Enjoy today and every day!
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You too! 
Of Course!
Thanks for the tip, but thatâs exactly what I want to avoid. I would like to be able to use the same quality in Roon as in the Qobuz app, including the temporary download.
Hello Richard, I realize that. Thatâs why I see my request as a suggestion for improvement. Perhaps Roon could develop a Qobuz plug-in - in coordination with Qobuz, of course - so that users with a Qobuz license can also use the full scope of the Qobuz app in Roon.
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Just checking because itâs the most likely cause for a difference. Thereâs absolutely no reason why streaming vs download would sound different otherwise (assuming same file). Downloading is precisely what Roon does before streaming it locally. It donât suppose you believe that it matters whether the download is on the Roon server for a year or 5 seconds.
Hello, thanks for the information. I donât necessarily want the download for offline operation. I have noticed that the music in the Qobuz app sounds better when it is played locally and not just streamed - assuming the same quality.
So just buy the highest quality download of the track.
Developing a Qobuz plugin is theoretically possible, but library management becomes more complicated since now Roon has to check not only that a track is in the data dump they get from Qobuz (I believe that happens on Roon servers) but also that you still have an active subscription and are allowed to decrypt the file locally. As there is no quality difference between streaming or playing the downloaded version at the same resolution (and you need an active internet connection either way), this would be very low on the priority list, I imagine.
You need to turn it around: âPerhaps Qobuz could develop a plug-in for Roon - in coordination with Roon, of courseâ. The effort would have to be entirely by Qobuz. It is not Roonâs business to build a full function Qobuz app.
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No all the tracks are on Qobuz servers. The only thing Roon has is metadata. This is why the url of the stream points to Qobuz not Roon. As have been said no 3rd party has rights to download or store any media from a streaming service. Whilst they could code for it, itâs of no use as they wonât ever be given the decyption keys.
But what the OP wants is playing downloaded Qobuz tracks which by definition would be on the local machine.
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Downloaded as in âdownloaded by the Qobuz app but not purchasedâ, he does not mean purchased downloaded material. Using the Qobuz app you can download music to your local device that is locked/encrypted for use by the Qobuz app only. Qobuz will never allow Roon to play or access that material; well really the rights holders wouldnât.
Exactly, thatâs why I suggested just purchasing and adding them to the local library, which is an existing anbd working functionality.
Theoretically and technically it would be possible, at least technically, to have Roon decrypt files downloaded for offline listening after doing subscription check with Qobuz. But chances of that actually happening are somewhere between slim and none, and are entirely up to Qobuz rather than Roon (and, also, would be a nightmare for library maintenance). So, OP should just purchase the files they want to play locally.
Perhaps, instead, the focus should be on working out why it sounds better when played locally, than streamed? Since, of course, it should make no difference to sound quality at all.
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I can only support that, but I donât know what causes the tonal differences. In Germany, for example, we rarely have fiber optic connections for the Internet. And that alone makes a significant difference to the sound quality of streaming. I was recently able to test this with a friend whose connection is being switched from cable to fiber optics. He had both variants available in his house for two days and we only had to switch a network cable between the routers for the comparison. The stream sounded much more precise and spatial over the fiber optic cable. But maybe it was also due to the different routers? When the music was stored locally via Qobuz, it sounded the best overall. Whether the download was via cable or fiber optic had no effect on the sound. The network infrastructure of the respective user certainly also plays a small role.
However, these influences can be largely reduced by local use for the best possible sound result.
Some posts said that the OP (i.e. me) should buy the music. To avoid exactly this, I have become a customer of streaming services. I love to rediscover music from many artists over and over again. And if I wanted to listen to a playlist for a relaxing evening, I would save the files locally just for that evening and enjoy them in the best quality. After a few weeks, my playlist would contain different content again.
I donât want to start a fundamental discussion here, I just see my idea as a suggestion for improvement. Roon is great software for distributing music around the house, but unfortunately it doesnât offer all the options for the integrated streaming services that the specific apps from the streaming providers do.
Many thanks for all the comments!
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Did you test paying money into your bank account? Was the amount higher over fiber or cable?
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Itâs not really possible, at all, for the type of internet connection alone â cable vs fibre â to affect sound quality in any way.
Youâre downloading a digital file, just binary bits; for there to be differences in sound quality, those bits would have to be different. If those bits were different and you were downloading a text file, for example, youâd have a corrupted file.
It is possible for video quality to change, depending on internet connection. But thatâs because video streamers monitor download speeds, and will dynamically switch to a lower-bitrate stream if the download speed is too low. And that will noticeably affect video quality.
But I donât think itâs the case that audio streamers switch to a lower bitrate stream for slow downloads. And if they did, youâd notice, since we tend to watch those things. And weâre generally talking about lossless audio streams, again unlike video.
Of course, only you know what you heard. But I can think of no technical explanation for it, but many reasons why it doesnât seem possible.
I can think of many differences between using Roon, and Qobuz apps, for example. Indeed, that was a major reason I got Roon, since the MacOS Qobuz app used lots of cpu all the time, causing my noisy fan to start up. But these differences donât â indeed canât â affect sound quality. Unless Roon is for example using lower bitrate streams, without us realising it (which seems unlikely).
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