classical music fan

Thanks, that works well. Aside from any gain in sound quality, it's good to avoid miscellaneous beeps and squawks in the middle of the music. For anyone trying this, note that the Qobuz app does not detect a change in the output device during a session. You need to quit and restart the app for the new device to be used.

Thanks, but if I understand you, that's the answer to a different question. Let me try to be more precise. Qobuz offers FLAC streaming, the only source I know of, for classical music. But it's offered only via their Qobuz Desktop app, and a special subscription. Their website only offers lossy streaming. The FLAC stream is great, good sound and with a reasonably fast connection I've only very rarely had problems with speed. Now I want to capture this to the input of my audio system ("redirect" would have been a better word than "capture"). I do this just by plugging a digital optical cable into the headphone port of my iMac. It sounds fine to me and I'm certainly not in the "golden ears" crowd, but I wonder if there are other mechanisms that give better sound, having read some negative comments about Toslink connections. The convenience of streaming is great; if I wanted to copy to a file, I would be happy to support Qobuz by downloading (and I do for their Studio Master Quality items especially).

I also 100% agree that this is a great site. For classical, they have the best selection of recent good releases. And their FLAC streaming gives what seems to me the best quality of any streaming I've encountered (even better, at least slightly, than the Naxos "cd quality" streaming). It does make for a slightly different setup, however: Because the FLAC streaming is done through their own App, rather than a URL, and also is not a download but strictly streaming, one has to capture the basic computer output, rather than using iTunes or similar (iTunes works fine for the purchased downloads from Qobuz). Do folks on the list have a preferred way to do this? (I just capture the output of my Mac with digital optical, Toslink, but have heard complaints from audiophiles about that.) Thanks for any opinions.