Hi
I am thinking of subscribing to Quobuz, but I also have Apple Music. Is there any advantage to have both?
My husband likes Apple Music. Moreover Apple Music is included in our family Apple One services bundle, so it would be hand to untangle.
Is Quobuz that much better ? Do any of you have both and what are the advantages to have both?
I have the ND5SX2 streamer with the SN3.
Only you can answer that. You can get a one month free trial of Qobuz - it only has one u - which will give an idea of what it’s like. One advantage is that it has a lot of high res music, and you can operate it from the Naim app, which is nice.
I believe the different online streaming services have different catalogues, so you may find one suits your musical tastes and another not so well. Or you may find one has some things you want but not others and another service may fill in those gaps, so conceivably if you want to access anything that you like you could find yourself subscribing to several different services. Best avail yourself of their free trials, and search out loads of different pieces of music to get a feel for their ranges, in particular anything you like that is on the obscure side.
I have Apple Music Family (only my daughter and I really use it) and have often considered Apple One, but we used to have Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness and they weren’t really being used much so they went. Never watched a thing on AppleTV despite several trials, suspect there may be better content there now.
The main difference from a hi-fi perspective is that despite Apple Music offering hi-res you won’t currently get that via Airplay, though I think Airplay sounds excellent. To get hi-res on your ND5SX2 you’d need to jump a few hoops and either connect a Mac with a DAC or iOS/iPad OS device with an adapter connected DAC to the ND5SX2.
Qobuz will play hi-res natively on the ND5SX2 via the Naim app.
Apple Music will have music videos and song lyrics on devices which Qobuz doesn’t.
If you purchase or intend to purchase downloads Apple will limit you to buying 256 kbps AAC files, whereas Qobuz offer from lossless CD quality to 24 bit 192 kHz lossless for many titles.
Again, if you fancy purchasing hi-res downloads the Qobuz Sublime option for around ÂŁ180/annum gives you very good discounts on many hi-res titles - up to 60% off, such that the hi-res is actually cheaper than their CD quality offerings which are rarely reduced except in sales.
Qobuz allow unlimited redownloads of purchases (so do Apple), but you can download in many different file formats using their downloader app as well as different quality if you purchase hi-res. So you could download a FLAC CD quality version, ALAC hi-res version and lossy less than CD quality MP3 of the same hi-res purchase. Their website downloads used to be more flexible but the downloader app is being promoted over website downloads.
If you like artwork in high quality, provided you downloaded the Jpeg cover art from their website in your purchase history you will often get quite high resolution artwork, often 1500 x 1500 resolution or better - all depends on the release, and even if the hi-res art isn’t that useful in general now, I think it may be handy for the future or simply just to view the artwork detail on a tablet device/computer.
Try a free Qobuz trial. I dislike Apple music’s fancy curation and suggestions, I think it gets in the way but I’m old-fashioned.
@jmtennapel i am new to streaming and have no real idea how all this works and what the best options are. Sorry if I offended you.
Not only will you not get hires with Apple Music over AirPlay, can’t you even get lossless. It streams at 256k aac regardless what the app says. There are a few articles about this. You can only get lossless and hires with a direct connection for now. Apple Music does have a better catalog but if you want at least cd quality, I wouldn’t recommend it.
@iamoneagwin We already have Apple Music before we had any streaming capacity. Apple Music is baked into our Apple One service bundle and hard to untangle. For us the question is whether to add Qobuz
I have Apple One for the family but have a Qobuz account for myself for better sound quality. It’s very subtle but you get better soundstage and better realism. I actually use Qobuz thru roon, so I get a better interface.
I would add Qobuz, if you do mind about the subscription, since Qobuz would give you bit perfect, hires lossless streaming via the Naim App or Roon, and you cannot get it via Apple Music, unless you need jump a few hoops with some cumbersome ways.
I am still waiting for the day when Spotify supports HIFI streaming.
Exact same situation as you with regards to Apple one Family and for the same reason I subscribe to Qobuz.
Yeah, I have a lifetime subscription to roon, but I’d definitely try Spotify Supremium when it’s released. Another manufacturer said over a year ago that Spotify Connect was already upgraded to handle lossless but they were just waiting for Spotify to throw the switch. The new rumor now says Spotify will be offering hires 24 bit files. The other option is Tidal, once they rollout the new Max tier to roon and Tidal Connect.
None of this would be an issue if Qobuz could have closed the gap on their library. It just seems so random where part of an artist catalog is missing. Go to Apple, and they have everything. I have tried hardwiring my iPad to my Naim Atom HE, and while excellent sound quality, kind of takes away from the whole wireless convenience. Maybe if didn’t already have roon, I might have gone this route until Spotify releases their new tier.
@iamoneagwin what is Roon? What does it do? How is it setup with the Naim ND5XS2? How much does it cost? I know nothing about roon. I don’t have music on a NAS or hard drive. I only stream without storing files.
Think of it like a curated music collection. If you only use Apple Music, you can’t use roon (doesn’t support it), so it’s irrelevant.
For those of us with our own collection for streaming, plus tidal or qobuz (or both) roon integrates everything seamlessly. Plus it supports multiple users and multiple output devices simultaneously.
I use apple music an qbuz with my ndx2 streaming thru my apple tv. I hve qbuz too and i think that apple music sounds excellent. I cant tell. I use qbuz with roon too, i cant really tell a difference and i might lean to apple music. My system is quite resolving tunetots rel sub power supplies for ndx2 and sn3
I use Apple Music & Qobuz as well.
thru apple tv i believe there shouldn’t be much difference between Qobuz & Apple Music as the signal has been converted to some sort of TV format.
when i purchased a DAC/Streamer with Qobuz (HiRez) built in, the sound over Apple Music via Apple TV was noticed.
i say listen to Qobuz not thru the ATV and see if you notice a difference.
Don’t be offended! I have no idea why, if people have nothing to offer and the thread offends them they don’t just move on.
Anyway, for me qobuz is the best streaming service out there for a Naim streamer
Essential is was a good way to blend your local library and streaming library. It was also a nice way to stream to different parts of the house.
At this point most my of music is on steaming services, so I hardly touch my local library. I don’t think I’d still pay for it if didn’t already have a lifetime subscription. But if already have the music favorited, it has nice filtering setups where you can filter within certain years, or countries, record labels, sub genres. But you can’t do any of this when first searching for music on the streaming services. Now Spotify actually has an advance search where you can do some of these searches on their entire library. Don’t the can do country but can do years, labels, sub genre.
Roon has a free trial, don’t remember how long. Interface is much better than the Naim and Qobuz ones. It’s especially nice on a tablet vs an iPhone. On the iPhone is think Apple Music and Spotify are better.
Yes, thanks, I’ve seen some of those threads especially from Naim saying that lossy AAC was being sent from Apple Music not a lossless CD quality stream.
Good to know current Naim streamers are however ready for lossless CD or higher quality if and when Apple throws the switch. It’s hardly down to local bandwidth issues.
I would not be thrilled about it, the problem is the Apple AirAplay design. Airplay cannot send lossless streaming because it has to be compatible with lot of audio devices out there.