I think Qobuz and Roon are targeting the same general music lovers, and I think, strategically, Qobuz is a necessary partner for Roon. I doubt any other music service will ever let Roon integrate they way they want to (or at all) and having all their eggs in the Tidal basket is pretty dangerous. Plus Qobuz is promoting Roon pretty heavily to cover for their own deficiencies - and it works, that’s what brought me here. So I can see why Roon and Qobuz are working so tightly in cooperation. Even if Qobuz best skill at this point seems to be selling Roon + Tidal
Technically Qobuz’s success would have been really good for us as music lovers as well, so I’m very disappointed they’re not what we needed them to be. I wish they had nailed it and really came out swinging, and I still really hope they can fix their problems, rebrand and really do a “proper” launch when they get their act together. Selling HiRes to audiophiles that have limited enough tastes to not notice the anemic catalog and are also willing to buy Roon isn’t going to keep them in the black, that’s for sure. Especially when once you have Roon, Tidal becomes head and shoulders above. Of course that means we depend on Tidal surviving Beyonce-gate and the fact they’re part owned by Sprint… Roon’s whole greatness revolves around the streaming partners, otherwise it’s just a prettier, really expensive iTunes.
I expected they’d have some rough edges, but I figured when they went into public beta it would be a mostly complete product with some rough edges. I never expected it would be so bare bones. No basic discovery that every other service has, not even a general database to find anything - if you don’t know what you’re searching for (or have Roon) you can’t find it. Broken, repeating, rarely updated playlists. And a barebones catalog is not something they should be currently charging money for -at all. For free, I’d gladly be a beta tester and submit problem reports. But my jaw dropped when they dared bill me for what was clearly a barely working product. Much as the delays were hurting them, IMO, they’d have done better waiting a year or ten before launching and really make a splash. I feel for them. It’s clear they wanted to do it well. I don’t know why they needed to reinvent the wheel when they had a working EU product. And I’m sure the labels are wringing them for all their worth. It feels like the life got sucked out of their staff and something internally halted inside shortly after public beta launched. If it can reinforce Tidal and improve it for us, though, via the competition (Tidal fixes nothing unless competition requires them to…) then I suppose we still win something out of it. I just hope what looks like a doomed service isn’t draining Roon of too many development resources that could be spent improving Roon and/or Tidal support.
They don’t even have volume normalization metadata in most of their catalogue so even trying to keep it to use it with Roon Radio alongside Tidal doesn’t work - I get blasted by the default loudness offset whenever a Qobuz track is picked!
I can’t comment on the US situation, but here in the UK I’ve subscribed to Qobuz for several years and am nearly into my third year of Sublime+. With that subscription, almost every new classical release is streamed in Hi-Res and I can definitely hear the difference. Quite a few non-classical releases are 24 bit as well. When Roon added support for Qobuz in Jan 2019, it was a game changer for me. I signed up and in less than a month had upgraded to a ROCK NUC in a fanless case and a lifetime subscription. My dreams came true.
Hi @James_Heckman I can’t comment on the US situation. I’m in the UK and just checked the Qobuz front page in Roon with All Genres displayed. Of the 10 albums in the Qobuz Grand Selection, eight are Hi-Res and only two are CD quality. With the Classical genre selected, 9/10 are Hi-Res at 24/96 or better. I think this depends your Streaming Plan. Mine is Sublime+ but there is also Studio Hi-Res streaming which offers a monthly subscription and advertises a free trial. It might be worth emailing Qobuz. I’m more than happy with Qobuz (and yes, I did try the other).
Good point, at least in terms of Roon’s efforts not being a loss, I do forget that the Roon integration does apply to the existing EU/UK Qobuz product as well. From that perspective I’m sure it’s not a waste. I don’t have experience with Qobuz outside the disaster US launch, but by all counts it’s not the disaster there that it is here. Because Qobuz almost treats it like a whole separate service, I tend to forget that Roon also integrates into the non-awful one you have!
If you really really hate yourself, try to find a way to see how terrible the US beta is… It’s possible for classical-focused listening it’s not bad, though at least the client we have here still displays classical as badly as every other service, and thus far, I haven’t found much even in classical on Qobuz (US) that isn’t also on Tidal (and plenty that’s on Tidal but not Qobuz.) I do see how for a HiRes focus it might be the only real option. But for anyone not HiRes focused, it’s just not even remotely compelling. The $10 and $20 lossy & HiFi tiers really aren’t compelling at all. At least in the US. And to move up to the $25-30 HiRes you have to be really into HiRes to the point of willing to give up a lot of music just to get more HiRes.
I’m in exactly the same situation as you David, living in the UK with Sublime+.
As you say, Qobuz integration with Roon was a game-changer for me also. I trialled Roon prior to this, but without Qobuz integration I passed on subscribing.
Since Qobuz integration, I’ve gone down the Nucleus/lifetime subscription path, and couldn’t be happier.
Qobuz In UK is great, with a massive range of true High-Res downloads. My main interest is classical & jazz, which I think is where Qobuz’s forte is.
So much so, I’ve recently decided to ditch Tidal. Tidal has certain recordings that are missing from Qobuz, mainly rock/pop, but I can just purchase those separately. Otherwise, there’s a lot of duplication between services here in UK.
Hats-off to Qobuz here in the UK! Let’s hope things improve soon for stateside users.
I’m running TIDAL and Qobuz side-by-side at the moment, but that can’t continue as there is little between the two services to justify both services. Of the 1,500 or so albums in my TIDAL collection around 80 were not available in Qobuz … that has improved over recent weeks but I am missing some folk and Americana titles.
So, I’m undecided: TIDAL or Qobuz? To help decide I have temporarily disabled TIDAL to see what I discover on Qobuz through Roon Radio.
I’m in the UK and Qobuz is lacking in my opinion and is nothing special. It offers much less variety across genres than Tidal and most hires is either for classical , jazz and old standard of rock. New releases in other genres all seem to be 44.1/24 hardly hires in my opinion. I’ll keep.it along with Tidal as it fills the gaps for some that are not in Tidal but I could not use it solely or I would loose about 2/3 of my streaming collection.
I’m in the same boat. I think I like Qobuz a little better, but the US catalog still needs some added albums. Probably keep both over the summer and decide. Hopefully by fall, the Qobuz catalog will be updated to match Europes.
I can’t see any difference between the Tidal implementation and Qobuz. The Qobuz catalogue is good in Australia, possibly because publishing rights have historically been bundled with the UK. I find Qobuz less prone to interruption than Tidal and will prefer a Qobuz version to Tidal.
Aren’t you using a Qobuz US or Qobuz UK subscription?
So your catalogue access would be either exactly whatever Qobuz US or Qobuz UK offer…
I’m not aware of a legit Qobuz Australia subscription, that offers an Australian catalogue like Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal AU offer… not yet, but it’s in their plans they told me.
I have a US subscription here in AU and the catalogue is sh!te compared to my Tidal US account… but it is a known issue, they are gradually bringing the US catalogue up to speed.
If you have a Tidal based Roon catalog, how do you migrate to Qobuz? Take a library copy and then… use the versions tool? Or use the third party tool Soundiiz? Any tips?
One thing Qobuz does right, is highlight some lesser known genres in their editorial content. There’s a chance I’ll actually keep a lossy Qobuz sub just for their editorial/releases feed…another $10/mo ($8.33 if I do annual) for music discovery. I wonder if it’s possible to set Roon to choose to play Tidal versions if available, or choose the highest res one available? Last week Qobuz had a “new in downtempo electronic” playlist. It was hit or miss, but Tidal has no such genre list. This week in “new” under “world music” they have a lot of releases listed, that in Tidal’s new releases I don’t see listed.
However, Tidal is just bad at showing what they have. They have more content than they make visible easily. Everything in that “World” listing in Qobuz also exists in Tidal. They’re getting all the new albums from the same off-beat genres as Qobuz. And in some cases Tidal has more albums by the same artist than Qobuz. And there’s of course a lot on Tidal’s new list that doesn’t exist on Qobuz at all. Yet, on the large list of “new” albums, almost none of these new albums appear in Tidal’s list, even though they have the albums.
So Qobuz is good at highlighting new arrivals in off-beat genres, even if they don’t actually have much more music than what they show. Tidal gets everything Qobuz gets and then some…but tells no one and makes it hard to find, despite having far batter discovery features than Qobuz! So I essentially need Qobuz to tell me what’s new in genres I like so I can go find them on Tidal and play the whole artists discography that Tidal probably had but kept hidden and Qobuz doesn’t have at all…
Sometimes I think I should just have stuck with Deezer Hifi…
It’s possible for classical-focused listening it’s not bad, though at least the client we have here still displays classical as badly as every other service, and thus far, I haven’t found much even in classical on Qobuz (US) that isn’t also on Tidal (and plenty that’s on Tidal but not Qobuz.) I do see how for a HiRes focus it might be the only real option. But for anyone not HiRes focused, it’s just not even remotely compelling. The $10 and $20 lossy & HiFi tiers really aren’t compelling at all. At least in the US. And to move up to the $25-30 HiRes you have to be really into HiRes to the point of willing to give up a lot of music just to get more HiRes.