you got me, I had to look up lacuna
Ended my Qobuz subscription
My music tastes largely revolve around jazz recordings and I find a deep lacuna in Qobuz's jazz offerings, as well as with some other music genres. I just cancelled my Qobuz subscription and am back with Tidal Hifi which has a much deeper jazz catalogue than that from Qoubuz.
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This is why I cancelled all my streaming services and just stick to a library of flac files I buy from online sites (HD Tracks etc) and I run them through a streamer with roon. There is nothing more satisfying then knowing what I have and not fearing that they may one day disappear because my streaming service doesn't have 'rights' to them anymore. |
I'm sticking with streaming (Tidal for now). The the opportunity for listening and finding new music far out weighs the occasional missing selection (or two) that get pulled albeit infrequently - for me any way. Plus if I find myself listening and enjoying an album over and over I sometimes buy the CD just to support the artist. |
I'm a jazz fan as well and cancelled my Qobuz subscription a couple of months ago. I went back to Spotify Premium (gasp!) While Qobuz sounds fantastic it can't compete with Spotify's catalog. I've found I can live with the slight loss in sound quality for casual listening and discovery (which Spotify excels at). I enjoy having my own library of music (how old-school) and like to support the artists with a purchase, hoping they continue to make the music I love. |
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Wouldn't lacuna be trisyllabic? And can there be such a thing a "bisyllabic" (an unholy marriage of Greek and Latin)? The more common word would be "disyllabic" (not offending the Greek gods). More to the point, however, is that there might be more than just one hole; there perhaps are many smaller holes, best described by the plural term "lacunae". In any case, Tidal's jazz offerings are more than generous considering the price. |
Haven’t tried Qubuz, and just cancelled Tidal HQ. Even though I have BluOS2i MDC module (in NAD C388) that natively unfolds MQA (and MQA does sound great), the $20/mo. means $2-4 per listen. For me, that’s not a good enough value. Thinking back, I’ve probably listened to maybe 50’ish songs in the 3 months since started, and paid $60, so something close to $1 per song (and don’t own any of it) - again, not a good value. I’ll stream FLAC from router-based NAS (approx. 2TB of music) for HQ, and use Prime Music to find new artists. If Tidal price goes down due to economy of scale, might give them another go later. Tidal worked great for me on both Denon (Heos) in basement HT system and NAD (BluOS) in 2-channel music system - no complaints on functionality. |
My Tidal account is part of a family package so I'm only out $5.00 per month. The larger Jazz selection of Tidal vs Qobuz is important to me and I fill in the gaps of Tidal with the free Spotify service but the majority of my listening is from my own eclectic music files
collection
(mostly 44.1/16 ripped from my CDs but also with some purchased HiRes files). The files are on my Aurender music server/streamer which can integrate album titles I select from Tidal into my collection database with my own titles. |
I'm staying with Qobuz for now. I listen to 80% classical and find their catalogue to be vast and seems to be growing daily. Tidal is way behind in this area, but I didn't realise they had so much jazz. Tidal beats Qobuz with its rock selection by a wide margin. Although, I've found that Qobuz has a fantastic selection of UK and Euro alternative/ independent music from the 80s and 90s. Makes sense since Qobuz got their start in Europe. |
I almost exclusively listen to jazz and classical music. I have Tidal and Spotify. I have Tidal at the student rate of $10/month. At that price level, Tidal with "Masters" (MQA) is worthwhile, but maybe I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic if the "usual" price applied. I have three complaints about the service: 1) the search function is persnickety (even a minor misspelling baffles the algorithm and sometimes entering by artist name or album title returns nothing but an alternative search phrase finds what I want). 2) Tidal relentlessly and annoyingly promotes music associated with its major shareholders (e.g., Jay-Z) and, 3) The algorithm oftentimes links music I like with utterly baffling choices. I also have Spotify Premium at the student rate. I like that service for my "inattentive" listening because : 1). While fidelity doesn’t seem quite to the level of Tidal’s (but maybe I’ve fallen victim to propaganda in that regard), the selection of jazz seems more comprehensive and classical is commensurate with Tidal, 2) The Spotify algorithm creates more appealing playlists than does Tidal’s and, 3) Spotify’s search function is more forgiving (or simply better) than Tidal’s. Right now, I can’t find a compelling justification for Qobuz, either by price or selection. I’d hoped that competition would drive down costs, but so far, that hasn’t happened. keith |
Qobuz has incredible playlists. You can follow this link to see them: https://play.qobuz.com/featured/playlists On my Aurender, I go to the playlist tab and look for Prestige 70 - Jazz classics. An outstanding collection of jazz music. Other servers, including, Roon have similar options for selecting Qobuz playlists. Or, Search for Gramophone awards and you will see 7 playlists. Qobuz gets an A+ for this music collection. Another suggestion is to enter #hires in the search field for a list of hi-res albums. I especially like listening to the hi-res albums and always find something that I like. I highly recommend Qobuz. |
Amazon Prime should offer CD quality or hopefully even higher as an upgrade and own the entire space globally. Why they haven't thought of this yet given everything else they do is pretty surprising. I have no idea how deep their current music offerings are. For the record I just left Tidal this month and have been wishing for years that Spotify would offer lossless. |
I went the other way - I cancelled Tidal and settled (for now) for a year's subscription with Qobuz. I thought MQA was pretty good, but the high-res flac files (92 kHz, 24 bit) at Qobuz are just as good IMO. MQA offers higher resolution tracks, but selection was minimal. The CD quality tracks sound better at Qobuz and the rock selection is better at Tidal, but both don't compare to Spotify (which doesn't offer hi-res). The classical selection is better at Qobuz. Overall, I'm satisfied with Qobuz. SRV's Tin Pan Alley is the best track (rock) I have heard so far. |
