Source
r/qobuz•
PinBobAwl

Two Reasons to Stay with Qobuz – Availability and iCloud Music

Like a lot of people I'm giving Apple Music a go at the moment, and while I'm satisfied with the sound quality and user experience, and obviously love the low price, there's two reasons I'm not giving up Qobuz just yet.

The first is simple–release availability. It seems like everyone I heard talk about AM said the whole catalogue would be available in lossless quality, but it took about three minutes of using it to find that's not the case. The first thing I did to test sound quality was browse new classical releases and click on the first release that took my fancy. It was the Bach Cello Suites by Alisa Weilerstein, and while it had the Apple Digital Master logo, it didn't have the Lossless logo, so I can only assume the files are lossy AACs. Someone else on the r/Audiophile sub I mentioned this to said at least AM offer it at all–for other streaming services it just wouldn't be available. A quick hop over to Qobuz however showed it available in 24/96 hi res.

The second is the dreaded iCloud Music Library. AM offers you no way to keep separate your purchased local file library from your AM streaming one. If you want to 'save' a streaming album, you have to initiate iCloud Music Library, which replaces all your local files, and their saved metadata, with the versions held on the Apple Store. If you're like me and have spent more time than you'd care to admit painstakingly perfecting things like cover art, song titles, and genres to suit your needs, hitting that 'Merge with iCloud Music' button and seeing that all disappear is something you are not going to want to do, and streaming will simply mean searching for something, playing it, and moving on, and not building a library to browse through.

Anyway, these are my initial thoughts on AM. I'd be interested to know if they resonate with other Qobuz users or if you have other reasons to stay or go.

Posted Jun 13, 2021, 7:30 AM UTC

1211
vcolfari•

I’m sticking with Qobuz because…Roon

11
GODfuckingdamnitman•

#theonlyreason

3
Emotional_Hamster86•

I will stay with Qobuz as well.

Airplay upsamples everything to 48khz. I don't want to connect a iPad with 2 adapters and a DAC only to get lossless.

Pretty sure the artists get more money from Qobuz

7
TokyoRedTwist•

I’m staying with Qobuz because I’ve been very happy for quite a while. Excellent sound, I like their recommendations even if curation/personalisation could be improved. I like the articles and playlists.

So even though I’m very much an apple fanboy I’m sticking with Qobuz for music.

4
JimmyClinton•

That’s not true about iCloud Music. You can keep your local library separate, create a second library for just Apple Music stuff, and import any missing gaps in the collection from your local library (powerful feature neither Qobuz or any other streaming service does as well). Or you can merge it and it will keep your personalized metadata and play from your local files on the device they are hosted on (the matched Apple files are only used on other devices in the Cloud, but your metadata is retained, and some songs are still uploaded directly rather than matched). I’ve done both in the past, currently doing the former just so I don’t have everything mixed together. (I often actually prefer the Apple masters to the ones in my local library anyway, want to use them as much as possible because of that and for consistency’s sake.) It works fine both ways though. There were problems with iCloud screwing up local metadata when AM first rolled out years ago, but those have long since been fixed.

It’s also not true that Apple won’t have the whole catalog in lossless. Right now they don’t, and they admitted that. But almost every song I’ve tried is lossless, including some pretty obscure stuff, and they’ve committed to having it 100% lossless by the end of the year. At which time they will have a way, way bigger lossless catalog than Qobuz. Biggest around I think.

4
PinBobAwlOP•

That's nice to hear; thanks for the reply.

1
kizzoom•

Royalites might be another reason to stay with Qobuz. Afaik, Qobuz pays artists almost 10 times more per stream than Apple. Considering the amount of money that many users will have spent on hardware to fully enjoy Qobuz's higher audio quality and given that, presumably, they listen to artists (or, if they're dead, their labels) who don't make a ton of money anyway, this seems another good reason. The best audio quality becomes worthless if musicians stop recording because they're now working two jobs to make rent.

2
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0
mindhead1•

I’m sticking with Qobuz because of the ease of integration with my Raspberry Pi streamer via UpNP. There is no easy way for me to access Apple Music in my main system. If that changes in the future I may reconsider.

2
hipohock•

I'm an annual subscriber. Through this streaming journey I'm realizing more and more that I've become more of a casual listener. This may explain why I spend so much time streaming Pandora Radio at home and in my car.

2
UserLB•

My two reasons for staying are (1) that I prepaid a yearly subscription so I still have month to go and for things to settle; and (2) I am a Sonos user (no External DACs or dongles) and AM is not supported at 24b there. I believe I’d have to wait for a firmware ir get the latest speaker (Arc) for the tv.

It’s probably a matter of time till Qobuz is forced to bring down their prices, though. They sure are under pressure with Apple’s move.

2