Hi Morning all,
I currently use my NDX2 to direct stream from Qobuz and a small amount from Tidal and Internet radio via the naim app,through an EE8 switch with all Blue Jeans cables.
I have been debating/procrastinating for months on getting a server/nas drive to download and store Hi res music and then play for better sound quality obviously. This week I have downloaded a couple of albums from This is the Kit from Qobuz and put onto USB stick and then plugged into the NDX2 and played through server/stored music.
The albums are downloaded in Flac 96 kHz 24 bit and when I stream are also at this rate. I really cannot tell any difference between the 2, downloaded or streamed and if I were pushed I would say the streamed is fractionally better.
Is this something you find to be true too. Is Qobuz streamed as good as you need ?
Thoughts most welcome.
Thanks
Mark
I’ve only found subtle difference between streamed and downloaded from Qobuz. It’s nice to buy stuff if you really like it though. 
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If your internet goes down, rare these days I know, you can still stream from your NAS.
You never know when Qobuz might remove your favourite album from the streaming service but if you buy the download it will always be there.
Buying stuff you really like helps support the artist far more than streaming.
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This really is a misconception.
If you buy the album you will pay the artist only once, no matter how long you will be playing their music, potentially decades. When you stream the album you will pay them indefinitely, as long as you keep playing it.
A rough calculation:
Buy an album with 10 tracks: $15
Qobuz pays the artist per track streamed: $0.04390, for 1 album this equals $0.439
This means that if you stream the album roughly 34 times, you will have paid them the full price of the album.
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Do you have a source for those figures? That seems a lot more than I thought streaming paid.
Those figures come from here:
[edit] sorry this is the original source:
Artists For An Ethical and Sustainable Internet
#StopArtistExploitation
Qobuz pays artists relatively well, on Tidal you would have to stream the album about 160 times to pay for the full album.
3 Likes
Hi,
If I really like an album, I buy it on vinyl as like the sound and actually having the record etc…
Do you notice a difference from streamed to downloaded, both on Quobuz ?
Same here if I really like something I tend to buy it on vinyl or occasionally on CD. I don’t use a CD player now so any CD purchases just get ripped straight on to the NAS. As for download vs streaming quality I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference but perhaps that’s because my system is relatively modest compared to some on here; ND5 XS2, Nait XS2, PMC twenty5.22
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Why would there be any difference between streaming the same files over the internet vs. streaming them from a local server, except any tiny ones due to possible differences in data processing due to different APIs, etc. (which Naim certainly has minimized as far as possible)?
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This is my point. With such a good streamed service, what is the point of buying Hi res music to download and store if the only benefit would be you could access it when the Internet is down which is very rare.
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I have had albums disappear when the label/distributor and the streamer did not reach an agreement.
Realistically this ain’t gonna happen though for the majority.
On the other hand, i’ve had a NAS crash before and corrupt the Raid-1 array, losing about 600GB of data… 
Well yes, RAID is not a backup as I am sure you are aware (now )
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It’s hard to say i guess? I have a number of albums i’ve been playing for well over 2 decades, i must have listened to those hundreds of times. So it would seem reasonable that those artists would receive more than the artists who’s albums i’ve only played 5-6 times…
With the emphasis on NOW yes 
I once lost 300 GB without backup due to a silly drunken user error in bash 
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If your backup strategy is any good that shouldn’t deprive you of access to your music.
When this happened to me (years ago), unfortunately my backup strategy wasn’t really great, and i ended up losing around 11.000 music files…
