My Volumio and Tidal / Qobuz integration and UI ?

Hi,

Possibly some silly questions but bear with me.

I currently use Volumio on a Cubox-i with a Behringer UMC204HD USB sound interface, (capable of up to 192Khz 24 bit) and use it to play both a local library from a network share (a mix of iTunes M4A purchases and M4A rips from CD’s, and the odd 44.1Khz 16 bit FLAC’s) and Spotify.

I use the Spotify Connect 2 plugin and do not use the Volumio web interface itself for Spotify - I prefer to simply launch Spotify on my iPhone and send the songs or playlists to Volumio as a Spotify connect receiver, which then continues to play by itself when I exit the app on the phone. As the phone is not streaming the audio it doesn’t drain the battery of the phone as Airplay would.

All works great except for one thing - I’ve never been that happy with the Ogg Vorbis sound quality of Spotify even at 320Kbps. (I assume the Spotify connect 2 plugin is actually using the maximum quality stream settings - no way to be sure ?) As I’m a bit of a Hi-Fi nut who likes to build his own speakers and is quite fussy about sound quality the mediocre sound quality of most streaming services (at the time I joined Spotify many years ago) has always irked me. First I went from buying CD’s to buying 256Kbps AAC from iTunes, which was a step down in quality, then I went to using Spotify, which was a further step down.

However it was really brought home to me the other day when I found a bunch of CD’s I hadn’t played in a few years because I had the albums both as M4A rips and on Spotify. The improvement in sound quality playing the CD version of the album on a full size stereo over the Spotify version streamed via Volumio was quite dramatic - despite the fact that I was only playing the CD on an Xbox One to my TV and then routing analogue audio out of the TV as that’s the only device I have in the AV system with an optical drive anymore…

I like Spotify overall however they seem steadfastly against ever offering uncompressed FLAC format streaming let alone higher resolution formats so I started looking around to see what else there is besides Spotify who I’ve been with for many years.

A bit of research suggests that while somewhat expensive, Tidal and/or Qobuz have the best sound quality of any of the current streaming offerings while still having a good catalogue and good iOS app.

What is not clear to me however is what the user interface for using Tidal or Qobuz is like in MyVolumio - is it only controlled via the Volumio web interface, or do the Tidal /Qobuz iOS apps offer equivalent functionality to Spotify connect where I could launch the Tidal/Qobuz app on my phone and send a song or playlist to Volumio to play for me ?

I haven’t started a trial period for either Tidal or Qobuz yet until I figure out the Volumio side of things, so I can’t really check the iOS apps myself to see whether they support spotify connect-like functionality.

Any comments from those already using Tidal or Qobuz with MyVolumio and the iOS app on how it works and how they have found it greatly appreciated!

So I’ve set up a trial of Qobuz and got it working with My Volumio.

The Volumio GUI works quite well for searching, browsing through existing artist/album/song lists and controlling playback, however it doesn’t seem like there is any way to modify qobuz playlists, album/artist lists, favourites etc… even the Add to Favourites button on the playback page doesn’t actually seem to do anything for Qobuz songs - it doesn’t add the song to any playlists on Qobuz, nor does it seem to add it to Volumio’s own favouties ?

As a result, to actually add any music I find has to be done through the normal Qobuz app (desktop or phone) which makes for a very disjointed user experience when I can’t control playback from the Qobuz apps.

Looking into it a bit more it seems that Qobuz does support a “Qobuz connect” feature that is very similar to Spotify connect, but supposedly using open protocols that are relatively easy to implement in 3rd party renderers.

I messed around with a couple of tutorials using BubbleUPnPServer to create a UPNP Openhome service for Volumio to be controlled with Linn Kazoo or Lumin but couldn’t get it working properly.

Are there any plans to improve the integration with Qobuz in regards to being able to add to Qobuz’s Favourites list, or to implement Qobuz connect, the latter of which would be ideal.

After using Spotify connect for several years to remote control playback devices including Volumio it’s hard to go back to not having this sort of functionality, despite the big improvement in sound quality compared to Spotify.

Think I’ve found why I can’t get Quboz connect working with upmpdcli or bubbleupnp server and openhome controllers is due to Qobuz revoking the Kodi API key last month that apparently everyone including upmpdcli were using. Whoops! :slight_smile: At least I know not to spend any more time trying to get that to work…

moodeaudio.org/forum/showthread. … 3#pid13443

Hi
I’m using Volumio 2.0 and I see no way how I could start Tidal or even configure Tidal . I can see on the sources Menu “streaming services” but nothing can be entered and I also can’t find a Tidal plugin.
Any solution or suggestion ?
Thx

1 Like

What is your exact version of Volumio ? Only very recent versions have MyVolumio support, for example the February 2019 Cubox-i build I was previously using does not have it.

When you are running a more recent version you can log in in the top right to a MyVolumio account - if you subscribe to it (there is also a 15 day free trial) you will find a place to enter tidal and qobuz login details under sources.

I’m stuck! Having signed up for a trial period with Qobuz and then signing in on the Volumio settings page, I get the Qobuz icon on Volumio but nothing actually ‘works’. If anyone knows why this might be, I’d be seriously grateful. BTW I have updated Volumio to the latest version and all my other feeds work fine e.g. play flac files off hard-drive and Spotify works well. No idea where to start in troubleshooting this Qobuz thing. Happy Christmas! Justin

All sorted! I needed to put my email address in the Volumio box marked User ID…not the user ID given when I signed up for the trial. I am now enjoying the excellent Qobuz sound quality and music library. I will certainly keep my subscription going! (…but please, Volumio, add some better instructions to the help or FAQs to assist the log in process for Qobuz.). Best wishes to all users for 2020.

Hello,
Does volumio support qobuz connect? It is more easy for me to work with the native qobuz app thje use the volumio browser gui?
Sory for asking several times but I need a clear answer.
Thanks

Right now using Tidal (and probably Qobuz) with Volumio is not a good experience.

Have you read this thread? In summary, it’s so bad it’s currently being re-written from scratch.

volumio-tidal-integration-terrible-t14540.html

As for Qobuz or Tidal Connect. I don’t think such a thing exists.

Happy to be corrected on this.

I’m using Qobuz with MyVolumio running on an Asus Tinker Board S. I can get on with the interface, it’s fine if not perfect. For me, the sound quality is of the utmost importance and all resolutions from 16/44 up to 24/192 sound marvellous and better than when I had silver media.

I’m following developments closely but I won’t be abandoning Volumio.