With Meridian Audio's new MQA technology paving the way for high-res audio streaming and the launch of Tidal's CD-quality streaming service, the lossless streaming market is stepping up a gear. And Qobuz has announced a series of updates to try and win your custom.
The first of the newly-added Qobuz features is bringing its 'True CD' quality music (16-bit/44.1kHz) to your web browser with the Qobuz WebPlayer - the lossless streaming service was previously only available using the desktop or mobile apps.
This means Qobuz now offers CD-quality streaming across all its platforms, web, desktop and mobile (Tidal, for example, limits lossless web streaming to the Chrome browser).
The company has also unveiled new mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, with the second generation of applications benefiting from a complete rewrite of their respective engines.
Both the iOS and Android apps have been revamped to improve the "timeliness, quality, usability and the integration of Qobuz features", while there have also been visual improvements too.
This is certainly an area of the Qobuz experience we highlighted needed improvement when we did our review, so we look forward to a faster, easier to use app.
Qobuz widgets that let you export your playlists or albums to a third party site have now gone live after a refresh, with all of these new-look widgets designed to boost promotion of the service.
And coming on 15th December in France (for now) will be Qobuz Sublime – its new subscription product that offers access to the streaming service as well as discounted downloads of 24/192 high-res downloads, effectively making them as cheap as MP3s.
The Sublime package is a one-off €220 payment for a year's streaming access, plus reduced prices for high-res downloads.
Read more about the updates on the Qobuz website.
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