Qobuz now in Canada. Finally, Roon integration and a taste of lossless multichannel streaming. Thoughts on the future of audio streaming.

Finally after all these years. Despite bugging them at least since RMAF2019, it has taken ages but at last as of April 2023, Qobuz is now available here in Canada. As you can see, price in Canadian dollars is reasonable at CDN$10.83/month yearly subscription or $13/month if you prefer month-to-month. I see a 60-day trial here; there are 3-month trials out there as well so look around for one that might apply to you.

With competition these days, the price is in line with other services offering up to 24/192 lossless hi-res content; here are the current prices in Canada:

Amazon Music HD - CDN$10.99/m ($8.99/m Prime members)
Apple Music Individual - CDN$10.99/m
Spotify Premium Individual (lossy Ogg Vorbis) - CDN$9.99/m
TIDAL HiFi (16/44.1) - CDN$9.99/m
TIDAL HiFi Plus (MQA, likely FLAC hi-res transition in August) - CDN$19.99/m.

Services are quite equivalently priced these days with lossy Spotify and the lower tier TIDAL Hi-Fi (capped at 16/44.1) around CDN$10, and those that supply lossless hi-res at around CDN$11. The only one that sticks out is TIDAL's Hi-Fi Plus which is almost twice the price and currently doesn't offer true lossless hi-res (until they transition to FLAC).

While TIDAL does offer videos, I think it needs to re-evaluate this pricing structure since I suspect the majority of subscribers are interested in the audio content only. I think Spotify understands this well since it offers exclusive podcast content - estimated that 20-25% of subscribers listen to podcasts regularly.

The Qobuz App and "Culture"

There are differences between the apps for the streaming services. Which one you like best will depend on familiarity, I suppose. My needs are quite simple - give me good search function, some music discovery options, playlists, a way to download a few albums for offline use, and I'm pretty happy. The Qobuz app looks polished and works well on Windows, Android, and iOS.

Like social media platforms, services can cater to certain user demographics. For example, while a service like Spotify appeals broadly to music lovers, if we look at the demographics, about 1/3 are Millennials (currently these folks would be in their late-20's to early 40's), plus there's another 1/4 below the age of 24 (see data from 2022).

Qobuz clearly is aiming for another demographic - audiophiles - who do tend to be a bit older (probably an age pattern like what we saw in the survey earlier this year), place sound quality and perhaps choice of favored mastering higher on the priority list. You can get a sense of this in their mission statement. This "cultural" difference between Qobuz and Spotify manifests in the look-and-feel of the apps. For example, if we have a look at the "trending" and "top releases" on each service, including all genres, this is what we see:

Qobuz.

Spotify.

While Taylor Swift makes an appearance for both services (correlated to why her live concert will likely smash $1B), notice an emphasis on more of the "classics" - classical, acoustic jazz, classic rock - on Qobuz than the front-page offerings of Spotify which includes Kanye West as a top artist this month.

While all the main streaming services have deep libraries (typically reported as >100 million tracks), clearly by what they're showing as being of interest to their clientele, Qobuz is catering to an older demographic and more "mature" musical tastes, shall we say. :-)

Let's have a peek at the "New Releases" section of Qobuz with an "All Genres" focus:

John Coltrane, Hilary Hahn, and Tom Waits are again representatives of the kind of demographic primarily being catered to. We can change this "focus" of course... Let's say I'm interested in new music in the "Hip-Hop/Rap" scene:

Who are these people?! :-) This speaks to the massive diversity of music that's out there and the depth of the catalogue when we're talking about millions of tracks.

One way to assess the depth of a streaming service's library is to see if we can convert a playlist from one service to another and if there are some missing tracks. Using Soundiiz, I tried converting one of my son's mixed Western pop and J-Pop playlists over from Spotify to Qobuz:

Just 149 tracks on this playlist (the free Soundiiz can do up to 200). I see that there were 9 tracks it could not find in Qobuz - 94% success rate is not bad, I guess, considering that much of his music isn't exactly top-40 popular stuff:

With >180M paid subscribers, Spotify remains the leader among music services and it's no surprise that it probably also has the deepest library of music. When converting that playlist to Qobuz, we're missing the music of Kitri, a sister duo from Japan, and Burbank, a young Lo-Fi artist. What I found surprising was that much of Carly Rae Jepsen's discography is missing here in Qobuz Canada, including her hit from a few years ago "Call Me Maybe"! Particularly surprising because she's Canadian from around here in British Columbia; whatever happened to rules favoring Canadian "broadcast" content in this country!?

I think this is a reminder that albums can come and go on streaming services (like Neil Young pulling off Spotify), and there could be regional variations as well depending on licensing. If I search the US version of Qobuz, I see that Jepsen's album Kiss is available there even though absent in Canada. Other than satisfying obsessive-compulsive needs of the "collector" mentality, this is a good reason still to have one's own library of favorite albums just in case any titles "go missing".

I'm curious, has anyone out there contacted their streaming service to request the addition of an artist or album? Were you able to get your requests included?

It's important that streaming services can send the music at lower bitrates especially when some hi-res tracks can be as high as 24/192 for those with data limits:

Notice again the focus on jazz and classical music in Qobuz; this is their "Magazine" feature with regularly updated articles.

Qobuz can limit down to 320kbps MP3 which would sound excellent and more likely than not indistinguishable compared to lossless 16/44.1. They also have bitrate caps at 16/44.1 lossless, up to 24/96, and up to 24/192 which are all sensible choices.

Roon Integration

While the Qobuz app is fine. I've been using Roon for years and it's great that Qobuz and TIDAL libraries can be seamlessly integrated with my own personal library. I know this is a "game changer" for many and truly innovative when released in Roon back in 2019. After decades of music collecting mainly from CDs and digital downloads, I'm not in any special "need" for music. But it is good to have a service like Qobuz integrated especially for discovery of new music and alternate versions like remixes and remasters which I don't already own. 

Easy sign-on to Qobuz in Roon, Services tab.

This past week, as of the Roon 2.0.19 release, they've integrated the Asian streaming service KKBOX into the family - good news for hi-res lossless streaming audiophiles in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Macau and Malaysia.

It would certainly be nice to have integration options with major services like Apple Music, Amazon Music, or Spotify. While Roon remains I think the best playback software for audiophiles, I appreciate that the expense is likely beyond what many would be willing to pay. Also, the total number of Roon users would be very very small compared to subscribers of these other streaming services, so there's little incentive for them to allow for a third party front-end like Roon which would reduce their ability to "push" ads and other content. A shame, but that's the way these things work...

Top albums on Qobuz for "Electronic" genre displayed in Roon - audiophiles love their Random Access Memories apparently!

Roon has done a great job integrating the Qobuz library; with their focus on jazz and classical, let's see how many versions/variants of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue are on the service:

As you can see, we have 31 versions of Kind of Blue on Qobuz. There are 24/96 and 24/192 hi-res alternatives, some mono, all kinds of remasters - enough for any KoB lover I think...

Over the years I have heard of audiophiles complaining that "Roon doesn't sound as good" (threads like this) compared to other player software. One of the earliest blog posts here 10 years ago was an evaluation of the sonic difference between bit-perfect software (also here and here) showing that the sound is identical. While Roon wasn't available back in those days, I can confirm that it's audibly and measurably identical to foobar and JRiver. Over time, many of the measurements I've done on hi-res DACs have alternated between using Roon, other software, and from hardware streamers like Raspberry Pi with USB storage or streaming from Roon through Ropieee. I have never run into a situation where bit-perfect output from Roon was somehow different or inferior to any others.

I trust after all these years, audiophiles understand the truth about bit-perfect audio streaming - it sounds the same between digital transports. Depending on hardware interface (eg. USB vs. S/PDIF), there might be slight variations such as jitter, but this and noise floor changes would be minuscule and inaudible for any decent DAC assuming output levels have not somehow changed. (More on this here.)

Lossless Multichannel Streaming in Qobuz

The one thing I find a bit unfortunate is that Qobuz hasn't put any attention on multichannel / "immersive" audio.

IMO, the audiophile hobby must not be limited to just 2-channel discussions. Our mission as hobbyists - seeking the highest fidelity audio - does not stop at just 2 channels up front, perfect speaker placement, sitting in some ideal sweet-spot. We live in a world of 3D soundfields which can be better replicated using multichannel arrangements.

Clearly, if multichannel / Atmos / "immersive" / "spatial" audio is important to you, Apple Music is what you need currently (streamed as lossy Dolby EAC3-JOC, 16/48, typically 768kbps). Amazon and TIDAL also have some Atmos-encoded as well as Sony's 360 Reality Audio (360RA, based on MPEG-H 3D Audio) content. Even though the music is there, hardware options for multichannel streaming is limited at this time however so it's best to do some research into what could work for you; lots of development ahead in this space!

Having said this, Qobuz is able to do something I have not seen elsewhere - lossless multichannel. For some reason, these albums are not easily searchable in Roon itself, but you can find them in the Qobuz app, make them favorites so they'll pop up in Roon, and play them over a multichannel system.

In the Qobuz app, do a search using the tag "#multichannel" and we see a number of albums - only 35 in total unfortunately:

Now, click on one of the albums of interest, and make it a favorite:

In the example above, notice this Beethoven album is available as a hi-res 5.1 24/96.

Having made the album a favorite, now go into Roon and click on "My Qobuz", you'll see it there:

And when you play it, indeed Roon is receiving a lossless 5.1 24/96 stream from Qobuz. I'm using my Beelink EQ12 Intel N100 MiniPC installed as discussed a few weeks back with HDMI out to the multichannel Yamaha receiver. This increasing focus on multichannel is why I've transitioned over to using a silent/quiet MiniPC for streaming these days instead of just a Raspberry Pi which is great for hi-res 2-channel USB DACs.

Notice the software channel mapped from 5.1 to 7.1, matching the setting on the Windows MiniPC.

The lossless multichannel Qobuz streams sound fantastic! Among the few albums, you'll also see some with sample rates up to 5.1 24/192. Playing 5.1 24/192 lossless will transfer a lot of data! We're talking about something like 14Mbps over Internet assuming 50% FLAC compression. Depending on how fast and reliable your Internet service is, you could notice pauses as the system buffers to catch up.

IMO, 192kHz multichannel is excessive. A cap of 5.1 24/96 would be more than perfectly adequate for human hearing. You can easily do this in Roon with the usual bitrate control:

After selecting that, the same track will be down-sampled to 5.1 24/96 - 50% less bitrate, still hi-res, still capable of conveying better-than-human-hearing quality:

If you have an Atmos set-up, turning on Dolby Surround Upmixer (DSU) does a really good job expanding the multichannel sound into the height channels, and if you want an even more aggressive upmix, try DTS Neural:X. As usual, upmixing is not as good as an official discrete mix, but very satisfying nonetheless.

Regarding samplerate, 48kHz is commonly what's used in studios. In fact, all those lossy Dolby Atmos and 360RA streams from Apple/Tidal/Amazon contains 48kHz data which is why this Qobuz lossless 96kHz and 192kHz material is rather unique.

With only ~35 lossless multichannel albums, this is more a taste of what's possible from Qobuz. For me, the jump from stereo to multichannel is a big one (and Atmos is an extension, not necessarily the most important piece in the sonic upgrade) and given that there are hundreds of multichannel classical recordings out there, maybe Qobuz should look at making those quad, BluRay, DVD-A and SACD multichannel mixes available? Beyond larger labels (like say Deutsche Grammophon), smaller "audiophile" companies like 2L, Blue Coast, Channel Classics, Chesky, AIX Records, Stockfisch, Analogue Productions could perhaps be "mined" for streaming content. There are also a number of 3.0 recordings like Oscar Peterson's We Get Requests, some of Nat King Cole's albums (like The Very Thought Of You) or the old Mercury Living Presence recordings would fit right in with audiophile interests.

Have a look at this list of titles and poll ratings to see just how much multichannel stuff there is out there.

In summary

Yay, Qobuz is finally set loose in Canada!

I'm using both the Windows and Android apps regularly and they work well. Roon integration is meaningful, allowing me to effortlessly go between my personal library and the millions of Qobuz tracks; especially useful for discovery of new music and variants of classic albums. I've not noticed any speed issues. I hope to never have to buy any version of Kind of Blue, A Night At The Opera, or Dark Side of The Moon again. ;-)

As the "little guy" in this audio streaming sea, it's good that Qobuz supports audiophile efforts aiming for the best sound possible since the beginning as pioneers of high-resolution lossless streaming. Being a major presence at audiophile shows is also a great way for them to give back to the community and to engage with the target demographic.

Looking forward as an audiophile who very much prefers multichannel audio when possible, streaming non-Atmos lossless multichannel is certainly a path of differentiation that Qobuz could take. There are many excellent multichannel classical and jazz mixes out there. Implementing a binaural playback mode in the Qobuz app will allow headphone listeners to benefit from these mixes while audiophiles using Roon would benefit from direct multichannel playback. Think about this Qobuz, as a way to reapproach the frontiers of high-fidelity streaming now that hi-res lossless stereo is quite commonplace.

Qobuz is very much a pure high quality music-only streaming service. If you want exclusive podcasts, consider Spotify which is what my kids mostly use and they enjoy sharing playlists with classmates. Want music videos and interviews especially by modern pop and R&B artists? Maybe TIDAL would be good although if I want to watch a music video, YouTube has never let me down. Want multichannel / Atmos streaming? Nothing quite approaches Apple Music content. If you have a Prime membership, well, Amazon Music is cheapest I suppose and Alexa music control could be useful.

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The future of audio streaming?

To end, as audiophiles, let's think about the future of digital streaming from the perspective of improving sound quality and expanding creativity for artists.

In the short term, we can easily predict lossless Spotify HiFi coming soon and TIDAL will transition to hi-res FLAC maybe starting even in the next few weeks. Other than ever-increasing amount of content, since 24/192 lossless stereo streaming is no longer uncommon, there's really nothing new qualitatively to seek beyond that for 2 channels other than hoping that mastering engineers and music labels will regain their sanity and give up on the "loudness war". For the foreseeable future, consumer audio consumption will primarily be 2-channel but that's not where the frontiers are for the most realistic, highest fidelity sound, or allowing for the greatest creative freedom. On that last point, I don't think it's about some haughty goal of achieving "what the artist intended you to hear", but more of "how do I make the soundscape cool and dynamic in my music?". In most genres, whether the playback achieves what is 'intended' is probably less of interest to the artists themselves than for most audiophiles. 

We must think about multichannel in the longer time window in order to technologically (and to some extent artistically) progress. 

We're still early with multichannel/audio-object (eg. Atmos) content and there's limited hardware support for those interested in decoding the streamed material still. As discussed years ago, we should encourage the development of binaural playback of multichannel material because demand will be created by headphone listeners or those with smaller speakers with DSP (eg. soundbars, Sonos, Sony SRS-RA5000, Amazon Echo Studio) "lifestyle" systems, not the comparatively fewer home theater guys or audiophiles with multichannel rooms. Over time, this will increase the number of multichannel albums available. We are seeing this shift happening with the initiative into "spatial audio" as per Apple. For the time being, Apple, TIDAL, and Amazon offer lossy Dolby Digital + Atmos or Sony 360 Reality Audio streams. This is a good start.

Looking into the proverbial crystal ball, an aspirational goal for multichannel streaming is achieving lossless TrueHD-Atmos content at some point. A 7.1 TrueHD-Atmos stream at 24/48 can be achieved without too much difficulty at current broadband Internet speeds. The maximum bitrate for TrueHD-Atmos is similar to Qobuz playing 5.1 24/192 as discussed above. The question is whether competition pushes companies to explore lossless multichannel options at some point and music labels license the content out.

Having streaming access to the TrueHD-Atmos version of Dark Side of The Moon, The Beatle's Abbey Road/Sgt. Pepper's/Revolver/White Album/Let It Be and other "A-list" albums would be an aspirational target for audiophiles who enjoy the multichannel experience.

While Dolby Atmos is the current frontrunner, don't rule out others like MPEG-H / Sony 360RA and even dts:X quite yet (alas, Auro-3D declared bankruptcy last year). dts:X is the codec for Disney+'s IMAX Enhanced movies. MPEG-H is an international standard. Not only can it do multichannel beds, plus objects, but it also includes an ability to encode high-order ambisonics should this be desired. Furthermore, MPEG-H is the standard for ATSC 3.0 broadcasts with the hardware compatibility this brings. 3D mixing work doesn't have to be redone for each format, it's just a different encoder/decoder. MPEG-H is lossy however. As I said, I think we're still early in the "immersive" multichannel-format space and the future is up for grabs. Who knows, we might even see open-source implementations like how FLAC has become a ubiquitous standard in lossless PCM compression these days.

I know there is resistance against multichannel music among some old-skool audiophiles (like Steve Guttenberg) and also those who don't know what's good for the road ahead (like Darko). This has been happening for decades among outspoken members of the audiophile community - at least since the early 2000's with SACD and DVD-A multichannel in the digital era. These are merely near-sighted opinions looking to review and sell what's current rather than aspire to progress. I believe these kinds of attitudes will change among audiophiles as audio technology advances. We'll talk more about this in the days ahead...

[Hint: many albums sound much better downmixed from multichannel to 2.0 with or without binaural processing already.]

Hope you're all enjoying the music, audiophiles!