I’ve just received the Qobuz beta invitation, so will sign up for my trial period tomorrow. I hope the term “trial” is in the sense of “you get to try it for a while for, like, you know, free”, rather than the other kind.
Question for those of you that already have it, either in your own country, US beta or US sneaky VPN hack: Does Qobuz have native DSD content that streams as DSD to the Bridge II (with no DSD->PCM->DSD conversion)? If so, is there any you can recommend as especially high quality? The only DSD I’ve ever played on my system is from SACDs, and through my Oppo’s DAC.
Just received the USA Qobuz beta email. When I tried to sign up, it said the email that received the offer (that specific one is required for sign up) was already associated with an account -yeah, MY UK account.
So I logged on to my UK account through VPN (just to be safe) and changed my email address. Logged out and back in to the UK account with my new email be sure the new one was set.
Turned off VPN and tried to set up the beta again and was successful.
"We are very excited to inform you that you may now sign up to join the Qobuz US Beta!
Please click the following link to sign up for your free 1-month trial. Be sure to use your email address xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to sign up, as it has been pre-approved for an account…
Once you’ve created your account, you will choose a streaming plan. If you are a Hi-Res music user, make sure you select the Studio plan to access unlimited 24-bit streaming.
One important note is the music catalog is not 100% complete yet, but it will be fully populated before we move out of beta. Therefore, it is not necessary to bring missing albums to our attention.
Some features, such as SONOS, Yamaha MusicCast, CarPlay, Android Auto, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa should be available for the US in the near future. Many of our customers have also requested a Family Plan subscription - we are aware of this suggestion and hope to develop one soon. At this stage, you don’t need to focus on these features when using our service.
I asked Qobuz if they were going to do a family package about three years ago and they said they were thinking about it. As a result I have Qobuz and my wife and one son have Spotify.
The Qobuz platform has been robust for a long time now and I suspect the Beta is aimed more at getting feedback in the USA rather than fault finding, although clearly it is also taking time to populate their library. Given all their in-house data and general perfectionist nature, I’m not surprised. Once the library is ready, I would expect it to go live.
Only about an hour in…first impression is that Roon-Qobuz seems a bit more detailed/“cleaner” than Roon-Files and Roon-Tidal (via BridgeII/DS Sr.); but maybe a bit “thinner” as well.
Definitely better sounding using Qobuz compared to Tidal. More definition and detail listening to acoustic instruments. I was pleasantly surprised that 99% of the Tidal albums in my library (pop, rock, jazz) were also to found in Qobuz, often in high resolution as well. No more Tidal for me!
I have been listening to Qobuz for a bit and I have mix feelings. Some tracks I find do sound better but I have found some that sound worse to Tidal. Honestly given all of the buzz I was expecting a lot more out of Qobuz. Another let down for me is the lack of high res music. I was hoping to find more high res music on Qobuz than I have found. I guess it is all relative to your listening style/habits.
After a couple of days; I am leaning towards the same assessment as you have made.
Going to do a lot more back and forth listening though to try and decide which I prefer (Tidal or Qobuz)… At this point, there certainly is no reason to contemplate maintaining both subscriptions. Curious as to what others are experiencing/thinking…
Yes I’m signed up for 24/192 and when I find hi-res music I like I have listened to it. What I find is Tidal and Qobuz pretty much have the hi-res music for me. I was hoping Qobuz would have more but so is life. I pretty much have been comparing Qobuz and Tidal like for like.
