Qobuz “HiFi” streaming service Geoffrey Armstrong 30 January 2013 Introduction The French Qobuz streaming service is the only one in the World that I’m aware of which provides “true CD quality sound”. Unlike similar streaming services such as Spotify or Mog which use MP3 lossy compression, the Qobuz “HiFi” service uses the lossless flac format. So the sound that is streamed to you from the Qobuz servers is at the same level of quality as the original CD’s. Think of it like a giant record store in your living room. You can choose any music from their vast library and stream it to your system. This article deals with how to make the best advantage of your Qobuz “HiFi” subscription. Details of how to subscribe are clearly explained on the Qobuz web-site, though only in French at this time. It is fairly self explanatory, though, so I will assume you have taken out a Qobuz “HiFi” subscription and show you how to obtain the best experience possible from this amazing service. Qobuz desktop application Once you have taken out your subsciption you will be prompted to download the Qobuz desktop application for your operating system (Mac OSX or Windows). Once installed this application will enable you to sign into your Qobuz “HiFi” streaming account. You should then go into the application Preferences and verify that “Qualité d’écoute en streaming” is set to Vraie Qualité CD (Lossless), if not select this option 1. The other important preference is the “Périphérique de sortie audio”. Choose your sound output device from the drop down menu 2. You can now exit from preferences and search for any Artist, Album or Song you may wish to listen to from your Qobuz “HiFi” streaming account. Just like any record store, Qobuz doesn’t have absolutely everything. It’s selection is very large though. I can’t help wondering just how big a store it would take to fill the shelves of CD’s that Qobuz has to offer via its streaming service. The choice via the competing streaming services from Spotify and Mog may be even larger. Then again, I have found selections on Qobuz that neither of those two services had at the time I made a search. 1 Figure 1: Figure 2: Qobuz is also an online shop which allows you to buy and download music, at true CD quality in a variety of formats. They also have a good selection of albums in higher resolution than CD, which they refer to as “Studio masters”, just like the American online store “HDTracks” and others which are cropping up regularly. No other service apart from Qoboz allows you unlimited streaming from their library at full CD quality though, in addition to buying that same music in CD or sometimes higher than CD quality. Purchases can be made directly from the Qobuz desktop application or your accont within their web-site. Because Qobuz provides this combined streaming service and online store it has become my first port of call when searching for music. The question becomes, if you can stream music at full CD quality, why would you bother owning the actual album and have it take up space on your hard drive? One obvious answer is if the album is available in higher than CD resolution, you may want to own it for the the higher quality. Another is that by buying the album you then have the artwork and any sleevenotes that are provided with it. If it isn’t available in a higher resolution than CD quality though, is there really a compelling enough reason to own the album, when you can stream it from Qobuz at full CD quality, anytime you wish? Well, if you buy it you can also burn it to a CD for playing via a traditional CD player or in the car. For me though, the most compelling reason for owning an album of music I really like, is that I’m not just limited to the Qobuz desktop application for play- ing it back. I can choose from a number of software players on either the Mac or Windows platforms which may allow me to improve the sound in a number of ways, over the sound obtainable from the Qobuz desktop application. Addi- tionally some of these players, such as iTunes or iTunes combined with an add on player, such as Pure Music, will enable me to choose the music from my library using my iPhone or iPad; etc. with Apple’s “Remote” app. 2 Having said that, we are not actually limited to the Qobuz Desktop applica- tion for playing back music via the Qobuz streaming service. Fortnuately there are options that allow us to enjoy our Qobuz streaming service at higher quality than is available from the Qobuz desktop application. Because of the techni- cal nature of an online streaming service, these may not provide the ultimate sound quality that is available via some software players. They do allow us to bridge the quality gap between the Qobuz desktop application and playing back albums you own via these other software players though. Mac options Did I mention Pure Music? Not only does Pure Music from ChannelD have a plethora of options which can allow you to improve the quality of playback for albums in your iTunes library, it also has a “Playthrough” option which will allow you to send the audio from any application through Pure, for improved sound quality. Thanks to Paul Raulerson for pointing this out on this Computer Audiophile forum thread. In order to do this go to “Audio Set-Up” from Pure Music’s main menu, then click on “Input and Playthrough”. You will need to click on the install button for the ChannelD Audio Playthrough Audio Driver, if it isn’t already installed. 3 It is probably a good idea to also make sure “Automatically set preferred Audio Device” is checked. This will ensure that applications whose sound you wish to pass through “Pure Audio” will be passed through the ChannelD Audio Playthrough Driver. In our case the audio source application will be the Qobuz desktop applica- tion. Within the preferences of the Qobuz Desktop application ChannelD PAD should be chosen as the “Périphérique de sortie audio”. 2 You can think of ChannelD PAD as a sort of virtual audio device which operates internally. It simply takes the audio from the source audio application and passes it to Pure Music for further handling. A word of caution here: Although Pure Music does have a number of dif- ferent options for improving audio, such as “Memory Play” and “Upsampling” if you want to ensure reliable playback of your “HiFi” streams from Qobuz it is bet- ter to disable all of these options. Simply choose “Disable DSP Options” from Pure Music’s “Music Server” menu. Once you have achieved reliable playback with all DSP options disabled, you can try re-enabling these options later. Finally, and again to ensure reliable streaming, make sure that Pure Music is set to send no higher than the CD standard 44.1khz sampling rate to your actual audio output device. This is best achieved by lanching the application “Audio Midi set-up” before launching Pure Music (quit Pure Music if it is already running). Find your actual audio device within Audio Midi Set up and set its output to 44.1khz. Quit Audio Midi Setup and launch Pure Music. If prompted by Pure music, make sure that both the input and output are set to 44.1khz. Now go into Pure Music’s “Audio Set-up” under the main “Pure Music” menu and choose “Output” from the dialog that appears. Here you should see your 3 Figure 3: 4 actual audio ouput device. Make sure it is set to 44.1khz. If you needed to change it, click on the button “Click to apply changes, Application will relaunch” at the bottom. Pure Music will now restart and should be all set to playthrough music from Qobuz to your output device at 44.1khz. 4 Now go to Qobuz and play something. Once you can see something begins to play (the timer should be moving at the bottom of the Qobuz window), go back to Pure Music and ensure “Audio Playthrough” is selected from the “Music Server” menu. If you have “Signal Metering” turned on form the “Metering” menu, you should see the blue meter bars moving with the music and at the centre just beneath these meters 44.1khz should be indicated. Now you should hear your Qobuz stream playing through Pure Music. 5To my ears this definitely improves the sound quality over the Qobuz Desktop application. Remote control So now we have improved sound quality, what about remote control? The only way I know of that allows me to remote control Qobuz using my iPhone or iPad is to install the application “XBMC”. This will run on just about any existing platform. We’ll stick with the Mac though for now. If you’re not familiar with XBMC it is an applicaton which turns your Mac or PC into a media center, much like Apple’s “Front Row application” or the now defunct “Windows Media Center”. This makes using a Mac as easy as using an AppleTV or similar “set-top Box”. People who are computer challenged (or simply don’t want to deal with computers at the end of a busy day) can easily navigate XBMC with a simple remote, while looking at a widesrcreen HDTV. For our purposes here, the good news is that there is also a free app for IOS devices which allows you to control XBMC, just as you can control iTunes using Apple’s remote App.