It really should work. I presume you have a Qobuz Studio or Sublime hi-res subscription?
In my experience both the “nas” (if you had one) and streaming should both work in a similar way.
If you have a streaming issue it may be your Internet or router. What quality/speed is it, how old is it and is it performing well?
(I had a 20 year old fibre which lost its speed. The Virgin engineer replaced a connector in the street and a splitter in the house. This restored the speed although even this issue had not impacted upon my streaming service). Also do your tests outside the 4pm-6pm busy period.
Are there any settings on M-Connect that are limiting/transcoding down your stream?
Yep I have Qobuz Sublime. It shows as 96khz on the app.
The internet isn’t fast (35 megs), as we are rural, but is stable. We stream 4K video and hi res audio on other apps fine. I have had Ethernet put all over the house so that as little as possible of the speed we do have is lost to WiFi. I have only had this buffering issue using Mconnect via iPhone. It plays for 5 seconds, drops from 100% to 20% then goes back up and keeps dropping in and out. It is the same whether casting it to my AVR or my Muso.
There don’t appear to be any customisable settings on MConnect. It just seems to struggle to communicate with the Qobuz server. It was only £5.99 so I’ll probably give up on it.
If you also have an Android tablet try BubbleUPnP. I find it great and enables Qobuz streaming to a MuSo 1st gen (which I understand the Naim native app cannot do). You can trial it for free.
There are options to restrict the stream to 24/96 or 24/48 if you find your Internet cannot cope but gets you into the hi-res band. Suggest you try it unrestricted first.
I thought this might be good advice.
So I downloaded mconnect lite on my iphone 5.
This is as old and as shonky as iphones get and this model is also recognised as having poor wi-fi. ( I have already switched off all background activities I can find!).
However although the app performed like a dog (every action was so slow) I was able to stream Fleetwood Mac/Rumours. Bill Evan/Portrait of Jazz and Ella Fitzgerald/Lost Berlin Tapes from Qobuz all in 24/96 and none of them missed a beat.
This might suggest your Internet is the problem. Although 35mbs is not fast I would have expected it to be generally OK. Suggest you chase up your ISP and ask them to investigate. Who is your ISP?
There’s no inherent 48k limit in the Qb’s hardware. I think that number is given as a guide by Naim as to the most you can expect on an average wifi connection. I can stream 24/192 to my first gen Qb wirelessly with no issues (albeit from a nearby Ubiquiti AC Pro access point). It should have no problem at all with hi-res on a wired connection.
Thanks Paul. I have got MConnect working now. No buffering. I don’t know what was causing it but whatever it was it is now fine! I haven’t changed anything so perhaps my network was just slow for some reason.
EDIT: argh literally as I type this it has started buffering every 20 seconds. I managed the whole of the new Faithless album without this happening but at 96khz for Rumours it is doing it. Speedtest.net shows 30 down 5 up, ISP is NowTV (i.e. Sky). I wonder if the difficulty is produced because my iphone connects to our TP-LInk Deco mesh network… The QB is connected wired to the network switch, which is connected to the main Deco (which is connected to the Router).
I also downloaded the Qobuz app to play via UPNP over the network as it is wired, so thought this would remove a point of failure (i.e. wifi) but it can’t find the QB…
Which app? PC or iOS? I can use iOS but it’s Airplay. PC won’t find the QB despite it being visible on my network and I can search my music folder from the Naim iOS app.
I presume Faithless album was hi-res but only 24/44.1 and problem manifested as soon as 24/96.
So jury may still be out as Internet or local network being the issue.
The Mesh should sort out this issue.
Maybe a test by switching off the remote mesh and connecting the phone to the main deco.
Can you disable the Now-TV box in case it is downloading media content (maybe in the background).
Can you reverse the main Deco and the switch (but is the router providing the network DHCP or is it the main Deco mesh?) Is the Now hub providing wi-fi on the same network SSID as the Mesh (as everything must be on the same network)?
Are there any updates to the Deco’s etc. Maybe a support e-mail to Tp-link explaining your issues.
What about the MuSo? How is that working?
Is this correct?
Naim says “UPnP™ (Universal Plug ‘n’ Play). Stream music from a PC, Mac or network-attached storage in high-resolution ‘better than CD’ quality.”
No reference to wi-fi restriction.
It’s there in the Qb 1st generation product details.
Audio Formats WAV, FLAC and AIFF – up to 24bit/192kHz
ALAC (Apple Lossless) – up to 24bit/96kHz
MP3 – up to 48kHz, 320kbit (16 bit)
AAC – up to 48kHz, 320kbit (16bit)
OGG and WMA – up to 48kHz (16bit)
Bluetooth - SBC, AAC and aptX
Note: All formats to 48kHz maximum over wireless network
Right stand corrected. I could not find it on the Naim QB 1 page.
Strange this should be necessary. But should not be issue in this case as it is wired but useful clarification.
@Guinnless, I’m not convinced this means that the Qb downsamples anything over 48k received over wireless. It does say that in various reviews on the web but Naim doesn’t actually state that in what you quoted and it may be that those reviews are wrongly interpreting what was intended as guidance from Naim as a hardware limitation.
What would be the point of downsampling data over 48k received over wireless? The stream would continue to be sent at the originating rate over wifi so there is nothing to be gained as I see it. @stevesky, could you confirm?
The Decos are set up as APs only rather than as full Routers at the moment, but I tried switching them off and just linking straight to the NowTV router but no difference.
I don’t have actual NowTV, I just got the broadband from them because they do a cheap month to month. It’s the same tech as Sky Broadband.
It’s currently working in Access Point mode - yes with the same SSID as the Router. So it goes NowTV Router > Office Deco > Ethernet Backhaul around the house to different Deco access points. The Muso QB is in the office attached to the switch on the Deco. I have attached it directly to the router - no difference.
Everything is up-to-date. I think given my test removing the Deco from the equation it isn’t the Deco causing the problem after all. The MConnect App just does not like streaming Hi Res from Qobuz. It’s the same playing to the Denon AVR from MConnect - it just starts at 100% buffer and instantly drops to 70, 50, 30, 0 … 100, 70, 50, 30, 0. I wish there were a setting to increase the buffering cache but it is light on settings.
I’ve ordered a Chromecast Audio from Ebay. Will plug that into the QB and see if it helps.
Same as the QB and the Denon. MConnect buffers horribly at 96khz or more. Definitely not my internet. Very stable speeds. Able to stream 4K content no problem, no buffering.
You seem to have tried all the obvious things.
This seems to point at the NowTV broadband and suggest you explore the issue with them, and let them run all their tests and checks. Do you have the option of their 63mbps service.
I recently purchased a new Lenovo M8 Android tablet for £100 to replace my aging Amazon Fire 7 that runs the BubbleUPnP app to control my system (it will stream Qobuz to your devices). The tablets are a much better experience than using a phone. They would give you further verification of the issue without wasting money.
