The Qobuz desktop app (available for macOS and Windows) shows five tabs across the top (in order): Discover, Magazine, Playlists, Favorites, Purchases, and Offline. An always-at-the-ready search box and an icon to access account settings are to the right of those menu items. You can easily choose your preferred genres from the Discover view, after which you see relevant curated playlists, editorial content, and new releases. A section below, called ‘The Taste of Qobuz,’ offers an Ideal Discography and Qobuzissime—basically, top picks from emerging artists.
(Credit: Qobuz/PCMag)
As with most online music streaming services, Qobuz persistently (in a good way) shows what’s currently playing at the bottom of the screen; tapping on this bar opens a song view. Standard controls let you rewind, pause, and fast forward, while a a scrubber lets you zip to the point you want to play from. You can also loop a song or album and adjust the volume.
Qobuz is unique in displaying the exact quality specifications for the currently playing track, along with the Hi-Res Audio logo if the content meets that level. Tidal simply displays a HiFi icon, while Amazon Music shows one indicating HD or Ultra HD, allowing you to click to view the actual specifications. Apple Music doesn’t display sound quality information on either the web player or iOS.
Next to Qobuz’s quality indicator is the audio output device chooser, which the service refers to as Qobuz Connect. This is similar to a formerly unique feature in Spotify, which lets you switch the audio output device wirelessly from the device you happen to be on. For example, if you’re using the mobile app on your phone, you can change what’s playing on your PC, streamer, or any other output device you have.
(Credit: Qobuz/PCMag)
If you click the album art, you get a pleasantly presented track list with a gradient background in a color that echoes that of the album art, which sits to its left. That’s called “full-screen” view (though it doesn’t have to be maximized on the desktop), and it looks like this:
(Credit: Qobuz/PCMag)
Clicking a track title opens a text window of credits. The ability to view the actual booklet that you would get if you bought the physical CD, either in the app or as a PDF, is a big plus for fans of libretti and liner notes. Idagio and Native DSD Music also include these. It might disappoint pop music listeners that Qobuz doesn’t offer any karaoke-like lyrics display while you play a song.
