What he said
If the point to buy dCS products is about getting the last gimmick for some, I think they took the wrong brand.
Having said that, the fact that this feature is released does not mean it is free of bugs, regardless of how obvious the concept is. I am quite sure that the same ones who demand immediate implementation will be on the forefront to complain if something goes wrong.
I guess each one has his own vision of what great support is. On my side, it is more about responsiveness to fixing existing issues or ensuring not to bring too many new ones.
Agreed. Although the world around us is increasingly defined by software, services and apps, dCS has at its heart a hardware platform that is know for its very high quality, being one of the best at their field. Nowadays they do have quite a lot of developers working on staying connected to the most important services.
I try to appreciate the effort and many man-hours this takes and be grateful when compatibility arrives in a well executed and tested way. I feel dCS are very open to user input and love that they have been around for so long and are in it for the long haul, being a family-owned company since David Sr. took over. But even before that they have been taking care of their staf and in turn still have several people there that were already there from the early days. This is so valuable in our fast paced world focused only on fast profit.
dCS is very focused on their customers getting the absolute best in sound quality, product quality, product life and customer satisfaction.
I personally donāt like to say oh this product was very expensive so now you owe me immediate compatibility with such and such streaming service or this new feature. dCS has always delivered on support, service and continued compatibility over many years.
This not a phone or a pc. The scale is very different and so are the number of people involved in software development. I understand people would like to have Qobuz connect a.s.a.p. but as had been said in other topics it will come, they are working on it and it is up high on the priorities. For me this is enough and I have full trust in them to deliver that. And my DAC plays wonderful music as is and doing a very good job at it. I might enjoy the Qobuz connect for its UI when it arrives but I have some patience and appreciate the effort. Weāre not subscribed to some dCS update service that pays for those programmers. We bought something some time ago and they keep on supporting it which is getting increasingly more expensive. We got free 2.0 updates with the new mappers. I could go on.
Whatever the price of a device, you pay it for the device you get, at the time you get it. You donāt buy a service.
When you bought a Rolls Royce in the 60s it did not have the air conditioning, now all the basic cars have the air conditioning. Do you expect Rolls Royce to install for free the air conditioning in all their previous models ? No, obviously, because you bought a car as it was specified the day you paid it. Like any other product.
Iām fine waiting until dCS has the update right.
not like they are using an āoff the shelfā chipset and circuit board as many are. Probably a bit more involved than we know
When it comes out it comes out. I am grateful that we will be getting it. I am especially interested in Qobuz Connect when I have guests over and I really donāt want them to have access to Roon. For unknown reasons Roon still hasnāt locked down settings.
What settings do you want to lock? Qobuz is not like Roon and has no DSP functions. There are settings related to your account parameters such as how many tracks at a time can be downloaded for purchased downloads but these are not available via the existing Mosaic access to Qobuz so in this respect Connect would not help. Of course we do not know what additions Connect may provide until we have it but I have not seen any references to such a feature in the publicity.
So why not use Mosaic for Qobuz when you have guests ? As this is a dCS forum I assume you have it.
Just sharing my two cents for no good reason at all lol⦠I LOVE my dCS gear but am no fan of Mosaic. Itās clunky. And having said that in the past and then being told by some that itās not ok to say that or I was wrong, I just kept my mouth shut because I donāt argue online.
That said, I use Qobuz and would love an alternative to Mosaic. Options are good! The more ways we have to enjoy, the better
So thatās all to say, I hope Qconnect is available soon and look forward to trying it with my awesome gear
From within Roon, I donāt want guests to be able to change any of my configurations. All users have access to it.
I like to let folks sit down with an ipad and explore within Roon. It is quite nice for that.
Thanks Vince. I see your point. No good handing them a device with Mosaic app
as the dCS system settings would then be available.
Vince, perhaps you want to give https://github.com/nihilux-org/roon-web-stack a try; it lets you control Roon from a Web Browser, without the ability to change any of Roonās settings (I believe. I havenāt actually tried it out myself).
I have been using Qobuz connect on various Volumio devices recently and I am very happy with the SQ of connect vs the volumio app (which sounds not bad in itself, meaning better than Roon).
So I am impatiently waiting for dCS to implement Qobuz connect in their devices. Stream Unlimited is a connect partner, so that should make things easier.
Rudi, Qobuz Connect should make no SQ difference compared to Mosaic. Both get music data direct from the Qobuz server .Where it does make a sonic difference is for other systems which use the device app to receive the music . Mosaic app does not carry music and is only a control point.
Qobuz Connect will, however offer an alternative GUI.
thanks, Pete
Yes Iām aware that it SHOULD not make a difference, and everything I learned at ETH in Zürich during my studies suggests that it SHOULD not. Call me a sceptical objectivist.
However there are configurations which in my (subjective) view let the music flow and others that do less so.
I know that DACs that measure identically should sound identical (at least if one believes the folks at ASR). But we all agree that dCS DACs sound quite different from Topping of SMSL (which measure identically) or else weād all be listening to Topping or SMSL (I have one at home so I can hear the difference whenever I chose) and save a lot of money. Canāt get more transparent than transparent, can you.
I have no idea why a Melco N1A should sound different from an Odroid N2 (bloody good for its price) or a Raspberry Pi (to my ears pathetically bad). They all transport bits in the correct order.
So, I have no idea why to me Qobuz connect sounds different, but it does. Anyone who is happy listening to Mosaic or Roon, I am happy for them, I have no objections whatever.
No doubt weāve seen this picture before (unfortunately any analogy comparing analog outputs is not going to be very useful in the digital world)
This is one of those situations where I could literally show you, with Tidal Connect for example, that the way a track is pulled down from Tidalās Servers is identical regardless of whether you use Mosaic or Tidalās Application as the Control-point.
At the TCP flow level, thereās absolutely nothing different, no new technology invented or involved, in both cases the DACās Streaming board issues a HTTP GET Method to pull down the music stream. The packets are still received asynchronously, buffered, re-assembled, and decoded (FLAC) all on the DACās Streaming board in exactly the same way, and then played out synchronously to the processing/filter FPGAs and eventually makes itās way to the Ring DAC.
Thereās absolutely nothing different as far as the DAC is concerned. Nevertheless folks will still āhearā a difference
Thanks, @Anupc
I am well aware of all that. I am also very aware of expectation bias. And if it is expectation bias that lets me prefer Qoboz connect, then I am happy to accept that. I still prefer it, no matter what the cause.
Why should I fight my preference and force myself to consider all streaming devices equal, if it does not add to my enjoyment of music? Just to be scientifically correct?
Agreedā¦ā¦however interesting you left Roon off this list (although I know where you stand on this )
PS - add JPlay to the Connect/Mosaic list as well. It also simply pulls from the Tidal/Qobuz servers
Wholly agree with your sentiments; itās everyoneās prerogative to subjectively prefer whatever they want to , no argument from me on that.
BUT, on a forum like dcs.community, I think itās also important to clarify how things actually work, because there are many less technically inclined who will believe thereās an underlying technical difference causing a sonic improvement when in fact thereās no such thing.
Well, if A = B, and A = C, then by the transitive property of equality, B must = C
(A is Mosaic, B is Tidal/Qobuz Connect, and C is Roon )
I think thatās where the difficulty starts. A system playing through mosaic is clearly not identical to a system playing through Qobuz connect. The fact that the sequence of bits being sent to the dac is identical does not consider that the EMC environment of the DAC is different due to different processor loads, different spectra of the CPU radiation, different load on the PSU etc.
These differences may be minute, but there is clearly a different electromagnetic environment depending on the way the software performs its task. You may well argue that does not matter, because the differences are too small, but it is still not an identical situation. So I think we need to be a bit careful with the mantra that there is NO underlying difference, when obviously there is. Whether is makes a difference to SQ or not is a different question that would need to be established through double blind ABX testing.
Its the same absolute argument that the ASR folks use. If Amir cannot measure a difference between an SMSL DAC for 100 USD and a Rossini, then there is no difference to be heard (which if true would make this forum superfluous).
You never step into the same river twice. You never listen to the same reproduction twice.