My phone is only capable of 24/48, and UAPP bypasses the phone's internal DAC and plays at whatever the file bit rate is.
There is nothing you can really do until the devs at Amazon look at the Windows API documentation and decide that adding exclusive mode isn't all that difficult since Microsoft has added it as an OS feature and already done the hard stuff to make it work.
I’m sure it’s been commented on but how are people doing running it through the Bluesound Node 2i. Able to get the UHD titles in their listed resolution? Any troublesome glitches? Currently I am only able to get CD Quality out of my PC streaming to my Rega DACr. Which is quite the upgrade over either my Apple Music and Spotify
Pardon my ignorance on this, and apologies if this has been asked before. I currently have the Amazon HD player installed on a MacBook that is connected via USB to my Yamaha AS801. I have to Remote Desktop in to that MacBook to use the player. Is there a way to control the desktop app from an iPhone, or iPad?
Amazon HD won't play gaplessly on my Samsung phone...definitely a major negative for me. I tried out the old faithful Dark Side Of The Moon to find out if gapless was a feature, as it is in Spotify, and noticed via headphones that the version of "Time" is clearly from the Echoes compilation, as one can hear the fade of the guitar arpeggio from the edit of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" on that album just as the ticking clocks begin. So it would seem to be a bit of a frankenstein mix and match rather than a true hd version of a single master. Apologies if anyone else has already mentioned this...I haven't been able to read all of the previous posts!!! So...a great idea in principle, but poorly executed. If you're bothered about hi- rez, surely you would want a smooth and authentic delivery? Ah well...there's always the turntable ✌
Awaiting on You All from George Harrison's Early Takes Volume 1 is not the demo, despite being labelled as such. It is the regular album version from ATMP. I checked out The Rolling Stones in Mono and found that the version of Lady Jane from the US version of Aftermath is the take from Got Live If You Want It. Mother's Little Helper and Under My Thumb on the UK version are definitely stereo, despite being labelled as mono. These are just the ones I noticed, no doubt there are thousands more...glad to have the free trial but would think twice before paying unless things improve.
Well, well, well! Holy moly, I may just be in the twilight zone here or going mad, but I may have stumbled on something important. I have posted multiple times in this thread about how Amazon Music is using a lot of CPU and GPU, as well as making my laptop cooling fan run fast. I have no idea why this might make a difference, but it sure seems to have done so. For review, I am playing Amazon Music with my HP Envy laptop, which is connected via USB cable to a PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell DAC/pre-amp. The PS Audio's maximum performance setting over USB is 24/384. So, when I started using Amazon Music, I went into the sound settings of the laptop, found the PS Audio DAC in the drop down list, and set the max resolution to 24/384. I have been using that setting for a couple of months now. Like I stated above, the laptop would get rather hot and the fan would run fast and quite audibly. Also, the streaming quality has been frequently dropping from HD or UHD to Standard. Well, after reading a comment about how the Windows system manages audio, I got the feeling that there might not be any reason to select 24/384. So, today, I went into the sound settings on the laptop and changed the setting for the DAC to 24/192 instead. OMG, again, I feel like I'm losing my mind because I am not aware of how this could be possibe, but the sound seems to be about 10 times better. Soundstage, location of vocalists, timbre of instruments, attack on notes, ALL seem to be noticeably improved. The xylophone on Van Morrison Before the World Was Made 24/96 sounds fantastic. And I had no expectation that this would occur. I had only hoped that the CPU usage might be reduced by lowering the resolution. With respect to CPU usage and the cooling fan speed, both seem to be reduced. I've been listening now for about an hour or two and the laptop is not hot at all and the cooling fan is barely running. Also, I have not seen the streaming quality drop during this listening session. If this is some delusional dream I'm in, I don't want to wake up tomorrow and find out the tooth fairy isn't real! Does anybody have any idea as to whether this could be possible? Thanks.
@mtrot Well, you were forcing your PC to upsample streaming audio on the fly - and up to 384k. I don't how computer-intensive that is, cause I've never done it, but it could be kinda tough, I think. The consensus is that windows system audio does a poor job of resampling, so I'm going to assume it does worse and worse the more you ask it to do - like 384k. Therefore when you ask it to upsample at something a lot more reasonable like 96k or 192k it should be able to do that better and sound better. Not perfect, but better. As for laptop temperatures - laptops just run hot, that's a fact of life. Since this concerns you, I'd suggest you download a free program that will let you monitor actual temperatures. It will do this in real time if you want it to. It's free and very useful for other diagnostics Speccy - Free Download The free version is all you need. I've used it for many years and it's really useful. Also - if you want a quick way to help negate heat, temporarily remove the laptop battery. Better yet, open up the case and clean all the dust out of there - I guarantee you there is plenty and it's inhibiting air circulation, causing the heat to build up. If you aren't comfortable doing it, it should be a really small charge at a computer repair place.
The resampling that Windows shared mode does is very poor. Does not sound good. It does harm the sound quality. Upsampling to 24/384 using that really poor quality resampler does more harm than good. The resamper that Windows uses is optimized for low latency and low CPU use rather than audiophile sound quality. The way to attempt to get the best audio quality with Windows shared mode audio is to set the Windows sound system to play at the bit depth and sample rate of the source. So if you're playing 24-bit 192 kHz files then set the Windows sound system to play at 24 bit 192000 Hz. And disable all sound effects and EQ and other sound settings that change the audio. When you change albums and the new album is a CD at 16-bit and 44.1 kHz then dig into the audio settings again and change the Windows audio to 16 bit 44100 Hz. You need to keep the Windows audio system playing at the same bit depth and sample rate as the source. Oh, and also close down all other applications that may want to play audio. If one of those applications decides to open the audio system because the app may want to play a sound it will cause the Windows sound system to enable the audio mixer and resampler in order to get ready to mix audio from two applications. The solution to this is for Amazon to enable exclusive mode. In exclusive mode the application gets full control of the audio device and can change the sample rate and bit depth as needed to match the source.
Thanks for the excellent information! I just changed it from 24/192 to 24/96, playing 24/96 tracks. I can't say I noticed much difference. But I won't be going back to 24/384. I am going to try out a 16/44 track and change the settings to match that.
The difference is not going to be night and day. The differences with different resampling algorithms and with low quality resampling vs. high quality resampling is in the realm of subtle. However, in audiophile listening terms that type of subtle amounts to whether the sound sucks or not. I use JRiver Media Center as my primary player. Playing local files. JRiver allows me to change the output from WASAPI Exclusive mode to shared mode Direct Sound. And compare how the two modes sound. I know how WASAPI exclusive mode sounds compared to Direst Sound shared mode with my gear. My main DAC is a Schiit Gungnir Multibit. I like it a lot. But only when played in exclusive mode. When I switch to shared mode Direct Sound it still sounds "nice" but loses the sound that makes it special. It loses impact, it loses imaging, it loses the engaging music feeling, it loses any sense of what I call "multibit magic". In quick changes the differences between shared mode Direct Sound and WASAPI exclusive mode is subtle, but in audiophile listening that difference is everything. Literally everything about why I bought and like the DAC. The problem with Amazon's HD music player on Windows is that there is no way to fully bypass the shared mode Direct Sound audio. You can try to minimize the impact of the Windows mixer and Direct Sound by matching the bit depth and sample rate of the source files, but you cannot fully bypass it. At least until Amazon's devs decide to implement WASAPI exclusive mode playback.
Does anyone know if Amazon's HD service allows for offline listening like their Music unlimited service does?
If you're using an Android phone using the Qobuz app directly might mean you can't actually listen in the highest resolution offerings because even if the phone hardware's DAC can do, say 24/192, the Android OS might limit the output from the Qobuz app (I think to 24/48). UAPP bypasses Android audio and will give you the highest res the phone DAC is capable of via the headphone jack. And of course you can drive an outboard USB DAC from the phone with it.
In the last 24 hours, something happened and many files are now playing the wrong songs for me Green River by CCR, Turn Turn by The Byrds, both playing diff tracks.
I may never get around to trying out Amazon Music HD since it seems they're in no hurry to implement exclusive audio device output or to fix the cobbled and confused mismatching of album tracks. But I took the plunge and signed on to Qobuz at their new subscription rate of $14.99 a month. This is pretty good, streaming 24/96 hi-res audio in Wasapi exclusive mode to my Rega DAC-R (and the 16/44 CD files sound great too). The first thing I searched for was Joni Mitchell to see what her hi-res tracks sound like. I found Blue and "River" was the first thing I listened to. Very nice, and it only occurred to me afterwards that I was streaming River (or channeling the river into the stream). They've got the new Leonard Cohen in 24/44 and Gene Clark's No Other expanded edition in 24/96... My first experience with a music streaming service and I think this is going to work out well and save me a bundle in download and CD purchases along the way. Cool beans...
The version of "Eight Days A Week" on Amazon HD's Beatles For Sale is the 2015 Giles Martin remix from the updated version of "1", as evidenced by the bongos in the outro. It might not matter to some, but for me this is unacceptable. Nothing against Giles' mixes, I like them, but they don't belong on the standard albums as is, especially not right in the middle of the rest of the vintage mixes. Amazon is also labelling the anniversary mixes of the White Album and Sgt. Pepper as "2009 remasters" which of course, they aren't, as well as carrying those mixes in the deluxe/super deluxe editions. It's a mess!!! There must be countless other instances of this slipshod approach to making sure each album is the complete correct version, and properly identified, but these and the ones I mentioned above are some that I have noticed over the last few days. Apart from that...it's all good. I will stick with it.
Funnily enough, the version of "1" which Amazon claim is "remastered" in 2015, when it was also, and more importantly, remixed- actually has some of the new stereo mixes and some vintage ones (most notably Paperback Writer with the lead guitar riff all in one channel) while conversely they also have a version of "1" dated 2000, which is all the 2015 mixes. Upshot of all this pedantic nitpicking is Amazon evidently haven't got a clue what they're doing. I shan't post any more discoveries. You all know the score- and if it bothers you or doesn't. Peace
Frampton Comes Alive is a mismash of UltraHD and HD tracks, different resolutions within the one album.
They still haven't fixed their bug-laden PC app. Burns 20% of CPU cycles just sitting there doing nothing on my laptop. Insane. Also, it's sluggish and glitchy, even on my desktop, which has about 10 times the horsepower of that laptop. Their iPhone app has actually gotten worse in the past few weeks. Completely hangs whenever you go to do simple things like browse an album list or start playback, on both my work iPhone 7S Plus and my personal iPhone 11 Pro Max. Anything that hangs an iPhone 11 Pro is garbage.
Click the three vertical dots on the right hand side of a track / album. The delete option is in there. They should make it a swipeable option, that’d be easier.
For now, using the Echo Input direct into my integrated amp, the sound is pretty good for non-critical listening. I'm using streaming more to discover what I'd like to find on vinyl or CD. It's also good for background listening.
