"Qobuz has always strived to make the highest quality audio accessible, as people become more interested in better sound. Now, on Sonos devices, we’re making it easy for millions more people to experience the improvement Hi-Res audio can make," Qobuz USA Managing Director Dan Mackta says of the partnership.
"Our open platform enables partners to bring the best of their experiences to the Sonos system and our mutual customers," adds Ryan Richards, Director of Product Marketing at Sonos. "Qobuz has been at the forefront of high resolution music streaming, and we look forward to customers enjoying their music with the clarity, depth, and room-filling sound of Sonos."
Even though Qobuz offers a mediocre basic streaming tier using obsolete mp3 (which shouldn't be allowed under no circumstances), in 2013, Qobuz became the first music service to offer 16-bit FLAC streaming - CD quality - on Sonos. In 2019, Qobuz finally fulfilled its promise to offer a FLAC Hi-Res streaming service (24-bit and up to 192kHz), the first of its kind in the world.
And now, it is continuing to expand access to high-resolution streaming on Sonos by introducing 24-bit streaming, compatible with most products on the Sonos S2 platform, which supports 24-bit audio resolution at up to 48kHz. This new integration builds on Qobuz’s continued expansion of hardware partnerships, including the addition of Hi-Res compatible hardware on select Android platforms several years ago.
Apart from the "standard" mp3 service (which shouldn't even be offered for free), Qobuz has always catered to music enthusiasts and the audio-curious market, with its expert curation, exclusive editorial content, liner notes, download store, and determined efforts to introduced improved sound quality by adopting lossless compression with FLAC. This expanded experience on Sonos will make premium Qobuz streaming capabilities accessible to a wider audience of music lovers. Qobuz claims to offer over seventy million tracks and is adding more in full Hi-Res quality every day.
Qobuz 24-bit Hi-Res streaming is available on Sonos in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States, for now.
www.qobuz.com
