AB99

From the list of albums I received it appears Qobuz are removing duplicate albums. The ones at the lower price are disappearing and have already gone in the cases that I have checked but the same albums are still available at the higher price for streaming and purchase. For example I bought Harmonia Mundi - Brahms: Piano Sonatas - Melnikov in 16-bit on 11/04/22 at £7.59 but at the same time there was another entry for exactly the same 16-bit album at a significantly higher price. That higher price one is still visible for streaming and purchase at £10.49 while the cheaper entry has already disappeared. We won't know for certain until after 1st October but I believe most of these albums will still be available but people who purchased the lower price entry will no longer be able to download their purchase and also will not be able to download the higher price entry without repurchasing. The Qobuz database of albums has always been a mess, with the search facilities often giving bizarre results and many albums having multiple entries. Perhaps these lower priced entries have been put in by mistake and infringed an agreement with the rights holders or maybe this is just a simple clean up of the database. In my view Qobuz are giving excellent customer service in providing a list of those purchases affected and advising people to download before 1st October. Obviously it is always best to download immediately after purchase and make backups.

I believe that is correct, over the years I have purchased 359 albums from Qobuz but the email I received from them only lists 32 of them as being no longer available for download after 1st October. But I expect everyone should have received the email about the change of Qobuz general terms and conditions, that was sent to me 2 hours before I received the email containing the list of purchases specifically affected.

The email I received this afternoon from Qobuz with a list of purchases which they recommend downloading if not already done, contains 32 albums. Of these: 25 are Chandos 2 are Harmonia Mundi 1 is Myrios 1 Atma 1 Bis 1 Pentatone and 1 unknown, which is not something I purchased but which Qobuz may have confused with another disc from Bis. I have tried to find a pattern and it appears that all or at least many of the items listed in the email have already been made unavailable for purchase but they are still available at a higher Sublime price. In the past I have sometimes noticed that Qobuz have more than one entry for the same recording, this has often been the case with Chandos. The Mozart Piano Concerto series with Bavouzet often had two or three entries for the same volume, 2 for Hi-Res at widely different Sublime prices, £6.50 versus about £9.13. There is also sometimes a third entry for the 16-bit version even though the 16-bit is available on the same page as the Hi-Res. Now it appears that those cheaper entries are being removed. They are not visible on the web and when looking at my purchases in the Qobuz Windows app it says for these albums 'The rights holders have not made the purchase of this release possible' But the album is still available for purchase on the web site with the higher priced entry. If I put one of these in my basket and view the basket there is no warning to say that I have already purchased it, but a warning will still appear for other albums that I have purchased. It is like the two different HI-Res entries are being treated as different albums. I tend to think that Qobuz or another party (the rights holders) have discovered these lower priced entries and they are having to be removed. Perhaps the planned closure of the Chandos download site is connected to this discovery.

What is happening with landscape mode for HQPDcontrol? I use a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE, 10.9" screen with Android 14 and HQPDcontrol gives landscape mode as well as portrait but after a few hours the landscape mode disappears and it will only show portrait mode, no matter how many times one turns the table or restarts the app. After a couple of days it may start offering landscape mode again only to lose it again in an hour or so. I have found that rebooting the tablet will consistently allow me to retrieve the ability to use HQPDcontrol in landscape mode but again it goes after a few hours, perhaps when using another app that only has portrait mode. Does anybody else have the same problem? The landscape gives a much better view, for me, as it shows both the queue and play windows on the screen at the same time. Though it maybe too small for anyone using a phone. Thanks to Ales for adding the composer field to the play window, it is a great help.

Thanks, it will be a good addition.

I have been using HQPDControl for a few years now and it is invaluable with HQPlayer Desktop (version 4 in my case). One significant shortcoming though is that the Composer field content is not displayed anywhere, this means that when listening to an album made up of pieces by several composers it can sometimes be hard to know which composer one is listening to. One can find out from documentation or similar but this is not particularly convenient. Could it be added to the play screen? Ideally also the playlist screen but there may not be space. The information is in the HQPlayer library file so it should be fairly straightforward to add. Perhaps with an option in settings in case some people do not want to see the Composer field displayed. People who do not often listen to classical music probably have little interest in the field.