. 

Have you tried to use flac with 0% compression?

Yes I have tried that... but I don’t won’t to discuss FLAC. For me it’s not an option. AIFF works fine for me with excellent sound on all my systems: Pioneer DJ, Mac, etc. even with the core and Nova except in HighRes. And this have to be a bug, because the specs says “Plays all”.

CSommer posted:

Yes I have tried that... but I don’t won’t to discuss FLAC. For me it’s not an option. AIFF works fine for me with excellent sound on all my systems: Pioneer DJ, Mac, etc. even with the core and Nova except in HighRes. And this have to be a bug, because the specs says “Plays all”.

Sure you should be able to use whichever format is supported and you fancy to use! Still, you could try to download a .wav file or a .flac file, encode it as .aiff and give it a try. This would tell you whether the issue that you are experiencing is a Naim issue or a Qobuz issue. In the latter case good luck: I have sent to Qobuz a number of issue reports and never got any feedback from them: a miserable technical service. If it turns out to be a Naim issue, it will likely be sorted out with a firmware upgrade. In the meanwhile you could download .flac files and then batch convert to .aiff once the issue has been fixed.

That’s a good idea! Keep you posted

nbpf posted:

CSommer posted:

Yes I have tried that... but I don’t won’t to discuss FLAC. For me it’s not an option. AIFF works fine for me with excellent sound on all my systems: Pioneer DJ, Mac, etc. even with the core and Nova except in HighRes. And this have to be a bug, because the specs says “Plays all”.

Sure you should be able to use whichever format is supported and you fancy to use! Still, you could try to download a .wav file or a .flac file, encode it as .aiff and give it a try. This would tell you whether the issue that you are experiencing is a Naim issue or a Qobuz issue. In the latter case good luck: I have sent to Qobuz a number of issue reports and never got any feedback from them: a miserable technical service. If it turns out to be a Naim issue, it will likely be sorted out with a firmware upgrade. In the meanwhile you could download .flac files and then batch convert to .aiff once the issue has been fixed.

I too have had miserable experiences with the 'technical' support from Qobuz, and the download experience, to the point that I will only buy  from them if it cannot be got elsewhere. However, there is one advantage in that you can download your purchase as often as you like, and in different formats, offering CSOMMER a temporary solution to his current problem. 

Hi all.  I live in Canada so cannot access Qobuz at this time.  However, I stumbled on a way to purchase and download Qobuz files, using Hotspot Shield, which makes it look like I'm in another country, like the UK.  Only problem is that it doesn't always work.  I can select an album to purchase, but it then opens up on the French website, which of course won't let me purchase anything.  Any ideas?

docmark posted:

Hi all.  I live in Canada so cannot access Qobuz at this time.  However, I stumbled on a way to purchase and download Qobuz files, using Hotspot Shield, which makes it look like I'm in another country, like the UK.  Only problem is that it doesn't always work.  I can select an album to purchase, but it then opens up on the French website, which of course won't let me purchase anything.  Any ideas?

Send Qobuz an email. I live in Switzerland and before Qobuz was available here they let me set up a French account.

docmark posted:

Hi all.  I live in Canada so cannot access Qobuz at this time.  However, I stumbled on a way to purchase and download Qobuz files, using Hotspot Shield, which makes it look like I'm in another country, like the UK.  Only problem is that it doesn't always work.  I can select an album to purchase, but it then opens up on the French website, which of course won't let me purchase anything.  Any ideas?

I have a similar situation and use a VPN add on. When I purchase I get an email with a link for downloading which works; if I access Qobuz purchases directly it will not work through. 

docmark posted:

Hi all.  I live in Canada so cannot access Qobuz at this time.  However, I stumbled on a way to purchase and download Qobuz files, using Hotspot Shield, which makes it look like I'm in another country, like the UK.  Only problem is that it doesn't always work.  I can select an album to purchase, but it then opens up on the French website, which of course won't let me purchase anything.  Any ideas?

Not sure if this news from Qobuz applies to Canada maybe not?

https://darko.audio/2018/07/qo...ice-of-american-pie/

docmark posted:

Hi all.  I live in Canada so cannot access Qobuz at this time.  However, I stumbled on a way to purchase and download Qobuz files, using Hotspot Shield, which makes it look like I'm in another country, like the UK.  Only problem is that it doesn't always work.  I can select an album to purchase, but it then opens up on the French website, which of course won't let me purchase anything.  Any ideas?

You have Prostudiomasters to choose from. Is Qobuz better?

Prostudiomasters is okay, but not fantastic.  Qobuz definitely has more selection.

Well, I found out how to buy digital downloads from Qobuz, and to my horror, have quickly purchased about $800 worth of files.  Think I'll slow down for a while.

CSommer posted:

Hi WAV plays but then you have the Artwork issues. FLAC is not an option for sound quality reasons, if you compare the same recordings as AIFF, WAV and FLAC you hear clearly the difference on a good system. 

Not entirely true. I transcode from FLAC to WAV using minimserver, simply because I can. However, although I did believe I noticed a (very) slight difference in SQ between the two when I used a Naim ND5XS streamer, there is no perceptible difference in sound quality between the two when using my Klimax DS/1 which I believe is part of quite a 'good' system.

David O'Higgins posted:

nbpf posted:

CSommer posted:

Yes I have tried that... but I don’t won’t to discuss FLAC. For me it’s not an option. AIFF works fine for me with excellent sound on all my systems: Pioneer DJ, Mac, etc. even with the core and Nova except in HighRes. And this have to be a bug, because the specs says “Plays all”.

Sure you should be able to use whichever format is supported and you fancy to use! Still, you could try to download a .wav file or a .flac file, encode it as .aiff and give it a try. This would tell you whether the issue that you are experiencing is a Naim issue or a Qobuz issue. In the latter case good luck: I have sent to Qobuz a number of issue reports and never got any feedback from them: a miserable technical service. If it turns out to be a Naim issue, it will likely be sorted out with a firmware upgrade. In the meanwhile you could download .flac files and then batch convert to .aiff once the issue has been fixed.

I too have had miserable experiences with the 'technical' support from Qobuz, and the download experience, to the point that I will only buy  from them if it cannot be got elsewhere. However, there is one advantage in that you can download your purchase as often as you like, and in different formats, offering CSOMMER a temporary solution to his current problem. 

Very strange, because my experiences with Qobuz support have been very different. Qobuz support has been very quick to respond and resolve any issues I have had with downloads. I recall one instance where I had downloaded a dozen or so albums and had a problem with one specific track on one of the albums. They responded very quickly to my query, indicated that the issue appeared to be with their file of that track and so couldn't be quickly resolved. They invited me to download any alternative album at no cost. Can't get much better than that! 

I haven't bought anything from them for a few months now, so I guess things might have changed, but I certainly have no complaints.    

I've had mixed experiences with Qobuz & I fully accept that as normal,  but it would be better to not have issues that needed to involve their customer service.  The last one however was a bit concerning;  I always select WAV if its offered,  or just take the FLAC & convert it.   The last WAV I bought from Qobuz did not have any metadata tags,  I e-mailed them & the reply came back that WAV cannot contain metadata,  I replied telling them what WAV does & how it does it,  plus that they had previously sold me dozens of correctly tagged WAV albums.  The second reply was (in effective)  that I was wrong & they were right.   Ohh dear life is too short for this crap,  I downloaded the FLAC version that did carry the metadata tags & converted that.   Now I don't have Qobuz as my first choice vendor.

Mike-B posted:

I've had mixed experiences with Qobuz & I fully accept that as normal,  but it would be better to not have issues that needed to involve their customer service.  The last one however was a bit concerning;  I always select WAV if its offered,  or just take the FLAC & convert it.   The last WAV I bought from Qobuz did not have any metadata tags,  I e-mailed them & the reply came back that WAV cannot contain metadata,  I replied telling them what WAV does & how it does it,  plus that they had previously sold me dozens of correctly tagged WAV albums.  The second reply was (in effective)  that I was wrong & they were right.   Ohh dear life is too short for this crap,  I downloaded the FLAC version that did carry the metadata tags & converted that.   Now I don't have Qobuz as my first choice vendor.

I had a similarly negative experience, even though I downloaded some albums in FLAC. Bizarrely, they too were devoid of all metadata, even though I know that others successfully downloaded the same albums with metadata. Customer support just fobbed me off with a non-answer, basically saying there was no metadata available for those albums.  

Mike-B posted:

The second reply was (in effective)  that I was wrong & they were right.

Oh my god! How can anybody be so ignorant to arguments that you had presented them!?

My experience with qobuz is very good. I had bought and downloaded an album that had a glitch in one file. The support told me to choose any other album that I was interested in as a free download instead. The problematic album was taken out of the shop. 

Another time I  preordered an album and so paid it some weeks before it was published. One week before it was published the price was reduced by around 5€. I asked qobuz that this cannot be the right way to raise the interest of customers for preordering albums. And again they offered my the possibility to choose another album for free download.

Everything else is working nearly ok. Sometimes the android app does not correctly connect to qobuz. You have to stop and restart it multiple times until it works. Also I am missing a tagging of favorites (interesting, good, very good, onto the wish list, etc) or at least a rating from 1 to 5 or something similar. In the list of new music that is selected by qobuz each week there are too many heavy metal and in my ears noise only hard rock albums (or however the genre is called) since some months now. And last week nearly no new music was presented in this list. Maybe they are all on vacation?

ChrisSU posted:

I had a similarly negative experience, even though I downloaded some albums in FLAC. Bizarrely, they too were devoid of all metadata, even though I know that others successfully downloaded the same albums with metadata. Customer support just fobbed me off with a non-answer, basically saying there was no metadata available for those albums.  

 Sometimes one and the same album is listed multiple times in the list of the artist's albums. So maybe one version was available with meta tags and another one without? I do not understand why these multi entries occur. They are confusing. Probably the import into there music database is happening automatically with the data the label exports. It is the question if qobuz has the possibility (and is allowed) to fix meta tags themselves. 

gert posted:

ChrisSU posted:

I had a similarly negative experience, even though I downloaded some albums in FLAC. Bizarrely, they too were devoid of all metadata, even though I know that others successfully downloaded the same albums with metadata. Customer support just fobbed me off with a non-answer, basically saying there was no metadata available for those albums.  

 Sometimes one and the same album is listed multiple times in the list of the artist's albums. So maybe one version was available with meta tags and another one without? I do not understand why these multi entries occur. They are confusing. Probably the import into there music database is happening automatically with the data the label exports. It is the question if qobuz has the possibility (and is allowed) to fix meta tags themselves. 

The main culprit for me was a complete set of Lou Reed albums, which I know some other forum members also bought, so I’m pretty sure we were all getting different results from the same version. 

So far, no problems with downloads.  I download & listen in FLAC, and quite honestly don't hear a drop in quality from WAV or AIFF.  I think I've got a decent system, including a DAVE DAC.  I listen to files on my portable system as well, again most as FLAC except my DSD files,  I use an A&K SP1000 and Focal Utopia headphones along with an ALO Audio headphone amp.  Good sound all around.

Hmack posted:

David O'Higgins posted:

nbpf posted:

CSommer posted:

Yes I have tried that... but I don’t won’t to discuss FLAC. For me it’s not an option. AIFF works fine for me with excellent sound on all my systems: Pioneer DJ, Mac, etc. even with the core and Nova except in HighRes. And this have to be a bug, because the specs says “Plays all”.

Sure you should be able to use whichever format is supported and you fancy to use! Still, you could try to download a .wav file or a .flac file, encode it as .aiff and give it a try. This would tell you whether the issue that you are experiencing is a Naim issue or a Qobuz issue. In the latter case good luck: I have sent to Qobuz a number of issue reports and never got any feedback from them: a miserable technical service. If it turns out to be a Naim issue, it will likely be sorted out with a firmware upgrade. In the meanwhile you could download .flac files and then batch convert to .aiff once the issue has been fixed.

I too have had miserable experiences with the 'technical' support from Qobuz, and the download experience, to the point that I will only buy  from them if it cannot be got elsewhere. However, there is one advantage in that you can download your purchase as often as you like, and in different formats, offering CSOMMER a temporary solution to his current problem. 

Very strange, because my experiences with Qobuz support have been very different. Qobuz support has been very quick to respond and resolve any issues I have had with downloads. I recall one instance where I had downloaded a dozen or so albums and had a problem with one specific track on one of the albums. They responded very quickly to my query, indicated that the issue appeared to be with their file of that track and so couldn't be quickly resolved. They invited me to download any alternative album at no cost. Can't get much better than that! 

I haven't bought anything from them for a few months now, so I guess things might have changed, but I certainly have no complaints.    

When you have purchased a ‘multi CD’ album for, say €80, and it will not download due to a ‘technical issue’, it is not good enough to be asked to select something else, and to face hostility when you tell them that you have since bought it somewhere else and that you just want a refund. 

I don’t know whether you have had to go through the process of downloading a ‘.Tar’ file, and then extracting the music to another location? It is a royal ‘pain in the butt’, compared to, say HDtracks, which just downloads your purchase without fuss.

Their customer services can be a little oblique sometimes, but I’ve downloaded dozens of albums - either the TARs (99% of the time) or for really big files (e.g, the Lou Reed set) via the app. Really straightforward.