Checking is one thing, but when you get a large box set, and have to split a single large list into albums, and add all the artwork and metadata yourself from scratch, that’s another matter.
+100% Chris, I call them amateurish & inept, but shoddy works as well.
I know what I see with Qobuz & I also know what should be done - the other vendors get it right. And like you when I politely ask why, they tell me WAV “cannot” have metadata,. I now just try to avoid them & when the only option is 16/44 then I get the CD, normally cheaper anyhow & dBpoweramp does an excellent job with the metadata.
I don’t think Quobuz can be blamed for this. They sell the files as supplied and labels/distributors should take more responsibility for accurate tags. Or even adequate ones. It might be that Quobuz has agreed not to alter the files as a condition.
In the normal course of events, I strip out all the tags as soom as I have downloaded a file. I personally wouldn’t mind if they came un-tagged. Even a well tagged file might be full of rubbish. Best to do your own.
Agree with your views on WAV and metadata Mike. Although users of propitiatory Naim rippers could perhaps be forgiven for misunderstanding this. Vendors who sell WAV files should know better.
Not sure I can agree with that, OK no one knows for sure, but Qobuz have a particular style with the way they present (format) their material & I don’t mean just the missing WAV metadata; I don’t see the same with other vendors. I’m not sure what that proves, other than they do it differently.
Also Qobuz’s attiude to people with a problem sounds quite casual and inappropriate. A good reason to go somewhere else, anywhere else in fact.
Best
David
I would go one stage further, and say that Qobuz are absolutely to blame for this. To take a litigious view, they are responsible to us, because it’s them that we gave our money to. But more to the point, nobody else sells music files devoid of all metadata. Especially when it has been promoted as a set of albums with an accompanying booklet that also fails to materialise. When this happens, something has clearly gone wrong with the download process. Any competent seller would try to help. Being fobbed off with blunt one-line email denials of responsibility does not align with my idea of help.
Totally agree re Qobuz issues problem is the extent of their catalogue makes them the only show in town.
Alternatives:-
7 digital - what is going on - seems they’ve lost interest.
Boomkat - very good but niche catalogue
Bleep - similar to Boomkat but more restricted catalogue
Bandcamp - adding VAT has priced them out of the market
HI-Res Audio - limited catalogue and VAT again.
Junodown - good deals on boxset download but patchy catalogue.
My first port of call for cheap music is always CDs from eBay or MusicMagpie, or occasionally the big river. Many downloads are, by comparison, staggering expensive, especially hi-res downloads, which I find do not always sound any better than regular 16/44.
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Have found Qobuz download files with incorrect suffixes - half the FLAC files in the compressed folder will be saved as .fla not .flac - then I have to rename them. Sloppy work but they have the catalogue!
The sins of Qobuz, if we’re justified to call them such, also come from the opposite direction. On one occasion I bought an album from them which was not only stuffed to the brim with tags, but could not be scrubbed clean. I eventually got rid of them by converting to FLAC, stripping them out and converting back to WAV. I don’t download a ton of music and I like to do my own tags from scratch, so it doesn’t bother me so much.
Been using HD Tracks for years now (mostly the US site, as the albums are cheaper). Not a single problem with the AIFFs I downloaded.
They only annoyance I have is with their ‘box sets’ album covers - each album within, had the same cover. That’s easy to sort out though.
Originally WAVE files did not support metadata, however that changed quite a long time ago, a more recent definition of the WAVE file format does allow metadata in any format. Unfortunately this newer definition of the WAVE file format is really quite hard to find.
As I recall, support for metadata was introduced for WAVE files sometime around 1998 - Qobuz seem to be a little bit out of date here - come on Qobuz , catch up with the rest of us!
When I’ve downloaded WAV files from Qobuz in the past, they have usually come with metadata, so they have known about it. Like the earlier comment, I’ve found the metadata from Qobuz very hard to edit, unlike any other downloads I’ve had from other sites. Mp3tag has failed totally, tag editing from dbPoweramp has usually been more successful, but I find that editing quite clunky compared to mp3tag. I don’t know how they manage to embed an ID3 tag (which is what dbpoweramp says it’s editing) that mp3tag can’t process.
Disagree on most of that Xanthe, WAV files can embed any kind of metadata including the popular ID3 tags & XMP. But yes I semi agree “officially” WAV does not support embedding metadata & some applications (Naim Core) may not be set up to process the extra information.
I edit & manipulate WAV without any problems whatsoever & am at a loss to understand where this myth about WAV not carrying metadata comes from.
ID3v2 tag feature was intro’d in 1998, thats only 20 years ago !!! (I wonder who was downloading & streaming audio in 1998??)
When I first started streaming, Qobuz - founded 2007 - published all the formats with metadata & apart from the_annoying_album_&_title_folders_with_underscores, most times all they published was correct, including the WAV format.
Its not a question of catching up, its a question of employing people who know what they’re doing.
Apart from the comment about the introduction of the metadata block in 1998, the rest was ‘tongue in cheek’.
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Gotcha
If Mp3tag won’t allow you to update the you have to delete all of the Metadata and create your own. You can then use the filename details to create some basic metadata.
It’s editable via dbPoweramp for some reason, so I just did that. I tend to avoid buying form Qobuz because it isn’t worth the hassle, unless there is a good offer mentioned in the MoSO thread.
Lately Qobuz doesn’t behave well with its Wave downloads! I always have to go over them on Jaikoz 10.0 to load Covers and Metadata
If I am forced to use Qobuz as no other choice is available, & to save frustration at the cost of an extra few minutes, I will purchase FLAC & convert to WAV with dBpoweramp