Sometimes wars are won without much of a battle. Such is the case with the Streaming Wars.
As I have reported more than a few times I am not a big fan of Tidal. It's a nice service with a decent library but sound quality always was an issue. Compared to my reference of CDs played on DMP there was not even a contest. In fact, the difference is so stark that I do my best to keep Tidal unavailable in Music Room One because it does not properly represent the system's capabilities. Instead, we limit the options to my Mac Mini server or the best option, discs played back on DMP: still the gold standard for digital audio playback.
But now there's Qobuz, the French company with their 40 million track library and quality streaming soon to be available in the States. Team members at PS Audio have been given accounts so that we might learn about this service and I must tell you, I am impressed. Blown away, in fact. While not quite as good as DMP it's within spittin' distance.
Qobuz allows you to not only stream but to download onto your local hard drive (they are encrypted so don't get too excited about copying them onto discs) and sound better played back from the drive than streamed over the internet.
DirectStream and DS Junior owners can stream Qobuz through the Bridge in resolutions up to 192kHz 24 bits when available. Or, simply stream or download to your computer and connect via USB.
Finally, a streaming service that works like you'd want it to. No more fussing with MQA in the hopes it'll be "better" than the original. Now you can enjoy a library that's multiple lifetimes big and much of it at 192kHz 24 bits. You can bet Qobuz will be central to our upcoming Octave system.
The battle lasted about 10 seconds, but that's good.
The war's over.
