Amazon HD Music goes live

I will only note my circumstances: I have Prime & Music Unlimited. The music consists entirely of HD & UHD. I got an email saying that there will no longer be an added fee for HD. The pricing was already attractive and now will be even better. I now see that Apple Music is going lossless. I tried Apple Music, but didn't like how it wanted to control my iTunes. Just as well, I suppose—I like having some variety, as opposed to an all-in-one-basket approach.

 

Spotify’s next move will be interesting.

Remember their upcoming change only adds CD quality streaming, not high res, and they’re yet to announce pricing.

 

New update for the desktop app today (at least for mac).
Not sure what they've changed, but still can't sort albums in any real manner.
A previous release provided sorting of songs within albums, but I can't see myself using that much.

 

Yes, new update for pc yesterday as well. I can't see anything different.

 

When is Spotify moving to CD quality?

 

Nor can I. You still cannot create a playlist folder, which is my biggest issue.

 

During their original announcement my guess was this fall. Could still be but now that Apple announced higher than CD resolutions Spotify is most likely scrambling to get that as well so it may take Spotify a little longer. Price would have to be the same as Apple and Amazon in order to compete so don’t expect it to be more expensive. It couldn’t be anyway because Deezer and Qobuz are only $3-$5 more expensive. Deezer needs to lower it’s price or get high resolution like Qobuz to remain relevant. Tidal is sinking if it doesn’t get rid of MQA. Wonder if Pandora and YouTube Music might wake up and do something?

 

Amazon's software is still hot garbage. It's amazing how awful they are at this.

I did notice that you can now select tracks from a list - say the list of tracks on an album - using shift to select ranges of tracks or control to select non-contiguous tracks and if you start to drag them to the right, a list of your playlists now appears over in the right margin that you can drag the tracks to. Not sure when that functionality was added. It's not completely intuitive, but it does make adding items to playlists much easier.

 

No true HD via Fire Stick? (48 bits doesn’t count). Then no go for me.

 

Other than the BluOS app, is there any way of getting bit perfect playback out of Amazon Music HD?

This is really driving me up the wall - they cannot be so stupid as to have not accounted for this in designing the app?

 

HEOA compatible equipment also plays it but perfect

 

So other than buying into a proprietary system, the answer is no?

 

There is no bottom to how stupid Amazon can be when it comes to software. If it doesn't involve whipping their employees while they pee into a water bottle, it's beyond their capacity.

Would you expect WalMart to get this right? Then why expect it from Amazon?

 

It would take about a day for them to fix. So frustrating.

 

That Amazon can’t sort albums in order of release ... or in any order... is frustrating.

But with my Echo Studio, many albums sound better via hd than many cds I have.

what Apple does will be interesting.

 

I tried - as a last resort - an Amazon FireTV Stick 4K, which is said to support 24/192 over HDMI, and ran this into my Anthem D2v.

Didn't work, because the HDCP protocol does not 'see' the amp, it only 'sees' the end TV and limits the bitrate to 16.

 

It's laughably inept if you ask me, that's one of several reasons I dumped them.

 

Hmm, I ran a HDMI cable from my laptop to my Denon AVR X-5200 and was able to play 24/192 tracks,, which sounded great. I didn't have any problem with the TV being also connected to my Denon.

 

How do you know they were 24/192?

 

the Amazon app displays the rate that is currently playing.

 

Sorry to trouble you - would you be able to double check on your Denon what bitrate it is actually receiving? Regardless of the song I played, my Anthem reported 192kHz sampling rate even though this was not what the source material was in.

 

The Denon is going to receive whatever bitrate my laptop pc is sending to it over the USB cable. In Windows 10, you go into your sound settings and select whatever bitrate you want to use. The laptop sound card will then downsample/upsample everything to that selection and send it to the Denon. I don't know how it works with a Fire TV Stick.

I do use a FireTV stick(not 4K) in my bedroom TV for the Amazon Music app, and the Fire TV Stick plays and sends any content higher than 16/44.1 at 16/44.1 to the TV and then the TV sends the signal to my Onkyo AVR via an optical digital cable.

 

Thanks - but this means manually setting the sound card to the sample rate (i.e. not bit perfect), which is the same problem I ran into with a MAC.

It really does appear a Node 2i is the only way to get bit perfect out of Amazon HD!

 

Yeah, I ended up just setting my sound card to 24/96. Everything sounds good to me. For those Amazon tracks that are 24/192, I will sometimes change the sound card setting to 24/192.