Giving it a 90-day free trial. Angus and Julia Stone have an album in Amazon UltraHD quality - that type of music sounds so good on electrostats (guitars and vocals). I like that Amazon has clearly identified which music (albums/tracks) are in UltraHD (similar to Tidal MQA)! Will give it a listen on music system tomorrow evening. Interested to see how well it integrates with BluOS2i MDC module (built into NAD C-388 integrated), controlled by BluOS Win10 app. Tidal MQA worked very well on the system, now we’ll see if Amazon UltraHD will recognize the account upgrade, play through it - and how it sounds. The Amazon Prime Music app recognized the account upgrade immediately upon opening the app on my outdated Samsung tablet, so likely BluOS will too, especially since there is no ’unfolding’ to be done (like MQA). As I read in this thread, ’UltraHd’ are FLAC files - will be interesting to see how much WAN bandwidth is required. I did notice the afore mentioned UltraHD album downloaded nearly instantly to the tablet, but suspect it’s likely actually downloading in the background; although, I haven’t noticed any lag on the tablet, so that’s good.
Amazon Launches Lossless "Hi-rez" HD Music Service
Showing 2 responses by mwatsme
Update on Amazon HD with NAD C-388 w/BluOS2i MDC module... It works great - fully integrated. Controls and automatically updates on Bluesound mobile and Win10 apps and sounds very good. Bandwidth testing reveals: CD-quality tracks seem to average 1 - 2Mbps, while "HR" (UltraHD) seems to average 4x higher. However, it is variable, and I’ve seen HR peaks high as 16.1Mbps. Random HR examples: The Cars, My Best Friend’s Girl (Best of UltraHD station) 4.8 - 6.5Mbps Eurythmics, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) [2018 Remastered] 1.5 - 4.4Mbps The Chainsmokers, Closer (feat. Halsey) flutters between 0.5 - 1.5 Mbps Interesting, because The Cars (above) sustains ~5 Mbps throughout the track. In all cases, between songs Mbps drops to "Idle", and bandwidth to the controlling device (in this case a Samsung tablet) is also measuring "Idle". One thing that annoys me a little is the occasional volume imbalance between some tracks. Tends toward older tracks (example: Pretenders, Brass in Pocket) have a lower volume level than other (newer?) music. Maybe not a very ’audiophile’ statement, but I prefer some volume leveling (especially on a music ’station’). It’s a strange phenomenon, though - because it’s not all older tracks (example: Fleetwood Mac, The Chain) is normal volume relative to others - wow that track sounds good in HR on direct digital NAD integrated and electrostats with Polk T50’s added to extend broadcast of the highs. So far, I’m liking the added quality of a service/membership partner I’m already connected with. |