JimDog
My understanding is that it does the first unfold ie to 24/96 although I am prepared to be corrected.
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Afaik Qobuz is integrated in to the new NAD Masters streamers so Naim will need to keep up
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But apparently Tidal desktop also does the 1st unfold as does Tidal for Android, according to Tidal’s website. But I’m not sure I really understand what that means? Does it mean that the entire digital music has to pass through your PC or your Android phone and be first-unfolded in that then sent to your Naim streamer for a 2nd unfold? Does that 2nd unfold work with the 272, which is entirely not set up for MQA?
But even if that did work in terms of unfolding the MQA signal, doesn’t the process of passing all that lovely audio data through the electrically noisy world of PC or phone screw up the quality so badly that it’s pointless unfolding it anyway? (At least that’s what happened when I tried it with my laptop and 272.)
How are you getting Qobuz to your Naim amp, Stephen?
.sjb
I entirely agree.
I suspect there’s as much chance of Naim fixing gapless via Chomecast built-in as there is of seeing Qobuz integration. I have to wonder if even Chromecast built-in is vulnerable now they’ve abandoned the Chromecast Audio device (Google that is), unless they feel licensing the technology is the way forwards.
I strongly suspect Qobuz were considered a risky proposition to integrate when the Unitis were being developed, a real shame as they seem to be doing well with the backing from Xandrie.
In this case, yes, the signal will travel via your PC where the Tidal app will do the first unfold in software. There will be no further ‘unfolding’ without an MQA DAC.
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Chris/JimDog
I’m not sure how it works with Audirvana though and that is what I want to try. I’ll use the free trial but I’m going on holiday shortly so will wait until I come back and then report results.
Have you tried this - and, if so, did it work in your system? Or do you not need to or want to because your system works differently?
Thanks - I’ll look forward to that feedback on Audiravana. The pages I looked suggest that if you have a non-MAQ enabled DAC - e.g. a 272 - Audirvana will just do a first MQA unfold. Whether this is worth the cost and hassle and extra circuits of setting up Audirvana is the question.
I’ve tried it using an optical connection from MacBook to streamer, which worked fine. This was when Tidal MQA support started, and I was just curious, but I didn’t hear anything to get excited about.
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Hi Stephen, may I ask, what is the specialist music you listen to?
Hi, Jim, i have Audirivana and is just automatically unfolds half of MQA you have to do nothing. In the options, you have to check a box that tells the software that your DAC can handle full-blown MQA, it will then pass through the data.
Personally, there is a massive difference for me and the wife with Tidal and Qobuz in the favour of Qobuz, the catalogue isn’t so vast but it’s getting better every day and when they enter the American market they will be up there with Tidal in that regard im sure. And it’s only the more obscure stuff like klergy for example
The Qobuz sound has a weightier and more chunky feeling compared to Tidal especially the Redbook stuff, Tidal’s sound is far more glassy and brittle in comparison but a little airer but that’s through the DAC V1 with a good quality USB, jitterbug and MacBook Pro, to me its plain day. Maybe a different story with with naims native Tidal support. Qobuz is also much cleaner with no digital artefacts, Tidal is defo normalized which introduces some strange crackles and somehow strains certain tracks. Personally, I can’t hear any differences between Qobuz Redbook and my CD rip’s Tidal I can for the same reason stated above.
Qobuz 24bit tracks take all I have said x2 the detail is all their, they’re cleaner, louder, weightier blah blah and all the other words that describe a sound, MQA feels “tight” almost “forced” it doesn’t flow as naturally and still retains that glassy/brittle nature might different if the DAC natively decoded it and i think that’s the point! without the correct DAC your not really achieving what MQA probably capable of. Neither sound as good as locally stored hi-res files and though qobuz offers that if you like.
One problem I do have with Qobuz is the phone app drops out constantly with chrome cast but then Tidal constantly crashes so I just stick with the computer both unusable personally on a phone or tablet.
Audirivana will give a three month trial of qobuz but i don’t know which tier that might be, I suspect the full-fat version and its certainly worth the extra 60quid cleaning up the sound in every respect
That’s my informed take on it! hopefully, that helps but this should be something you can easily find for yourself everything has a one month trial
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Sure. I purchase a lot of electronic music from privateer producers than have their own independent labels such as - Good Looking Records, SoulTec, Soul.R, Fokuz, Movementnsound, JazzSticks Recordings etc…
Thanks, Stephen,
And, there’s me, thinking I know stuff about the outs and ins of music, and you putting before me something I know absolutely nothing about. I will go and search some of it out.
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Honestly it doesn’t matter a whit what I think, but for what’s it’s worth it all makes perfect sense and I’d fully expect the only difference you’re hearing is the hiline.
Reverting to type here, I’ll recommend you demo a ND5XS2 once Roon has Qobuz natively added and trial this combination. I feel it would tick a lot of boxes for you as it will effectively make your collection and your Qobuz favourites seem to be one and the same. Hard to explain, very intuitive when you set it up. And you can run and control it all from your PC.
But what you have works, don’t knock it, there’s plenty here banging their heads off walls trying to get things working.
.sjb
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Sorry SJB, I have deleted my reply as I don’t want to hijack Jim’s thread. Perhaps I should start my own one.
Thank you so much for your reply anyway. Yes, I think you make good sense.
My apologies to Jim
Hey, no worries at all, Steven and SJB.
Very interesting and relevant exchange of ideas.
I’m going to try the Qobuz free trial soon and will report back on that.
Am also looking up some of those jazz labels.
cheers
Jim
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I loaded the trial version of Audirvana yesterday to give it a try and must say that my conclusions are much the same. The Qobuz SQ is without doubt much better than Tidal comparing Qobuz Hi Res to Tidal Studio Master, the description weightier is a good one. However a further issue for me is the lack of MQA availability although this may be a reflection of my musical taste, many of my Qobuz hi res favourites are not available as Tidal Masters. Moreover without actually playing the Tidal album it is difficult to ascertain what is MQA and what isn’t. Got to say that I didn’t find the Audirvana Qobuz rendition differed much to my currently preferred Bubbleupnp through Lumin which, of course, is free.
The real issue for me though was Audirvana’s failure to address the one stop control integration that I was looking for. If you are currently locked into the Naim ‘ecosystem’ as I am with a Unitiserve then there is what appears to be a fatal flaw in that, on downloading, my ripped library albums with more than one CD show as one item rather as the separate CDs in the Naim App. Audirvana’s fix for this is to amend the Metadata to show CD one, two etc, the problem is that you are unable to edit the Naim ripped files metadata either through Nserve or Audirvana. Accordingly, unless you have ripped music to a NAS, then the Audirvana solution is not workable without major changes to ripped data.
I notice today that Roon has announced Qobuz integration so that will be my next stop, at least for the ND555. I will need to retain Bubble/Lumin for my Superuniti and Muso but I suppose you can’t have everything. I really wish that Naim would introduce support for external UPNP apps like Bubble in the Naim app, it would make life so much easier.
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That sounds like a good idea - although I have not yet taken that step.
Roons just added Qobuz today. I will be trialing again to really see if I can hear any differences as I haven’t before, but comparing them now is going to be so much easier. I doubt I’ll switch though as Tidal offers more choice in my musical tastes. Keeping both might be overkill