Qobuz in ZA

[Naks]

Hi everyone,

So I decided to try Qobuz, since Tidal is going to the dogs.

After much fiddling with VPNs, Smart Proxies, etc., and getting nowhere, I eventually got hold of my mate in Porto, and he setup the account for me. It is only the initial account creation that requires one to be in a supported country, and of course, the payment via Paypal or a foreign card (which I have).

Once he was done, I could login from here, and stream at my heart's content to my phone, Desktop, T778 via BluOS, etc.

Right off the bat, the HiRes stuff definitely sounds better compared to Tidal:

So here's my offer to anyone here: when I am next in Porto, I will glady help you setup a Qobuz account

 

[Mr_B]

Hi @Naks, I've been using a fellow forum members account from time to time, and did some pretty extensive listening tests between Tidal, Qobuz and Deezer. For me, Qobuz is the winner. Further recent testing on a Windows laptop also revealed that the FLAC format on Qobuz streams at a much higher data rate than the new FLAC format now offered by Tidal.

My initial testing confirmed Qobux best, then Deezer and last Tidal.

Could you let me know the monthly cost of a Qobuz subscription please. May be keen to sign up.

 

[Naks]

Could you let me know the monthly cost of a Qobuz subscription please. May be keen to sign up.

Single user subscription: €10.99pm, but works out to €8.99 if you pay for a full year up front.

2 user subs: €13.99pm, but works out to €12.50 if you pay for a full year up front.

Up to 6 people: €14.99pm

 

[Mr_B]

I have a suspicion that they are readying a ZA expansion, because when we stream from them, some of the content is already streaming via local content caching.

@Naks I'll DM you on the offer.

 

[Naks]

I have a suspicion that they are readying a ZA expansion, because when we stream from them, some of the content is already streaming via local content caching.

How did you come about this info?

@Naks I'll DM you on the offer.

I'll only be in Porto from 17th Jan, so a while still.

 

[Mr_B]

How did you come about this info?


I'll only be in Porto from 17th Jan, so a while still.

When doing my technical review, the Windows network tools expose the url of the cache/source. Most of the files were streaming from MWEB servers.

 

[Stereosane]

Hi @Naks, I've been using a fellow forum members account from time to time, and did some pretty extensive listening tests between Tidal, Qobuz and Deezer. For me, Qobuz is the winner. Further recent testing on a Windows laptop also revealed that the FLAC format on Qobuz streams at a much higher data rate than the new FLAC format now offered by Tidal.

My initial testing confirmed Qobux best, then Deezer and last Tidal.

Could you let me know the monthly cost of a Qobuz subscription please. May be keen to sign up.

I definitely agree with the above. Qobuz, Dezeer then maybe Tidal.. I found Tidal sounds very different, something about the highs just sound off compared to the other two..

 

[Mr_B]

@Stereosane spot on. With the MQA format on a non-MQA dac, the last unfolded critical to the HF's doesn't happen leaving you with thin bitty HF's that sound "scratching" to me. Ribbon tweeters especially expose this shortcoming.

 

[Naks]

Completely forgot that Sonos would not let me add Qobuz (due to it not being offered in ZA) until yesterday, when I wanted to play the Dune 2 soundtrack on my Sonos.

I contacted Sonos support, just in case they knew a workaround, but because Qobuz is not available in ZA, they will not allow you to add the service. I had a quite heated argument with the support person, seeing that I also live in a supported region, but in the end I just gave up.

I then scoured Reddit, and found that a few years ago, some people managed to get Alexa working in non-supported regions by changing their region/address in Sonos.

So I gave that a go, setting my Portuguese address in my profile.

Next thing you know, Qobuz miraculously appears in the list of services in the Sonos app.

Now I'm happily enjoying Qobuz via Sonos as well