Qobuz: Music & Editorial Reviews

I love Qobuz, when it works. I have used a number of other music apps with no issues. this app however has been problematic from the beginning. I’m old and not adept with electronics. Still I have never had the kind of problems that I have experienced with this app. The problems include: having trouble bypassing the trial period so I can have full use of the services; being able to know when I actually have been enrolled; having been enrolled, being able to get out of the trial program. This seems to be the overall problem. The system’s default appears to be the trail program and navigating out of it has been way harder than it should be. That’s where I am now stuck in a seemingly endless loop of password changes, customer service instructions, following one prompt after another only to end up in the trial program. I’m reminded of the early days of computing when the attitude of the specialist was “ if they are too stupid to understand how to use it, they don’t deserve to use it”. I’m not saying that this company has this attitude. I am saying that when I compare and contrast the this app user experience with it’s competition, I am disappointed. I want to enjoy the wonders of HiRes, not be diminished.

I’m a new this app user and I’m excited about it!
Quick question... let’s say I want to hit random on all the music that I like... is there a way to do that?
First I tried downloading MP3s (as 44.1 files would take up space in a hurry) to my phone, but then I realized that I lost the option to stream those songs at CD quality.

Then I tried favoriting albums, but if I’m trying to have all the tracks together in one place... it looks like I’d have to individually favorite each song, and even then there’s not a random button on the favorite songs list.

Then I tried making a playlist of everything but it Looks like there’s a cap on how many songs are in a playlist.
I believe the easiest solutions to be as follows:

1a. Make it so when someone favorites an album, all the tracks show up in the favorite tracks list

b. Allow random play on favorite tracks

Or,

2. Have a shuffle button in the favorite albums list that includes all songs from all albums.

Or,

3. Have the ability to prefer CD quality when streaming even if I’ve downloaded MP3s of the same songs.... this would be a wonderful feature to have anyway!

Or,

4. Have unlimited length playlists

Thanks!
Tom

Started my trial to see if I like this app better than Tidal. I noticed this app has more of certain masters than tidal, but it’s also missing stuff that tidal does have. I’m satisfied with the quality and selection but Qobuz needs a lot of work. Playback gives errors more often than Im okay with, and I don’t like how the player disappears completely when you’re in the search menu. You have to go all the way back to get back to the player which is super inconvenient. In my opinion, album titles should be moved to the top and featured artist should be next to the artist name. I don’t like how there’s no exact release dates for anything, just the year it came out. The discover tab needs a whole revamp, it’s super hard to find new music for me and nothing is relevant. If there’s a new music Friday tab like every other app someone please tell me. If not that’s something people are used to with other services so that’s a must for me. Swiping though songs in the player would be really nice. There’s loading symbols for basically everything you press, even just favoriting a song. Qobuz needs an overhaul. Other than that it’s a good service but because of Qobuz alone I won’t be choosing this over tidal just yet

I’m only writing this to hopefully help the developers out, because I think they’re on to something. I’ve recently been testing a ton of music streaming apps. All of the big names. This one, has some huge pros and also some huge cons. First, out of all of the streaming services I tested, I liked the sound quality of this one best. Actually by a lot. I played everything from Tool to NF and everything just seemed to sound better than any of the other services. However…. Out of all of the music streaming services I’ve tested, this one is the buggiest. Just within 3 days of testing, I had multiple songs just refuse to play, some songs would studder in the middle, and then forward to the next song. I ran into this type of thing quite often, whether using WiFi or over a strong cellular signal. It’s for this reason that I cannot use this app at this time. Just too many issues with playback. Also, there are no lyrics, if you’re into that kind of thing. Sound quality is so good that it’s ALMOST worth overlooking the other issues… but not quite. I’ll check back in 6 months or so and see if anything has been fixed.

I want to praise this app to the skies. The human touch is significant and brings back for me the excitement and curiosity I first had when I began exploring classical music as a teenager. It’s amazing to me that it isn’t the 24-bit audio that makes this app great. They don’t rely on just that to appeal to audiophiles, like everyone else does. They include liner notes (as NO ONE else does). They write about the music (e.g., the editorial panoramas). This turns the music into a cultural experience, people sharing with people what they love and why. And the clean interface of Qobuz only enhances the human touch while being clutter-free. I’m currently in a trial subscription, but already I am sold. Thank you, this app, for all you do above and beyond the 24-bit audio. Please keep doing it.

Having nothing but problems with app. Music shutting off in the middle of play back and signed up for sublime subscription but can only play back at cd quality despite using external fiio q5 dac/amp and iPhone XS Max with lastest iOS. Great idea if they can get things working. No phone number for support and still no email response for support after 24hrs so far.
Update on this. Finally got email back and not very helpful indicating that since bought subscription from App Store need to talk to them. No help there directed me back. Eventually figured out App Store subscription for 25$ is only hifi or cd quality streaming while 25$ sublime from this app on their website allows you to stream all music at highest resolution through app. Not sure why that is.
Now working as advertised and I’m loving it so I’m upping my star rating.

The interface on both mobile and desktop has some kinks to work out but none of thrm actually detract from the service.

I subscribed for completely lossless sound quality (coming from TIDAL, which I discovered to be a scam re: MQA). This service has provided me exactly what Inwas looking for.

My only actual grievance here is that the music selection is somewhat limited—very underground or niche artists may not be available. But that will be remedied as the service grows. 5 stars for sound quality alone and the ability to actually buy albums for permanent storage on laptop and mobile.

I enjoy the service, however I have a problem with Qobuz . I try to use it at work, but I don’t have time to continually mess with it, and change songs. My favorites are clearly listed, and I have the option of listening to them alphabetically by song, artist, or album. That’s a terrible way to have music playing in my office all day. I would like to see a shuffle all favorites selection that will randomly select from every song/album that I have favorited. Every other service does this.
At home I have Roon software, which integrates beautifully with this app, and mixes my locally stored music with this app favorites seamlessly. It’s a perfect setup for me. Unless I am watching tv or a movie, there is never a time when music isn’t playing.

Great quality, promotes more obscure artists all over the spectrum. Great playlists. In my time on Qobuz I’ve discovered so much music. Good integration with devices. It has reviews of albums and really try to provide content for music lovers of all genres.


But, it has Slow load and buffer times if you don’t have a perfect WiFi connection. Whenever you “heart” something, it has to take entire seconds just for that action. I see that loading symbol so much just trying to do basic tasks.

A lot of the time it has difficulty loading artists profiles. Even when using cd quality with 4g data. where as I don’t have this either problems with tidal HIFI or deezer HIFI when I’m out and about.

In my opinion, Qobuz feels a bit clunky. The UI design just looks like a base model iOS app. Where I wish it felt more professional or at least some “personality”.

I really want to make it my main service. But those issues just sorta turn me towards tidal. (Also if you added a student discount that would help more people switch.)

I absolutely love the set up of this app app. I love that it tells you what you’re streaming quality is instead of just saying “Hi fi”. Interface is sleek and easy. My only complaint is that I am a metal fan and it only has 1 Infected Rain album, & missing a few other favorite groups such as Tetrarch. Even my pop mix I’ve had for a few years is missing 3 or 4 songs which makes me sad. So not sure if I want to be without these few favorites. Other wise I highly recommend this app for music lovers. It really sounds amazing and sits right next to Tidal (but at a lower cost)

Every time I bring up Qobuz after minimizing it, it displays the history page. It should remain where it was when I minimized it. I’m tired of swiping every time I return to Qobuz . Please fix this.

UPDATE: As of January 10, 2022, after updating Qobuz , this issue persists. I am SO tired of this. Even though I always display the “Listening” page when playing, every single time I minimize and then bring Qobuz back up, it has reverted to the “History” page. Why, for the love of God, can Qobuz not stay the way I left it when I minimized it? FIX THIS, this app. If I minimize Qobuz on the “Listening” page, it should STILL BE on the “Listening” page when I bring Qobuz back up! Why is this so hard for you? FIX IT!! I promise to raise my rating when you do.

I bought this app to stream from Roon, and it worked great already for that, but I thought to try it for mobile as well and I’m glad I did!

First, the sound quality is fantastic, which is expected for this service and the hi-res streaming price. I keep an iPhone SE with standard headphone jack because of its size and that its internal DAC is far superior, and this app reveals it well. Night and day even with VE Monk earbuds.

Second, and the part that surprises me—this app is just a better music app period, regardless of sound quality. The features, organization, discovery, library, and small details like instant stream quality switching, artist/album reviews and bios, full credits, and related content are just really well done. One thing I particularly love is the left/right swipe while in player view to get to history (left) and queue (right). Makes total sense and is just intuitive and convenient, I wish all music apps worked that way.

Best of all worlds. Great experience.

Access to high resolution audio that just makes the competition look silly (and sound awful). Qobuz is akin to the local record shop. The music featured is curated by people who truly love music; this is a music lover’s music app. On rare occasion, something is missing, but it is rare. this app excels with great features on artists (often with hyperlinks to influences and peers). this app even has a dedicated corner to audiophile equipment for those interested. Fortunately for this app, the competition obviously doesn’t care as much about the consumer experience.

This application encounters so many errors when streaming hi-res both on my iDevice as well as my PC. I've complained to this app directly, and they give me the run around to other products like Audirvana without acknowledging the serious faults with their hi-res streaming capability. I am definitely considering one of the other hi-res services because this app on my iProducts and the this app PC application have just been terrible and leaving me in fear every time I do anything on my iDevice that my action will trigger this app hi-res streaming to malfunction rather than continue seamlessly in the background as it should and as I expect as a paying customer.

I have found that streaming via a VPN versus direct connection from my home IP greatly reduced the likelihood that hi-res streaming malfunctioned, but then there are still significant errors with the application otherwise.

I will say that CD quality is solid - I have not encountered any issues with CD quality.

Fix your lackluster hi-res streaming experience and your pretty but buggy applications, this app. For the sake of Christ, don't tell me to buy some other product to use your product.

Wonderful to have music at this high quality.

Selection is good.

Lately Qobuz is very slow to respond. Very, very slow. Especially when you try to bring up the offline library.

Also there’s a major feature missing that others have mentioned: when you select an album as a favorite, you want the songs in that album to show up as favorite tracks, so that you can shuffle through all the tracks from albums you’ve favorited. That can’t happen. Seems like an easy fix but it doesn’t seem to have been implemented yet.

P. S. I am surprised that when people submit feedback here, the developer response asks you to go submit it somewhere else. It would be a lot easier for this app to copy and paste these comments for their own use, assuming they’d want to improve their app to retain users, than to require every single person to go elsewhere to submit the feature request, especially when you can’t copy/paste the URL they indicate.

I downloaded Qobuz and subscribed to the free trial, which required automatically enrolling after trial period. Qobuz is running me in circles, will only play sample tracks in MP3 format. When I follow link to upgrade it tells me I am already subscribed and logged in. Emailed support and have not heard back so will hope to have access and will repost my review at that time. You would think the developer would have made sure the download, trial offer and subscription enrollment would work seamlessly but based on my experience it was somehow missed!

I have done a few comparisons on my headphones and on my iPhone speakers, and I could tell you that it does sound better than streaming from TIDAL.

The interface is not as good as other services but the sound quality is noticeably better. It’s so much better that I need to change, or turn off my EQ settings that I normally have with other programs.

This service is even better if you have really good audio equipment, as you really will hear the difference. It’s like upgrading your DAC to a $5000 piece of equipment

As a longtime (old) audio hobbyist, I didn’t think of my Apple 6S as high end gear, but the trial hi-rez this app subscription just blew my socks off with really good sound. Whether using apple earbuds or my Etymotics, or even using the iphone as a streaming dac into my preamp, the quality of sound and the enormous music catalog has profoundly changed my listening experience. I’m now seriously considering leaving behind physical media (of which I have many, many full shelves), scoring a higher-end streamer/dac and moving my listening chair to a nice, comfy spot in cyberspace.

Jeff

I do not write reviews for apps but I had to for Qobuz and the company. Besides the outstanding quality and choice I don’t think I have had a music app in which the auto play feature gave such amazing related songs, most all for music I did not know about. It really has expanded my listening bubble tremendously is the week or so I’ve had it now.

Thank you to all of the awesome people that have worked and continue to work to bring this to us.

I really have considered myself pretty well-versed in the music department. I had no idea what I was missing I have been an Apple Music member for longer than I want to think about.
I did not know what I was missing, quite literally so. I really didn’t.
the sound quality blows my hair back!
Qobuz with music suggestionsAnd the interactive platform itself is so user-friendly and so smart.
So I can’t say enough about it obviously 5+ stars.

So happy with this app as my new streaming service. The best sound quality to my ears, cleaner than tidal for many tracks I compared between them. The catalogue for classical and jazz is superb, and the meta data and listings for classical works is much better than the rest. The apps have improved greatly since I first took a look, and now stand near the top tier. The searching now surpasses tidal as well, especially within one’s own collection. I hope they continue to actively develop the CarPlay app. Merci!

I really like this app’s CD-audio quality, because I believe I can actually hear the difference. (That’s why I switched from Apple Music.). And I love that it’s already integrated with my beloved Sonos.

But this app is simply not ready for Prime Time when it comes to pre-curated “playlists” for various artists, genres, musical moods and themes, etc. (Apple Music does *really* well at this). Yes, I can build my own playlists, but I don’t want to, and shouldn’t have to spend the time doing so.

Same for music “stations”, a la Pandora and others. Especially when those stations “learn” your true preferences with those handy thumbs up / thumbs down buttons.

For me, it’s a huge downer that all I can really do with this app is play individual albums and songs, and only if I’m already aware of them, and then search them out specifically by name. They sound great, but I want to pick a playlist or station, and just let the tunes roll for hours at a time. Apparently not happening on this app.

I love Qobuz and it has great sound quality but needs more hip hop songs. One thing that needs work on is on my playlist I have a lot of music and after I hit 500 songs on my playlist and any music have 500 doesn’t show up. Also I don’t like how if you stop playing music and leave Qobuz for a little Qobuz automatically close out and have to scroll threw your playlist again.

ok so I have to say sound quality is amazing, is better than tidal, no regrets on paying 25$ a month for great music, it sounds good even on AirPods, lol no lie , now my only concern is that there missing Latin music in there catalog, so it’s kinda hard to find new music, etc, I wish they update this very soon, I don’t want to keep going to a song, then checking the label record so I can find similar songs, that’s annoying, pleaseee ! Update asap!

If I have this app, why do I need Roon? I don't have an extensive CD collection. Music is too varied (and to much of it) to be able to buy it all. But I like the higher quality playback, now that I've got some decent speakers. I play this app over Chromecast Audio and the network takes over, as it should do. Wow! Something that works that didn't come from Apple or Google. Yay!

I have subscribed to hifi sublime for one year , and as compared to other its experience ,i think at that price point they should offer , no streaming but download in high resolution in hifi sublime subscription.
I mean that’s pathetic, we can only download in. Cd quality , very unsatisfactory according to the amount they charge !
The one at peak on music service in compared to quality is Tidal , which offer high resolution at the price point of this app sublime subscription .
This should be addressed out asap , if they don’t wanna loose their customers . And they must work on the interface, its so dull and messy on pc while streaming.

I was impressed with this app from the moment I tried it with a UI that's superior to either Deezer or Tidal. While the Hi-Res catalog isn't as expansive as one might wish, it's growing and definitely ahead of the services just mentioned. Now that this app has offered a competitive price, I'm all in and looking forward to a year of excellent audio quality.

Went to sign up for the “free trial” only to be charged one full month immediately, so false advertising on the company’s part. No big deal, I thought, until I realized half of my favorite albums (which are available on Deezer) aren’t on this app. Also had a hard time finding well-known artists on this app. Not even close to being worth $25/mo for CD quality. To put into perspective, Deezer’s premium audio (not lossless) sounds better. Hugely disappointed for the price. Won’t be renewing for a 2nd month, and it’d be nice to get my money back on the “free trial” I tried to sign up for... :/

The audio quality is great, but Qobuz looks like an after thought. The artist photos are blank silhouettes, search is poor and the playlists were tossed together 2 hours before the US launch. I think the price is fair, but the web player and native app kills the value proposition for me.

If Qobuz improves and I’ll take another look. Tidal for me as MQA is fine and I don’t notice much difference other than a slight difference in the audio signature.

I can get rid of Apple Music now. It streams to my stereo and even on carplay. The simplicity of Qobuz and quality of content is superb. Tons of variety. Qobuz even sound better than most of my cds ripped to flac. I’m at the highest tier but it’s worth not ripping the cds or getting stuck with a poorly engineered cd. If you used to buy 2 cds a month this is a wash.

If you love music this app is the best music platform for audiophiles. I agree with one reviewer that you have to subscribe on the this app website because you get more for the same price. The sound quality is outstanding and the support is extraordinary if you contact them via Facebook!

After more than a year during which I was not able to import my Hi-Res purchases in Qobuz , it seems that the latest update has solved the issue.
However, I do not see the option to import a whole playlist anymore...
But overall I am very happy to have finally regained "ownership" of the thousands of Hi-Res tracks that I have purchased from this app before that bug struck.