Qobuz or Apple Music?

Paradym shift.

 When I first got a steamer which sounded as good as my other sources I typically did what I have done for the last fifty years… searched my memory for an album on the streaming service and play it. Ocationally it was not there… but often there were more albums by the same artist.

Over a relatively short time I switched from listening to the music I had already purchased (I own 4,000 albums)… to exploring new music.

Streaming has hundreds of times more music than I own or know about. Now I explore mostly… albums in the back of Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, recommended on Audiogon, Qobuz recommendations… new music added. I’ll check them out… new releases (many new high Rez releases of older jazz and classical as well as new new of every category. Occationally there will be an album I own that is not there… so what? (to me) I move on, if I listen to a dozen new albums a day I will still die long before catching up.

So, to me, with a different medium comes a whole different paradigm. Most of my life I was forced to listen to the same stuff over and over because purchase was the only way to fill my life with the music I like. My on-line library… must be 8K albums and growing daily. I probably listen to an old favorite of mine once a week.

Do we have an option for dedicated reference Network Streamer supporting Apple Music out there !? R those two streaming services even comparable!? I use both. Qobuz for main system and Apple Music for mobile listening. I would give up Apple Music, but kids and my wife got used to it and want to keep it. 

@mlsstl wrote:

Besides sound quality, I really like Qobuz's new music feature which is updated every Friday. You can look at all new music that's been recently released or limit it by genre. I've come across some great finds using this. And, they also have a "best sellers" category along with some nicely curated playlists.  Qobuz is great for exploring new music.

I agree; I have made this a weekly Friday ritual to check out all the new releases, add the most interesting ones as favorites and then spend the weekend getting introduced to new music and artists I've not heard before, some of whom I add to my favorites as well.

Likewise with The Weekly Q compilation, which has introduced me to quite a few new favorite albums and artists.

Qobuz is the best for me, with by far the best sound quality I've ever heard from a streaming service, and once they get their version of "spotify-connect" technology rolled out, they will be even better and easier to use!

This post was typed while listening to Volume 6 of An Anthology of Chinese Traditional and Folk Music: A Collection of Music Played on the Guqin.  This one happens to be "only" 44.1/16 resolution, but it's very well recorded in most cases.

https://open.qobuz.com/album/m468wxzw2pbvb

Quite a stretch from my old classic rock and indie rock origins, but a vast and eclectic service like Qobuz exposes me to so much diverse music, it's really mind-blowing in the best way!

Don’t mistake iTunes with Apple lossless. The latter is a very good streaming service—on par with Tidal on my system at half the price. But to the question…

In case your system sounds like mine… I A/B tested Apple lossless vs Qobuz for 2 hours last night. I played the same songs on my Audition playlist on both streaming services. 1) Was there a difference? 95% of the time, yes. 2) What were the differences? Qobuz was clearer (very apparent in the bass) and provided a much deeper, expansive, 3-dimensional sound stage. For about the same price, Qobuz was the clear winner. My system is iPad > RME adi 2 > pass labs 250.8 > B & W 803 d3 + 2 Rel s/510s

HTH.

As others have pointed out, you can’t get Apple Music on any streaming devices, except maybe the Sonos Port (which is limited to 24/48). In that regard, there are few streaming environments where you can directly compare Apple Lossless and Qobuz. I guess you can stream it from a computer or iPad to your system, but some would argue those methods to be inferior to a dedicated streamer.

I stream Tidal and Qobuz on my home systems, but also have access to Apple Music through my cell phone plan. Through headphones (AQ Nighthawks or Grado 325e and either AQ Dragonfly or iFi DACs) I really cannot discern much of a sound quality difference between all three. But, I admit, I don’t really spend any time doing back-to-back comparisons. I have tried Apple Music via Airplay to my main system. Although Airplay is limited to 16/44, my initial impression is that Airplay didn’t sound as good as my CD player or dedicated streamer. But, again, I haven’t spent a lot of time doing comparisons. I tried it a few times and thought "meh."

That said, I actually like the Apple Music app much better than those of Tidal or Qobuz. I tend to listen to albums versus playlists or individual songs, and Apple does a much better job of categorizing your saved albums.