I enjoy streaming as much as the next guy however what is being offered as premium Hi-Res , HD and what have you at is not as advertised and all the services do it of course .
Im going to be speaking with another recording engineer whom also subscribes to another popular streaming service whoms work he noticed at least one of his recordings is offered as Hi-Res which in fact was originally recorded on tape .
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I recently chatted with one recording engineer whom found some of work on Amazon that is being sold as HD when in fact it’s 16/44 . If you pay attention, you will realize that this is just a matter of semantics. Amazon calls 16/44 "HD". And anything above that is "Ultra HD". That said, I have found that a few titles are not in either. Just whatever the standard stream rate is, 320 kbps I am assuming. |
If you pay attention, you will realize that this is just a matter of semantics. Amazon calls 16/44 "HD". And anything above that is "Ultra HD". Yes....but anything "above" 16/44 or ULTRA HD (as Amazon claims) would have to have been originally recorded in a 24bit studio to be actually be superior to 16bit....and little has. |
Curious to hear the quality. I use Amazon for movies and, even though they are "HD" sound, the sound quality never seems to be as good as when I play the same movies using blu-ray or UHD blu-ray disks.
For movies, I assume there's compression, dithering, or whatever going on there. |
While streaming, to me, is entirely viewable and listenable, I still get Blu-Ray discs from Netflix specifically as my understanding is that, regardless of the speed of your internet service, streams will always be of lower overall (audio and video) than BR discs.
But a better reason is that the newest movies are only available from Netflix on disc.
But this is really an entirely different subject. |
This is not hi-res quality music. Most songs seem to be redbook cd quality. Hi-res quality can be 24/192, but DSD and MQA are of much better SQ. Since I have hundreds of DSD or 24/192 songs ripped, and also stream Tidal MQA, I use roon. I will never use USB to connect to an external dac so I use Roon server on a Mac and my PS Audio DS sr dac is accessed using wired Ethernet. Right now, nobody else has perfected using Ethernet going to a dac. As soon as Roon has an update to gain access to Amazon so I can compare an Amazon HD song to a Tidal MQA song, I’m happy with Tidal
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Like @rbstehno I was disappointed to find out that I could not stream Amazon music files to a UPNP renderer. I worked hard to get off of USB and that's a deal breaker for me. |
Buy a Node 2i and call it a day...........
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Like @rbstehno I was disappointed to find out that I could not stream Amazon music files to a UPNP renderer. I worked hard to get off of USB and that’s a deal breaker for me. Yes that’s lame - but marginally excusable: AMHD is relatively new and doesn’t have much tenure yet out in the 3rd-party device/software environment, let alone the open-source audio ecosystem. But given Amazon-as-vampire-squid it’s hard to imagine any other approach other than one that benefits their businesses/services first. Short answer: don’t expect parity anytime soon with Tidal and Qobuz in support of the broader open-source audio community. AMHD ’lying’ about HD is also lame. So are its feature and UX shortfalls. Simple example: no user-facing feature to create ’stations’ from artists. That problem was solved years ago by the competition - and has been missing from Amazon Music since at least 2014. |
Anyone used the Echo Input with the Amazon Music with the HD service? |
Perhaps the best streaming I have experienced. Still not up to my SSD and that's a deal breaker.
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So I have downloaded the Amazon Music fke the .99 a month for 4 months. I cant find any mention of HD within the app nor can I see what the songs actually are. Am I playing lossless already? Frustrating. I am using android, anyone have some tips? |
Make sure you sign up for HD service and not the regular one.
Their mobile app is not that great in showing track information, you are correct it doesn’t say if it’s “HD” or “Ultra HD”. I mostly use my Bluesound Node 2i and so far everything I have played is CD quality or 16 bit 44.1k, I have not seen anything better than that yet.
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Amazon is no longer a option fo me and many others due to their recent behavior/ |
