Time flies. Besides being the title of one of my favorite latter-era Porcupine Tree songs, these were also the first two printable words that came to mind after I found the answer to the question, “Say, when was the last time I did a deep dive with Qobuz?” was exactly three years ago. (“Sacre bleu!” is the PG-13 equivalent to the other choice words I thought of in that moment.) Fact is, a full 36 months have passed since I first delved into the many hi-res offerings of this très magnifique French streaming service. With that in mind, I felt it was high time for a hi-res Qobuz re-evaluation to see if the ever-expanding service has been able to continue building upon our constantly changing audiophile streaming ways.
I’m happy to report the platform has only gotten stronger and deeper in terms of content and presentation in the interim. At press time, the Qobuz hi-res catalog has increased to house 185,000 albums—up 15,000 albums since my last eval—and the service boasts 70 million tracks overall, almost double from before. True, a good portion of this burgeoning track total is only available at 16-bit/44.1kHz (CD quality), but more is always better, imo.
This story is from the December 2021 - January 2022 edition of Sound & Vision.
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This story is from the December 2021 - January 2022 edition of Sound & Vision.
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The Big Clean
Chances are you probably do not think about the state of your electronic devices too often. Oh, you might think about all the upgrades you would like to make; where you would put those new tower speakers, or how a second or third subwoofer would really tame those bass modes in your room, or how much more cinematic a larger screen would be. Sure, you think about that part of your system. But how often do you think about the well-being of your system?
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