Can we talk about Qobuz for a minute

Oops, hit send too send.

Beyond sound quality, the app UX is very important to me. I like Spotify’s AI curation of songs. I enjoy listening a lot better with an AI DJ, that Qobuz doesnt have.

Qobuz has gotten a little annoying for me because some music does not stream properly without dropouts. My internet connection is solid and when the Qobuz drops I check out the same album on Tidal. On Tidal the music has far less dropouts. I cannot remember the last time I had a dropout on Tidal.

I went back to Qobuz recently because they had a few tunes that Tidal did not. However, I am finding the tech a little less reliable than Tidal.

The latest ROON update added the DAILY MIX feature from Tidal and I am very impressed by that feature. It is a playlist about 3 hour long based on your listening habits. They focus each Mix on a particular artist and then go deep into that artist and similar artists.  I discovered Fela Kuti's drummer today by listening to Tidal's Fela Kuti's DAILY MIX based on my listening habits. I do not see this integration with ROON for Qobuz.

I’ve been using Qobuz since 2019. At that time, I preferred the overall Qobuz experience over Tidal and Amazon Music HD.

I do still love the sound quality, but the more I’ve used Qobuz, the more I taken issue almost everything else--e.g. their search engine is slow and often inaccurate, the interface is cumbersome, they have poor playlists for entire genres, untrained prediction algorithm. I told Qobuz in 2019 that they had some of the best Chromecast implementation I’ve seen in any app. But over the last 6 months, the casting has started failing where music will play on both my phone and the stereo system--and the pause button only turns one of the two off. It’s painful. I’m very much looking forward to Spotify HiFi.

I currently have a Spotify and Apple Music subscription too. I’m ultimately going to migrate to one of those two by the end of the year.

I use both and have specific preferences for each

I prefer Qobuz sound quality on my 2 channel reference system, but it's bandwidth intensive and prone to more drops than Tidal

For mobile listening, streaming over cellular while driving or on the beach, riding a bike etc I cannot maintain a reliable connection with Qobuz but Tidal rarely let's me down and is my go to source for mobility

Also Tidal has a few discount plans for students, military and first responders, as well as loyalty renewal discounts after 2 years, e.g. 12 months for the price of 10

I'm unable to find similar discount options on Qobuz

I do find the Tidal UI a bit easier to navigate and more user friendly

I have two reactions to this thread.  (1) OP is doing something that, IMHO, more people should do: bypassing the Node 2 DAC and using it as a streamer only.  For $500 (ish), it’s a decent streamer.  (2) I question whether it’s decent enough, however, to reveal a difference between HiRez Qobuz files and Tidal’s MQA.  I’ve invested a decent chunk of money into my digital side on two systems, and I still find it a close call.  But, like others have said, I do prefer the Qobuz sound for some elusive reason.  I also have a dumb, but nonetheless real, skepticism toward MQA and its whole “compressed, but not really” approach.  But the depressing reality is that we have no control; a really good recording streamed over Tidal will always beat a so-so recording streamed over Qobuz, and vice versa.  We spend too much time and energy agonizing over gear when we should be agonizing over recordings.  Do better, music biz.  Your entire job is to help me and the rest of us .0000005 % audio-geeks get the most out of our toys.