Amazon music vs Qobuz

@mapman 

fwiw, I was listening to the same recording (Klaus Tennstedt conducting the London Philharmonic in Mahler Resurrection Symphony from the LPO house label) played both on AirPlay and Chromecast yesterday.  Streamer is Cambridge Audio CXN 60, source was Apple Music.  For some reason my Android phone wasn’t able to cast to the streamer, but my Android tablet was able to.  I had to charge tablet up so while that was occurring I used an iPad, which apparently won’t do Chromecast afaik, so I used AirPlay to the CA while awaiting the charge on the Android tablet.

  Chromecast easily beats AirPlay.  The work starts arrestingly with violin tremolos followed by slashing double basses, which were much fuller with Chromecast and threadbare on AirPlay. The mid range was much fuller on Chromecast..  And while I don’t have a CD for this particular recording, in the past I’ve done comparisons with CD vs AirPlay and found AirPlay to be wanting in comparison, albeit a step up from Bluetooth .

I have had Amazon HD since it came out.  I tried Quobuz and listened to songs with both and couldn't hear any difference.

3-D imaging, accuracy, etc.  High quality sound.  Other improvements are noticable way more than any music service. 

Thanks everyone for the great feedback. Much appreciated. 

@mahler123

I use a iPhone running mainly Plexamp app to stream from my personal library which is mostly full res ripped CDs . There are some mp3s in there as well that I acquired and those sound ok but yes thinner and less dynamic overall. I cast to Cambridge evo 150 via either google cast or airplay. Have done some quick compares and no big differences jumped at me but will give it some more attention and see. Fwiw it is airplay 2 that does cd resolution and my app indicates that is the case when playing either way.

the Evo can stream higher res than cd and I have found a couple internet radio stations that do that. Those generally also sound very good sometimes better sometimes not noticeably better than CD res…depends mostly on the source material playing more than merely the streaming resolution. In any case there are differences but nothing bad so it often becomes a matter of cutting hairs to decide which is best, so I tend to not care much, as long as the music is playing loud and clear.

I have Amazon HD for about 2 years now. Very happy with it. I just had to try Qobus though. I have a pretty good system, about 20k. What I noticed is Qobus does sound BETTER, tighter, more dynamic, just more clarity and oomph.

Amazon is much easier to navigate and use, their format is better, IMO.

Qobus has been a nightmare at times to use, not really user friendly.

I have noticed with either outboard DAC i own, that Amazon will generally register a song as HD but, doesn't always register exactly what the streaming rate is properly. With Qobus , my DAC's register exactly what the streaming rate is. Be that 16/44   24/192  24/96, etc. Amazons streaming wont do that, I don't know why. Some how I think Amazon is cheating somehow or somewhere?  I am still keeping both for the time being. But, every time I listen, it is always Qobus I prefer. Just sounds better.  I will say that Amazon sounds very good and is easier to navigate though! Robert TN  Hope this helps someone.