The difference between Qoboz stream vs purchased songs

@gkelly

Your post confuses me. You state that you are frugal, but seem to be interested in spending more money should purchase improve the sound vs streaming. A good place to start is for you to post (on your profile) your full system down to all cabling. You might then state a budget and ask where it best be spent to improve the sound.

Buy music?

The simple answer no.

I have two Aurender streamers using Qobuz and if the published resolution is the same and, of course the same mastering, then no.

Qobuz supplies over half a million high Rez recordings and millions at CD quality level. If you want high quality sound then I recommend upgrading your streamer and (depending on your system) the rest of your system.

@carlsbad2 that's what I was thinking, right.

@ghdprentice am always trying to up my game, the pulsemini was a welcome addition to the mix. Am currently thinking of the Parasound halo hint 6 as the next victim in this madness. Hoping this will replace the Marantz 7025 power amp, using a Marantz sr5015. Hoping to use the parasound w/ht pass through. Have some kef ls50meta, along with a rel ht1003. Synergistic research foundation power and speaker, audioquest evergreen interconnect, and iconoclast power, for cableing. Any thoughts on this is appreciated. 

@vonhelmholtz look above, have tried to post my system on the sight, I get stupid or something, but i cant figure it out, sorry. My budget is around $2500 a year. Thanks for any input you may have.

Are you talking CDs? or digitally downloaded purchases such as apple music.   I'm not sure they even do that any more. 

Thank you for the additional info.

First, if you click on your UserID… a couple times you will eventually find, “create a virtual system”. If you get their it becomes easy. Easy to post photos and ID your system.

I looked up the components you have. I assume if you are on a fixed income that means you are retired. My initial conclusion is to take your time. Look very carefully at all your components before moving forward.

If carefully considered, one can make great improvements with $2.5K… and even greater in a year or two. But, to do this a very careful strategy is required. We will have to make sure the components you are considering will move you towards the sound you like.

Typically, one would have about 35% of your investment in speakers. Having two sets just dilutes the effectiveness. Also, combining with an AV Processor will degrade the sound. All of these things need be considered to move forward efficiently.

If we can see your current system / venue, this will help a lot. I am also happy to discuss privately via private message.

@carlsbad2 I don't have the space for CDs, so I am looking at downloads off of Qoboz. Just curious whether it would make sense to invest in a product that would make it so. Thanks for the response. 

The only advantage of buying an album via download from Qobuz versus streaming it is that you now own the album. This means you can still play it if you cancel your Qobuz subscription, or if Qobuz loses the contractual right to stream the album (this does happen periodically with some labels and artists.) And, with a downloaded copy, this also lets you burn it to CD for use in your car or take individual tracks off the album for use in a "mix tape." The latter item used to be more of a thing than it is these days, I think. 

Some people are more obsessive than others about owning copies of albums; that's something you need to figure out for yourself.

I'm confused too. Why consider "buying" music? With Quboz you can pull up any song- or thousands of songs- you ever think of instantly, add them to a playlist and or download them- all in super high fidelity- and for the same flat monthly fee. 

We all live on a fixed income it’s not like money is flying in through our windows all day

Let me approach this another way. The OP is wondering if there is any benefit to owning the digital files of the music which may play locally over that of the sonic quality that comes from streaming Qobuz.

@gkelly Yes, there is typically a difference in the sonic quality between high-resolution streaming and local file playback. Unfortunately, the streaming chain can be prone to a lot of noise -- through your router, ethernet cable and in the quality of the streaming architecture itself that may introduce jitter into the signal. So while you are playing a high-resolution file, it can be fatiguing and shrill. With local file playback, you typically bypass any network processing, and even a lower resolution file can sound better due to less digital errors and lower noise.

With all this in mind, there are steps one can take -- investing in a high quality streamer (the Innuos you mention is a good start), investing in an audiophile grade switch (or even just a decent Cisco one), using a quality audiophile ethernet cable for the last 1M, powering your router or switch with a quality linear power supply... the options are vast. That said, I’m now at a point where I can barely tell the difference between streaming and local file playback and believe at most times they are equal.

One other consideration -- if you want to play DSD, most streaming files are not in DSD or DSF format. Of course, there are ways to convert streaming files to DSD on the fly like using software like HQPlayer, but in my opinion native DSD/DSF files fed to a DSD DAC deliver the best sonic results above all.

All I can tell you is that it is truly rare that I'm not satisfied with a Qobuz stream (and yeah, I just checked the spelling and it is indeed Qobuz). In any case, I do wish I truly knew how much or how little an artist gets when it comes to streaming as compared to downloading or buying the artist's actual CD/slab of vinyl.  Do what your conscience tells you to do.

Bottom line, though, I love streaming with a passion. For a reasonable fee, the world of music is at my fingertips, in the main delivered with quality to die over.

I think I know what you're getting at. I'm a Qobuz subscriber at the highest level  (I think they call it "Sublime") which allows me to purchase hi-res recordings at a really low price. I have bought 15 or 20 just because there are some recordings that I consider to be staples and I like the idea of owning them. Plus, the cost is pretty minimal, certainly cheaper than a cd. I also was curious if there would be a SQ difference. In my experience, if a difference exists it's pretty subtle. I would not make plans to purchase a whole lot of music just for SQ reasons. However, there are some hi-res recordings that Qobuz makes available ONLY for purchase, not for streaming. I have noticed that sometimes when a track or an album says "not available" in my streaming setup that it is available to purchase. And sometimes there may only be a standard-res recording available to stream, but the same title my be available to purchase in high-res. This isn't a common scenario but it does exist. Qobuz streaming is honestly a pretty terrific way to enjoy music.

I think the short answer is that you are unlikely to discern a material difference in SQ between streams and purchased music on Qobuz and it's not the place to spend your money

streaming is a great way to enjoy music in a cost effective manner. I think SQ is better on my vinyl setup but not so much better to make up for the millions of songs streaming makes available at the touch of a button may a very low cost 

If you are on a fixed income and do not already have a collection of physical media, I would definitely stream only.  I personally prefer the sound quality of CDs or downloads, but it isn’t a night and day thing, as streaming gets very close

@blisshifi 

show ANY proof for the below….

With local file playback, you typically bypass any network processing, and even a lower resolution file can sound better due to less digital errors and lower noise.

I wanted to buy my entire playlist so in case Qobuz went away at least I would have the songs it took me years to assemble. Qobuz said they don’t offer that choice so hoped they will be around for a long time. 

I think it is a good idea to download the files that you feel you can't live without. I like classical music and I am fed up with the amount of times that I go to listen to something on Qobuz that I haven't listened to for a month only to have an annoying page flash up with a large OOPS !! That means you can no longer get that stream and it is damned annoying , so buy what you really like from the new streams as they may not be there for very long.

@fredrik222 i have demonstrated this for myself and for many others who have come to listen or for whom I’ve brought equipment to in their system. To me, that’s all that matters and I have nothing more to prove. I am providing this guidance through my own empirical learnings in an effort to pass my experience to others. Many others agree, but there will be people who are skeptical. Those who wish to learn more can also do their own research and experimentation. There is plenty of discussion in this forum that touches this subject.

@edcyn I swear that when i checked(double checked) the spelling it was qoboz, must of been in bizarroland at the time. Thanks for the reality check!

shooter41

...there are some hi-res recordings that Qobuz makes available ONLY for purchase, not for streaming. I have noticed that sometimes when a track or an album says "not available" in my streaming setup that it is available to purchase ...

I have found the same thing with  Qobuz. In the end, there is sometimes no substitute for owning a recording. Same as it ever was.

@blisshifi  and there you have, physics, protocols, and so on be damned, there is nothing more to prove! 

There are plenty of discussion, and no one has ever put up any proof for outlandish claims like you made. No one. Nothing that can be verified, nothing that can explain how it works. No one. 

To just say something about noise and digital errors, that does not work. There is no noise coming from the ethernet cable or down the chain, that is the anti-thesis of how Ethernet works. And digital errors are mitigated by the TCP/IP stack, and if it wasn't things like DRM and encryption would fail and there would be nothing to play. That is how the reality is. 

@gkelly sound quality wise, there is no difference. In fact, Qobuz download entire songs before playback starts during the streaming, and even stores them in a cache. 

fredrik222

Qobuz download entire songs before playback starts during the streaming, and even stores them in a cache. 

That false, and debunked in this post. This is very easy to test for yourself, so I'm not sure why you continue to make the claim. You are conflating streaming, downloading, and caching.

Yes, @fredrik222 does not understand streaming.

So the answer to the original question, not that I think I understand it.   I didn't know that Qobuz sold songs to download, but if they do, there is likely an improvement in the quality of the digital data, depending on your system.  Downloaded files are not time sensitive so they use error checking, like banking, defense industry, or other critical functions, to ensure that the downloaded file is an EXACT copy of the original file.   

Streaming cannot do this.  Streaming must keep up with the music so streaming always has error management tool that interpolates for any missing bit and moves on.  Now if you have a high end streamer and great internet service to it, there may be very few missing bits.  OTOH, if you are streaming wirelessly, there are a lot of missing bits and a downloaded song will have much better digital representation.

Jerry

@cleeds Thx for the ‘Heads reference. 
@gkelly There’s a trove on this forum about ways to improve (streaming) sound. Search and yee shall find.

Robert Harley’s book “The complete guide to high-end audio” is a great primer.

A well done room (how the room affects sound) is a highly important component and a great place to start. 

I'm not on a fixed income (yet) but I'm frugal, and stream Hi-Res music most of the time. The important detail is that most of the services offer different levels of quality and with actual Hi-Res audio (CD quality or better roughly) you have no need to spend money buying music or managing files. Get a decent player in your budget and enjoy. I only subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited as it's a bargain and simple with our Prime membership. I was also being frugal and streaming from my iPad as I already had it, but then bought a Bluesound Node for its software and feed it into a DAC. Simple and fairly inexpensive and perfect sound. The Node and other players can also pull music from a computer or NAS for that music you may have ripped from your CD collection.

@fredrik222

Perhaps, from a technical perspective we want to know if error checking of the transported digital file is different from error checking with live streams.

@vonhelmholtz  It's not. 

@cleeds  No, what was proven is that you don't understand how Ethernet and streaming services work. We went over that. That thread didn't debunk it at all, in fact, I showed how Qobuz works in detail, with packet captures. And it is one quick download per max speed when you "stream", then the next download for the next track. Why? Simply because that is the best user experience. 

@carlsbad2 You are again wrong. That is not how streaming works, and it is the opposite of how Ethernet and TCP/IP is designed to work. A TCP session cannot move on when there are missing packets. It will pause and request resends. That's how it works.

Like the other thread showed, there is not a continuous stream when you stream songs from Qobuz. That is simply false and just shows how little people understand.

@gkelly I'm on a fixed income as well in that I have to strategically make hi-fi purchases relating to substantial upgrades. I have a family to raise and the kids and wife seem to vacuum up my $ and time. But that's life right?

I have a modest mid-Fi system that consists of a Cambridge CD player, the CXN-V2 streamer/DAC, Marantz AVR (used primarily as a preamp for 2-channel listening), a vintage Adcom GFA-2 amp, Rega Planar 3 and mid-tier Polk Audio monitor speakers. AQ Evergreen connects. I plan to make some tweaks by upgrading my speakers and maybe swapping out the Marantz and Adcom combo for a better integrated amp w/ a phono stage. I can't justify buying nor do I want to have tons of separates. 

I stream via Spotify and Radio Paradise for general streaming and previewing music. I have a mix of vinyl, digital files and CDs. I've been ripping older CDs I don't want to keep or listen to that much as FLAC files and purging. I only really buy specific artists that I like and want to enjoy higher quality/better listening experience. I get not wanting to have a ton of physical media. It takes up space and with streaming you can enjoy an infinite amount of great albums with little investment. My recommendation is purchasing only the music that means the most to you or gives you the greatest listening satisfaction or if you're a completist for certain artists. I'm one album away from having all of the New Pornographers on vinyl, ditto w/ Calexico and some other favorites of mine. I'm limited on space and my wife already things I'm too high maintenance w/ my space requirements for my music and book collections.

Streaming on Oubuz can be totally awesome. From what I can tell it is the equal of any other source. Maybe I'm cheap but having to own stuff rather than accessing it from the cloud is basically like throwing money away. If there was a true quality difference, then I might reconsider, but right now having access to more good music than I'll ever have time to listen to is quite enough to satisfy me and my checkbook.

fredrik222

No, what was proven is that you don't understand how Ethernet and streaming services work. We went over that.

Ad hominem, logical fallacy.

The link I provided showed details of a simple demonstration that disproved your claim that a song is "downloaded" to a cache in entirety before playback starts. I knew you were mistaken before I conducted the experiment, but I did it anyway, in part to encourage others to do the same. Perhaps there might be something to learn about the sizing of a streamer's cache, or even how that cache is stored, but that's a difficult discussion to have with anyone who truly believes a streamed song is downloaded in full to cache before playback starts. Indeed, you conflate streaming, caching, and downloads as though they are all the same thing. It's rather like claiming an SUV is a car. In a way, an SUV is rather like a car, but it's different. Hence, we make distinction between it and a car for the purpose of clarity.

To be fair  to you, if all you ever download is the latest 3-minute Katy Perry (or whomever) pop hit, it is possible that the entire track will be in cache before it starts to play. After all, those are often very brief tunes and my cache held about 3 minutes of music.

OP,

A digital download is usually the same format as as when it’s streamed, so there’s little to no difference in the sound when played on either.

@fredrik222 

Like Juan from Bliss Hifi, I’ve heard differences in the quality of the presentation that has me shrugging my shoulders.  The first ‘what the…” moment was when I totally upgraded the power feeding my system.  The second was when I upgraded the 3’ Ethernet cable from the wall to my streamer.  Both of these transformed my system with the Ethernet upgrade having the lesser improvement, but I really don’t understand this difference given what you said, and I have no reason to doubt you, that error correction is the same.  It makes sense that it is the same in that Ethernet protocol is set, but it leaves me at a loss as to how changing the Ethernet cable can make a difference.  Either I have a preference for a low bank account balance, or there is something else going on.

@cleeds It's not an attack on your person, it's 100% a statement of facts. You don't know anything about Ethernet or TCP/IP. The link you provide here goes to speedtest.net, so that proves that you still don't understand it. 

If you are talking about disconnecting the cable, like I said previously, you would fail the DRM check, so no cache playback without internet access. However, Bryston is known for its bad streaming capabilities, including it's small cache and how that is causing issues. So, what you have is a uniquely poor implementation.

Further more:

"

The Nitty Gritty
Playback quality is governed by the maximum you choose (see Figure 4). On mobile, you have the ability to set separate quality caps for streaming on Wi-Fi and mobile networks. In the desktop app settings, you have the option to take exclusive control of the selected audio device. Using exclusive control, I watched my DAC display its automatic switch to different sample rates as I played different tracks, barring Windows Core Audio from resampling my Qobuz stream. The mobile app does not cache audio more than a handful of seconds in advance, but the desktop app caches the entire track at once. 

The caching is a nice feature because it visibly builds your offline library if you check an option in the app’s settings, adding all cached tracks to the offline library. You’d be right to be concerned about Qobuz monopolizing your storage space as it automatically caches all music played. Under music playback settings, you can set the maximum cache size from 500 MB to 100 GB. As a bonus to those with multiple hard drives, Qobuz allows you to set a new location for cached music to reside. The music download location can also be changed in the settings, and you can monitor how much space it is using. 
"

https://audioxpress.com/article/exploring-qobuz-high-resolution-streaming

@cleeds I really don't know how much more you need to show you are wrong, but wrong you are.

fredrik222

It’s not an attack on your person, it’s 100% a statement of facts. You don’t know anything about Ethernet or TCP/IP.

Begging the question, a.k.a. circular reasoning, logical fallacy.

The link you provide here goes to speedtest.net, so that proves that you still don’t understand it.

That speedtest link shows that the test I performed - which disproves your claim outright - was not caused by poor interconnect speed. I’ve since duplicated the test with other equipment. Feel free to tell us what equipment you’ve used to achieve different results.

I really don’t know how much more you need to show you are wrong, but wrong you are.

I’ve provided the results of actual demonstrations. And, you still conflate streaming, caching, and downloading, as though they were all the same thing.

Streamed Quboz tracks are not downloaded in full to cache before playback starts. It’s unclear why you refuse to acknowledge that, especially given that it’s been proven in demos.

"Streaming cannot do this.  Streaming must keep up with the music so streaming always has error management tool that interpolates for any missing bit and moves on"

Depends on the protocol in use.   Certainly UDP by itself can lose packets and so loss has to be accounted for at the application level.  But this is not how data streaming is done these days (and hasn't for some time).

Today, we use RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) or SCTP (Stream Control Transport Protocol) which provides a true IP connection allowing error handling at the network layer, so you rarely lose packets unless your ISP is having an issue.   These protocols even support play, stop, and pause.   SCTP is preferred because it actually breaks the stream into chunks of data and will provide network level error correction, and thus is superior because the packets delivered will be a faithful to the data sent.

To reiterate, if you're having trouble with data retransmission, it's an ISP problem and you can spend an 6 figures in getting the most sophisticated networking gear in your house and will have no impact if your ISP has a problem (or the internet itself is having a problem).

If you think you're having a data issue; before you spend money on cables, special switches and routers, hire a local communication company that can check if you're having packet loss.  It will cost you a lot less than buying new network hear and you'll have data to based your decision on.  

@cleeds this is getting ridiculous, you clearly didn’t read, but here it is again, from David Solomon, the Chief Hi-Res Music Evangelist of Qobuz: “caches the entire track at once.”

https://audioxpress.com/article/exploring-qobuz-high-resolution-streaming

you are 100% wrong. 

fredrik222

this is getting ridiculous ...

Communication is only possible when there is shared definition of words. A zebra is rather like a horse, but it's not a horse. An SUV is rather like a car, but it's not really a car. And a download, a stream, and a cache are three different things in my world, regardless of how they're related. To you they're all the same, and you can't accept a simple physical demonstration (details previously provided) that demonstrates otherwise. So good luck to you.

@fredrik222  That's good information; I know some of the early services did that, and I know spotify does this as well.  I was curious if you download a 192/24 flac that fast, so I did some back-of-the-envelope calculation.

From the article, 192 kHz/24-bit music they allocate 41.9 MB/minute.

Looking through my library, a typical FLAC at 192/24 is about 14 MB for a 5 minute song.

That means that they'll send that song to a user in roughly 3 seconds, assuming the user has sufficient bandwidth.

If you assume a typical home user has a 300 Mb which is (mega Bit) not accounting for the overhead of the IP connection setup that would get you the song in around 3 seconds.   So yes, it's very possible they download first.   I'll have to try that when I get home this evening.

As a pure guess, I think it's likely they're using SCTP because you can let the protocol handle the error correction and breaking the music into chunks.   And then they can start playing as soon as they receive the first chunk of data. This avoids any interpolation of data in the application, and you don't have dropouts waiting for data.

All of this works because music files are tiny, they take almost nothing to move.  It doesn't even stress your internal network.   

It's far more complicated to stream video because we're talking 2-3 orders of magnitude difference in size.

@cleeds So when Qobuz tells you that it's cached first, literally, what do you think is more likely, 1) Your experiment is flawed 2) Qobuz is lying. The answer is obvious.  

They are not the same to me, I know the difference in the technologies, and that is why this matters. You don't. You have demonstrated this beyond any doubt. 

And, even with Qobuz telling you that they cache first, you still refuse to admit that you were wrong. That is ridiculous. 

@tomrk  Here's a nugget for you:

” See an example of that in the attached graph from my Roon core playing 96/24 from Qobuz as a track ends and the next starts: a steady send rate to the playing endpoint, and a big burst receiving the next track. It’s all on 1Gb wired local network to the router, so that 140 Mbps burst is no problem.”

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/qobuz-192-not-working-despite-over-100-mbps/165568/8

Also from the article "I compared latency streaming 320 kbps as an even benchmark across services. Loading a new track in Qobuz takes on average 1,25 to 1,5 seconds. " Which is more than enough to download a 320 kbps MP3.

fredrik222

what do you think is more likely, 1) Your experiment is flawed 2) Qobuz is lying. The answer is obvious.

Logical fallacy: excluded middle/false choice.

Please feel free to conduct your own experiments. I’ve now done three, with three different streamers, with similar results. The experiment is so simple, it’s a bit of a puzzle as to why you resist, other than it allows you to keep the "argument" alive.

Of course, you’re also free to copy/paste here, rely on press releases and the like. Suit yourself.

@fredrik222  Yeah, that's why I showed the math.  I surprised myself when I realized that you could literally download a high-definition FLAC from Qobuz in just a few seconds easily.

I use Spotify most of the time since I drive a lot and like to listen to headphones during the day.  However, I use Qobuz when I'm listening on my NAD M33 which has the BluOS built in.  I stream from both my internal network and Quobuz, and you really can't tell the difference between the two in terms of latency or the quality.

And the difference between digital and analog is while you can still argue about the quality of the sound between components (speakers, DAC's etc), digital data in terms of content and timing of data packets can be measured and quantified in a way that gives you something that is directly comparable.

@cleeds  it just proves my point. You can do 30 experiments, or 300, and it will still only prove the point that you don't know what you are doing, nor do you know anything about the technology. 

So that's the end of the road. 

@fredrik222 Interesting thread  It appears Quobuz is using a either a network  protocol or an application technique that will try to dump as much data down initially (which probably works really well for short pop & jazz songs) allowing an instant start of the song and then giving a slower network the time to download the rest while playing the beginning of the song.

For most pop songs, it's seems like that initial chunk may contain the entire song.

It would be interesting to see what happens if he tried to play a long song to see if the data rate stays high even after playing the song starts.

@cleeds 

Interesting.  Do you have any way to share that test?  Because based on what I'm seeing on my own, I don't see an issue with Qobuz;  quite the opposite.

As to the original poster, I have a natural tendency to want to own songs and music I really like.   Yes, I still pay for streaming too, primarily because I like to discover new music (their newsletter is handy for this), and Spotify is great in the car and on my phone because of the vast amount of music available, since the fidelity is more than enough to support listening even on a good car stereo.

Heck, I've gotten into about 4 or 5 musical genres simply because the music is readily available to listen to.

tomrk

Do you have any way to share that test?

The first test I did is detailed here. It’s easy to do, so you can try yourself.

Because based on what I’m seeing on my own, I don’t see an issue with Qobuz; quite the opposite.

I have no issue at all with Qobuz, it works just about perfectly for me. I think it’s a great service.