Badly compressed album

[GuillaumeB]

Just thought I'd give everyone the heads up on here, and in particular jazz lovers.

I downloaded a 24 bit FLAC of this album from Qobuz last night after reading very positive reviews from a number of sources online:

   

Kamasi Washington's "The Epic" is actually a wonderful album and its title is somewhat fitting, however it is badly let down by poor sound quality rendering it almost unlistenable. It is that bad! My guess is that it has been very badly compressed which has literally squeezed the life out of it. Very very disappointing, all the more so for a jazz album, and one of this stature and ambition! Very little separation between instruments, poor resolution etc, at times I wondered if I was listening to an MP3.

Will report this to Qobuz.

Guillaume

[Mikeeo]

Just thought I'd give everyone the heads up on here, and in particular jazz lovers.

I downloaded a 24 bit FLAC of this album from Qobuz last night after reading very positive reviews from a number of sources online:



Kamasi Washington's "The Epic" is actually a wonderful album and its title is somewhat fitting, however it is badly let down by poor sound quality rendering it almost unlistenable. It is that bad! My guess is that it has been very badly compressed which has literally squeezed the life out of it. Very very disappointing, all the more so for a jazz album, and one of this stature and ambition! Very little separation between instruments, poor resolution etc, at times I wondered if I was listening to an MP3.

Will report this to Qobuz.

Guillaume

Well at least on my Unitiserve WAV sounds better than FLAC of the same album download. Naim promotes WAV so maybe the focused on optimizing for WAV. Having said that, try the WAV download.

/M

[amabrok]

Thanks for the heads up Guillaume.

Who is to blame here, the label company or Qobuz. I would personally blame Qobuz for this one.

Also I have another disappointing experience with Qobuz Sublime subscription. They lock you in for one year in advance and in return one would get high resolution albums for a 30-60% discount! The trick is very few titles are in that offer and when I wrote to Qobuz they responded that they don't have agreements in place with all labels!

OIf course, when I reviewed their website I noticed a disclaimer at the bottom of the page in a very small font stating that the discount is on selected titles. While this is still legal I believe it is unlawful.


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[GuillaumeB]

Thanks for the heads up Guillaume.

Who is to blame here,  the label company or Qobuz.  I would personally blame Qobuz for this one.

Also I have another disappointing experience with Qobuz Sublime subscription. They lock you in for one year in advance and in return one would get high resolution albums for a 30-60% discount! The trick is very few titles are in that offer and when I wrote to Qobuz they responded that they don't have agreements in place with all labels!

OIf course, when I reviewed their website I noticed a disclaimer at the bottom of the page in a very small font stating that the discount is on selected titles.  While this is still legal I believe it is unlawful.


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Well you know what I almost signed up for Sublime! Thanks for sharing this.

If you get a chance please try and stream "The Epic" from Qobuz and let me know what you think. 

Guillaume

[amabrok]

Will do.


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[amabrok]

i couldn't listen to it. the sound was flat and washed. almost noisy add on top of that Air dropouts!

not pleasant 

[GuillaumeB]

i couldn't listen to it. the sound was flat and washed. almost noisy add on top of that Air dropouts!

not pleasant 

Shame... I heard back from Qobuz, they said they were going to look into it and have offered me an exchange... so I went for Chris Potter's Imaginary Cities! ECM generally do decent sound quality. 

http://www.qobuz.com/fr-fr/album/imagina...04077#item

Guillaume

[Womaz]

Thanks for the heads up Guillaume.

Who is to blame here,  the label company or Qobuz.  I would personally blame Qobuz for this one.

Also I have another disappointing experience with Qobuz Sublime subscription. They lock you in for one year in advance and in return one would get high resolution albums for a 30-60% discount! The trick is very few titles are in that offer and when I wrote to Qobuz they responded that they don't have agreements in place with all labels!

OIf course, when I reviewed their website I noticed a disclaimer at the bottom of the page in a very small font stating that the discount is on selected titles.  While this is still legal I believe it is unlawful.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for sharing this, I was also considering the Sublime subscription. Not now. May be worth starting another thread warning people of this.

Thanks again.

[amabrok]

Thanks for the heads up Guillaume.

Who is to blame here,  the label company or Qobuz.  I would personally blame Qobuz for this one.

Also I have another disappointing experience with Qobuz Sublime subscription. They lock you in for one year in advance and in return one would get high resolution albums for a 30-60% discount! The trick is very few titles are in that offer and when I wrote to Qobuz they responded that they don't have agreements in place with all labels!

OIf course, when I reviewed their website I noticed a disclaimer at the bottom of the page in a very small font stating that the discount is on selected titles.  While this is still legal I believe it is unlawful.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for sharing this, I was also considering the Sublime subscription. Not now. May be worth starting another thread warning people of this.

Thanks again.

I did that already


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[PhilP]

To be fair, it does clearly state in the e-mail invitation to upgrade to Sublime that 24-bit downloads are discounted "on a large part of the catalogue" not all of it.

I didn't upgrade because, very sadly, I think its quite likely that Qobuz won't still be around next year