I listen mostly to classical and I find again and again - though certainly not always - that the tracks within a given album on TIDAL are not in the correct order. There is a workaround, which is to make a playlist for the album with the tracks in the right order, but this is a tiresome business. My question is whether or not others have noticed this on Qobuz? It is likely to be a TIDAL-specific issue?
I have tried contacting TIDAL about specific albums but the response is usually ‘that’s how the tracks were provided by the record label.’ AFAIK no incorrectly-ordered album has ever been reordered to put the tracks in the right order.
I’ve not had that issue with Qobuz (never used Tidal) though it has occurred very occasionally with downloads, but not Qobuz downloads IIRC.
Good though it is, I don’t find Qobuz perfect for classical. One issue arises from an album that contains two four-movement symphonies, say. Then, if you want to listen to just the first of the two and avoid running straight on to track 5 you need to be ready to switch off whilst listening to track 4 or create a playlist: distracting or a faff. That’s one reason why I generally prefer local streaming via MinimServer for classical.
I’ve sometimes wondered if Presto is the answer, but it’s not currently available through any of the streaming devices I use. Perhaps that will change in the future.
Same with Tidal (the two 4-movement symphonies example). The workaround is to create a playlist (or two if you want both symphonies). It is a pain but understandable: the streaming companies see such albums as an album of 8 tracks (8 ‘songs’, probably!) and nothing more.
It isn’t ideal but it is wonderful being able to hear almost anything, in high definition, within seconds of thinking about it.
I have both Tidal and Qobuz, I have to say i’ve never noticed an issue with track changes in Qobuz but on a few albums in tidal you do get a mix up especially on older recordings where remastering has taken place I think.
But both significantly less than other streaming platforms.
What I like about MinimServer is that if I were to choose that 8 track album from my NAS, Minim would offer me the choice of the two symphonies. Tapping on one of them would then give me the movements of that symphony and selecting “play” would play them in sequence. It does require a bit of metadata editing initially, but any streaming service that offered the same functionality would get my vote.
I play a lot of classical music with Qobuz, but via Roon. I’ve never had tracks out of order. I once auditioned Audirvana and had issues with it putting tracks out of order, IIRC. I have also tried Qobuz Connect with Naim streaming but don’t recall problems in that regard.
Yes , Minimserver is perfect in that. I download my classical music (either from Qobuz, Presto or other sources) or by the second hand CD. Music is so cheap (second hand CD’s are only 1-5 euro), so who cares.
I don’t care at all about the structure of the download or CD, because I tag the music (in JRiver Media Centre) in a specific naming convention I developed.
Each composition becomes a separate album, because I care about the composition, not about the way a record company wants to sell music. I add to the album name the year of composing, the year of the recording, the conductor and the orchestra. If you do this carefully, you get a nice list of your versions sorted per year of recording.
For instance the album name of my “Mahler 2” versions I have tagged like this. And I have tagged the symphonies from all other composers in the same naming convention. If I would select on album name rather than artist, I get all symphonies from all composers nicely sorted by year of composing.
For each individual symphony, the symphony is sorted by year of recording. A bit time consuming, but quite handy. The + or ++ indicates a “good” or “very good” performance (in my personal opinion). For Mahler 2, I still need a lot of free time to compare the versions I collected over the years. Nice plan for my retirement !
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1961-62 Otto Klemperer & Philharmonia Orchestra ++
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1968 Bernard Haitink & Concertgebouworkest
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1969 Rafael Kubelik & Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1973-74 Leonard Bernstein & London Symphony Orchestra -
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1975 Zubin Mehta & Wiener Philharmoniker +
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1976 Claudio Abbado & Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1980 Georg Solti & St. Louis Symphony Orchestra +
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1981 Klaus Tennstedt & London Philharmonic Orchestra
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1982 Leonard Slatkin & St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1982 Rafael Kubelik & Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (live)
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1983 Lorin Maazel & Wiener Philharmoniker
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1984 Bernard Haitink & Concertgebouworkest - Kerstmatinee (live)
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1985 Eliahu Inbal & Radio Sinfonie Orchester Frankfurt
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1985 Giuseppe Sinopoli & Philharmonia Orchestra London
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1986 Seiji Ozawa & Boston Symphony Orchestra
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1986 Simon Rattle & Birmingham Symphony Orchestra 44.1/24b
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1987 Gilbert Kaplan & London Symphony Orchestra
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1987 Leonard Bernstein & New York Philharmic Orchestra (live)
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1992 Claudio Abbado & Wiener Philharmoniker (live) +
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1992 Herbert Blomstedt & San Franciso Symphony Orchestra
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1993 Bernard Haitink & Berliner Philharmoniker
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1994 Zubin Metha & Israel Philharmonic Orchestra 88.2/24b
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1995 Bernard Haitink & Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest (live)
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 1995 Bernard Haitink, Chor der Sächsischen Staatsoper & Staatskapelle Dresden (live)
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2001 Riccardo Chailly & Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest +
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2003 Claudio Abbado & Lucerne Festival Orchestra (live)
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2005 Iván Fischer & Budapest Festival Orchestra
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2005 Pierre Boulez & Wiener Philharmoniker
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2006 David Zinman & Tonhalle Orchester Zürich
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2008 Bernard Haitink & Chicago Orchestra (live)
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2008 Valeriy Gergiev & London Symphony Orchestra (live) 48/24b
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2010 Mariss Jansons & Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest (live)
Symfonie 1894 № 2 - 2010 Simone Young & Philharmoniker Hamburg
That shows an impressive level of organisation and detail. I have no wish to retain physical or electronic copies and merely want to stream. I wonder if Tidal is worse than Qobuz here because, notwithstanding others’ comments, I do continue to find that some albums have out-of-order tracks. Recently I have found this with classical recordings on Naxos and Lyrita. The only solution is the laborious one of making a playlist for each album.
If I did, for the symphony example, I would just hit Play now on the first movement then Queue next for the following two movements in reverse order and then queue last - it’s very quick unless you want a permanent playlist.
Out of interest could you see if this album has out-of-order tracks on Qobuz, it is merely a test-case, one of many which is out-of-order on Tidal. I’d be interested to have some evidence that it is not a record company issue, as Tidal claim.
Thanks. It’s a Tidal problem, then. It was a toss-up between T & Q and it looks like I went the wrong way. I sense that more folk on here are on Q than T.
A feature of Minim for organising classical music I find particularly useful is the group tag.
I recently succumbed to the temptation to buy a download of the complete set of Haydn symphonies. There’s 104 numbered ones and a couple of unnumbered ones. That’s getting on for 400 tracks and scrolling through such a long list to find the first movement of a particular symphony and then creating a playlist can be a bit of a fag when one just wants to listen. Instead, I’ve tagged each track of each symphony with a group tag for that symphony, so my control app just presents me with a list of symphonies. Tapping the one I want to listen to gives me just the movements of that symphony and one more tap plays through them.
The downside is that it does take some time to edit the metadata of 400 tracks (I use Metadatics), but I’d do that anyway and it only needs doing once.
I’ not the biggest classical fan, but a friend of mine is, and he founded a streaming company to address searching for classical music. The app has since been acquired by apple and re-surfaced as Apple Music Classical, not sure how and if it integrates with Naim streamers, but might be worth having a look, I’m pretty sure they’ve got the order of tracks in order
That was Primephonic, I subscribed for a while, and it did suffer from the track order issue somewhat, though less than Tidal. My requests to correct incorrect ordering were responded to politely then ignored. Same with Apple Music.
Apple Music is great on phones etc but it cannot be streamed at all on Naim streamers other than via Airplay, which is not at the same quality as the services (Tidal and QB) which can be streamed directly on an NDX2 and other players.
I was already wondering about Apple Music, I’m currently on Tidal, but always wondered if Naim supported Apple Music, so I’d better stick with Tidal for now. Thanks!
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