I never thought I'd see the day. HQPlayer now offers native support for streaming music from Qobuz and HIGHRESAUDIO STREAMING. Wait, what!? Yes, Jussi Laako has added streaming services through the HQPlayer interface and it's glorious. Many in this community already discovered Jussi's holiday gift to music lovers worldwide, but incase you missed the full-court press by Jussi's PR team, marketing manager, and publicist, only kidding, I thought I'd write about it and how to enable it. 

The information below is mostly available in the HQPlayer "really brief quick start guide" that nobody reads. OK, six of you guys have read it and the rest have no clue it even exists or where to find it. That's not a knock on anyone, I count myself in that group much of the time. 

I've added some screenshots and a bit of information below. 

Requirements: 

1. HQPlayer 4 Client version 4.15 or higher, and one of the following

2a. HQPlayer 4 Desktop version 4.15 or higher, or 2b. HQPlayer Embedded version 4.28

The HQPlayer website lists this streaming support under only the Desktop version, but it also work with the embedded version. The key is the Desktop Client software. This can run on any machine and doesn't require a separate Desktop license to connect to HQP Embedded. 

Enabling Qobuz in HQPlayer is very easy. Make sure either HQP Desktop of Embedded is up and running on any computer on your network. Open the HQPlayer 4 Client that's included with the HQPlayer Desktop application download. GO to the Album View and click the dropdown arrow to display Qobuz. If you can't find album view, look on the edge of the window for options like Play View, Transport View, Album View. Click through them and you'll find what you need. 

Selecting Qobuz bring up this screen where you login.

After login you'll see this success screen. Click the Back button in blue. 

You'll be presented with your Qobuz favorited albums by default. As seen here.

Clicking the right hand dropdown you can see the Qobuz options. 

One option that isn't in that list is search. To search Qobuz from within HQPlayer, I selected My Favorite Albums, then put my cursor in that box immediately after the word Albums. Then I deleted the text and entered my own search criteria. Here you can see my search for Neil young. 

I'd love if there was an option to select search that cleared the search box automatically, but I can live with this for now. 

Here's a screenshot of playing an album from Qobuz to my HQPlayer Embedded server. It's really nice and full of more information that I expected. 

Here's a screenshot of my HQPlayer Desktop version, while streaming a different album from Qobuz. Nothing special, but I want to show it so people can see. More information is available here than when streaming from Qobuz to HQP through Roon. 

That's it for this glorious holiday gift from @Miska. I know many people who can now use HQPlayer as their sole user interface for playing music. It's pretty cool to have this as an option. Options are good.