You’ll need to go to you Settings in Roon and then to Services. You can then activate Qobuz there.
Well, it’s true, I’ll listen to almost anything and like it. Anything not electronic, and even some of that.
But some instrumental jazz is superb. Mostly long-form pieces, like carefully arranged albums or long performance pieces. Charlie Haden’s “Land of the Sun”, for instance. I’m very fond of the Duke Ellington - Johnny Hodges “Back to Back” and “Side by Side” albums as well, both long meditative blues collages.
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I just did that, thanks to you! And having checked out what’s available in Quobuz versus Tidal, it seems I should just go ahead and take the 1 year, which in the long run is not only cheaper. But easier to pay once and be done with it, I think.
Plus it seems that a lot of what Tidal has as CD quality, Quobuz has the very same music but in High Res. Seems like a better deal. And I hadn’t realized about that Tidal MQ something.
Again, many thanks to all! I am so grateful for good advice. Trust me, I don’t just go to any old “group” on the web. I am pretty careful about where I might solicit advice. Or trust recommendations.
I do see that there have been some people in the past year or so who were disappointed in Quobuz. Have they improved? Since so many here seem satisfied with it. For classical and the other things I’ve see that I like in Tidal - almost invariably they are on Quobuz, but often in higher resolution.
I’m nearly convinced.
(They’ve even posted recommendations in the Roon Quobuz account for me already.)
…
One question re Quobuz: Are the items they have for sale in their store also in their downloadable collection? (I would hope so.)
Do you read any of the other Topics/Threads on this forum? I try to read all the new ones and the updates. I’ve picked up a lot of good information and advice from reading them even without posting anything.
I have Tidal and Qobuz, haven’t decided on one yet. Started out with about 2500 tracks in my small CD library and it has doubled, in the last 6 months, with additions from Qobuz/Tidal based on suggestions and recommendations. Now I’m afraid of what I might miss if I cancel one of them. Will probably keep that up as long as I can afford it.
It is an easier choice for you since you know what you want to hear. My musical taste change from day to day and I want access to all of it.
Yes! Since I signed up here I have looked at quite a few topics and threads. As well as reading in the Roon “info” that they’ve put out.
I don’t think I need 2 services. Indeed, I may never need to rip my CDs, since both services seem to have pretty much what I have. Not necessarily the same orchestra or musician. But the same or very similar. Or what I’ve already put in the Tidal library is mostly in Quobuz. But I honestly think I may be happier with the latter. It’s cheaper in the long run. Or appears to be. And it’s Hi Res seems to be of a better type which doesn’t prevent my DAC from using its highest level of playing.
I think I’ll just go ahead and pay for the year of Quobuz. At my age too many “services” and complications is just way more than I need or can handle.
So I gather that I can erase the Qobuz App? Given that it’s now recognizing me in the Roon system.
My musical preferences are now pretty set. I actually like a certain amount of ethnic music too. But I know almost immediately whether I love it, am neutral or hate it. (I have long believed that I could be tortured to admitting things I never did - to get Rock Music to stop. I would not make a good saint. I knew that as a kid in parochial school when they lined us up at maybe age 8 and we were supposed to be ready to die or be shot for our faith. I knew I would lie. I’m generally a very honest person, but be shot? NO!)
Yes, although, it might be nice to keep around as a backup in Case of an issue with Roon.
You might want to rip one or two of your favorites just to see how it works. And there are issues with all streaming services. The Internet might “break” (happens more than you’d think), or the service might decide to remove some album that you want to hear, or be forced to by licensing changes.
I didn’t notice in this thread if you’ve already installed a solid state drive (SSD) in your Nucleus yet but I would suggest you do that. It’s a very simple process and there are step-by-step instructions somewhere in the Knowledge Base. Once you’ve done that, you can pick up a CD ripper on Amazon, plug it into the back of you Nucleus and it’ll be a breeze to rip your CDs to it. Just insert a CD and it will automatically eject after the rip.
Hi Thera, you gave me goosebumps reading your posts. to think a foxy 75 year old is streaming music and using roon gave me goosbumps. Then to have a Macintosh was even more impressive.
Here I wat I think happened. You had Tidal open and roon. I think you were trying to control roon with tidal. Tidal is a separate app and Roon is a separate app/program. Then you are using roon do not open the tidal app. Roon will connect to your tidal account when you login and not roon will play music from tidal without having to open tidal. So only use the tidal app if you are not using roon. Roon connects to tidal in the background without having the tidal app open and you control what you was to listen to thru roon and roon is showing you all the album information.
I did install the SSD. The same day I managed to get the Roon up and going. Last week. I also have a CD ripper, one which someone had recommended. But haven’t even taken it out of the box yet. As so much music is available. In even better fidelity!
I may ultimately rip some. Depends how I feel…
Thank you, Bruce!
Yes, now I’ve come to understand the Tidal Ap and the Quobuz Ap are not necessary if I’m using them through Roon.
I’m now totally convinced that Quobuz is better for me. And once I finish substituting what I had initially saved in Tidal (to the often much higher fidelity same music in Quobuz), I will figure out how to end the Tidal free month. I decided to get the year-long Quobuz. And I’m loving it!
I took a 3 month trip to Europe last Fall. Alone. Traveled by ship both ways. Then used Rail Pass and traveled as far north as Norway and as far south as Seville. Did spend 3 weeks with my husband’s family in Spain and France. And visited friends in Oxford. Met so many interesting people due to traveling alone.
But now I am traveling by music. It’s all been worth every penny!
(McIntosh: my dear departed spouse did his Ph.D. in Binghamton - and caught the bug there! I knew nothing of this till he purchased our first McIntosh CD player, pre-amp and amp 30+ years ago. Which endure. Once we decided to go digital, it was simpler to stay within the McIntosh options. And just choose which machine. He was already dying and left that up to me. But he wanted me to want the 200 watts he’d always coveted. It is beautiful! Lovely heat sinks that compliment the Nucleus heat sinks.)
My advice to all: Live a healthy lifestyle. Live frugally. Love much. Stay active mentally and physically in your old age. Be grateful!
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Keep your Qobuz app on your phone and/or tablet for when away from home.
Good advice for most people!
However if I’m ever away from home for very long, I’d have to accommodate my large excellent headphones. As I wear hearing aids (expensive ones with a wonderful music program for a congenital hearing loss). And I’d have to carry a headphone amplifier in addition to however I’d store the music I wanted to hear. It might get so complicated that I wouldn’t really do it.
My hearing is such that I can hear music acutely. But deciphering voices, especially with background noises, is extremely difficult. Indeed, when I was about 12 or 13, I used to wonder how people could decipher the lyrics of popular music. I could hear the tune. I knew they singing words/songs. But I could not decipher the words! I used to wonder how all these people could do that and learn the lyrics. Only in my 40’s did I learn the source of my problem. It took a long time for digital hearing aids to be sophisticated enough to be worth buying. Now they have so many channels that my ability to hear music is perfect! I could hear it before but of course never knew what ranges I was not hearing as well. As for speech, it is an ongoing problem. Getting worse with age. For TV, which I rarely watch, I need the closed captioning to really understand well, like for Masterpiece Theater on PBS. (I understand now why I’ve always hated TV. Even with the closed captioning, I miss out on the facial expressions when reading the captions.)
Ok, enough of me. Life is good. I’m grateful for what I have. And for all the advice!
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TheraP…
I’ve read through this post and found it inspiring and heart-touching! Thanks for the humor and humility. I’m super impressed with your ability to wade through the techno-garble and set up such a great system for yourself. I’m sure your dearly departed is smiling down on you with pride!
Regarding your open questions: Qobuz and Tidal are similar services (I have both) and differ only in i) the way they handle “hi-res” music and ii) the focus of their catalogue.
i) Tidal uses MQA, which is a proprietary language to package hi-res music for easy distribution on the web. It requires some extra software/or hardware to “decode” (or “unfold” as MQA call it) it back to the original hi-res music. Roon does this for you, which is why you saw several extra steps in your signal path… that was the software doing its software thing to decode the music (though I’m surprised that you didn’t see it on your MAC at 192… and instead at 96khz… there might be a setting in Roon you can tweak (can anyone help?). Qobuz uses “native” hi-res, without the need for proprietary compression and unfolding. The pro is that there is less manipulation of the source music required, but it takes up more bandwidth/space so may put more pressure on your internet signal.
ii) Tidal is decidedly more focused on popular music… new albums will come out on Tidal faster (and thus has a larger library). Whereas Qobuz is probably a bit better at curating jazz and classical recordings and ensuring it has the highest quality recordings available. I’ve kept tidal, but reduced it to the lower priced (non MQA) tier, since there are albums there that don’t show in Qobuz. Longer term I expect to drop tidal and stick with Qobuz.
PS… I also have a Mac amp… the baby brother to yours an MA5400 and I love the sound of Qobuz 192khz hi-res playing through its DAC.
Hello, Adam!
I just put something from Quobuz on that plays at 192 kHz and indeed it does show up as 192 now. (I’m sticking with Quobuz. And the free trial of Tidal will end on the 26th of Feb.)
I probably would have gotten the less heavy McIntosh, but it clear what my husband preferred - those 200 watts. And yes, the sound is glorious. No one will ever “walk off” with my 75 lb machine.
Hi TheraP,
I too find the lauded metadata that populates in Roon to be surprisingly lacking. This is perhaps due to the obscurity of my music taste, but in any event I was a little disappointed. I gather that you listen to some classical music, and one thing that I’ve noticed in Roon is that classical tracklisting has improved significantly and now individual tracks are organized based on the structure of the piece (i.e. movements grouped into their opus, etc.). This makes the navigation of classical records with multiple pieces much more intuitive. Still, I often find myself wanting or info on recordings about the orchestra etc.
I listen to classical almost exclusively.
However about a half hour ago, Roon froze up again - in the middle of the St. Mathew Passion. Exactly at the Crucifixion!
I have done everything that helped it unfreeze before (upthread) but nothing is working this time.
I am going to read and see if there is something to help me.
As far as the metadata, it’s better in Quobuz. And for the above work there’s a lot.
I can connect to Roon. I can navigate and see the library or the system. But I cannot get the above Bach Passion to work. And nothing else will play either. Somehow the Queue says there should be more things left to play. but they don’t show in the Queue.
Everything was going so well… till this!
(I did have my iMac open - to work on the taxes - and the problem happened during that. But I’ve turned off that computer entirely. With no improvement.)
In this community you live in: is it shared network/internet access? or do you have your own modem/router?
I have my own Router. My network is not shared with anyone. And only machines that I have put the MAC numbers in are allowed to connect. (It’s a Netgear Nighthawk X6S - a couple years old). It is connected to a Modem from the internet company.
The Nucleus was allowed the first day I connected it. And the Receiver is also in there.
Everything was playing fine since early in the morning. So for hours.
But now if I click on MAC7200 it has something down below that says: Pause all zones.
The retirement community does have its own “terrible” network, which is unsecured. I never use it. And I am certain my iPad Pro is connected to my little network. Only.
I am having no trouble using the internet. The community pays for TV (through Spectrum) and I use them also (privately) for phone and internet service. (I have checked and the TV works and the phone works and everything on the internet works. )
But Roon itself seems to have paused any music, I’m guessing. I closed Roon a couple times. (That worked the other day). But on my own I don’t seem to be able to get the music that was interrupted to play. Or anything else.
…
Here’s an interesting thing. The “zone” indicator actually knows and shows “st. Matthew passion” and there is a little dark rectangle between the arrow (that I assume would mean play) and st. Matthew passion. And that same little dark rectangle shows in the list (not the Queue - which now shows nothing) right before the place where the music stopped playing.
Even the Queue tells me there are 36 more “whatevers” left to play and may 3/4 of an hour left.
So… the software knows where the stop happened. It knows every zone is paused. But how to get it going again? That’s the problem. As I see it.
Ok, you have your own individual router. Thats good. What about the internet access, where does it come from? DSL over the phone line, or perhaps from the cable company.
I’m trying to determine if the signal may be shared with the rest of the community somewhere down the line. Sorry if your answered and I didn’t catch it.
Streaming services have issues sometimes, could be related to something outside of Roons control.
If your have some ripped music in your library try that.