High Infidelity


I’m unapologetically old school. I own rather than lease my car and not because I think it drives better that way. I own my music and not because I think it sounds better than streaming. I’m puzzled as to why it’s cheaper to buy a CD, have it shipped home and rip it rather than downloading it from a popular digital audio store. I’m disappointed that artists who bypass the CD process seem to only offer MP3 downloads. But I digress…

I recently purchased music for download on Qobuz. The website identified the download as CD quality 16 bits, 44.1 kHz. The downloaded files turned out to have varying bitrates between 756 & 938 Kbps rather than 1,411 Kbps. I contacted Qobuz through their help messaging. They thanked me for bringing this to their attention and stated they would request a corrected copy from the record label. They unfortunately could not give me a timeframe as this would be up to the record label.

I requested a refund on the basis that I purchased CD quality tracks for immediate download per their website description and the prospect of potentially getting them at an undermined time in the future was not acceptable. I was told that Qobuz does not provide any refunds on purchased music in any circumstance. There are no exceptions to this rule. I asked to speak to a supervisor but my request was denied.

I’d like to get feedback on:
-     whether others have encountered downloads that weren’t as advertised or if this was truly an exception
-    what you think of their refund policy
-    any possible recourse

Thanks
 

rpmpam

+ another one for @ghdprentice Well put. If the internet goes down, then CD’s get played otherwise it’s Qoboz. 
@jasonbourne71 Meh. 

@baylinor Great minds. 
 

I have thousands of vinyl and hundreds of CDs. Also been streaming for a couple years. However I have never ever purchased downloaded music and never will. Seems to make absolutely no sense to me. Once in a great while an album on Qobuz I placed in my favorites is no longer available. If I really can't live without it, I either buy the vinyl or CD. It's that simple. Streaming has become the norm in my house of stereo. Like ghdprentice says, done right it sounds as good as vinyl or CDs. Overall nothing beats it imo.

For what it’s worth, I have both Tidal and Qobuz but Tidal seems to have more of the music I like.  Tidal is also moving away from MQA and replacing them with Flac files.  Streaming is definitely future.  I’ve not purchased media or downloaded a file in quite a while now and don’t really miss it.  

@rpmpam I would probably chalk it up to lessons learned and let it go, but I certainly understand the frustration of not getting what you paid for and having no recourse for a refund.  

One other problem is that so many supposedly high resolution sources are not that at all--they have been up-sampled to fake high resolution.  In doing reviews of recordings High Fi News and Record Review would do an analysis to determine if the original source was high-resolution or merely up-sampled lower resolution stuff (I don't know if they still do this because I have not read them in a while).  

Well if my two kids (33 and 35) are indicative of what's trending...they don't buy a thing and they are both movie fans bigtime.  Couple clicks on the remote and they rent virtually whatever they want for the evening.  They have no media at all, all of that stuff (discs) is here.  So, I have a ridiculous collection of movies/CDs, many of the movies are blu-ray 4K.  When asked what do I do with stuff they both say "throw it out"!  I don't have enough time left (or the inclination) to try to sift through it all.  Although I do enjoy the James Bond boxed set as well as the Sopranos boxed set.

Regards,

barts