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Article: Amazon Music HD Launches


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This announcement may not sound like a big deal but it is. Tidal and Qobuz gets competition, but with a lower price. I signed up myself and will test it on my Bluesound Node and PowerNode. Maybe this is why my Bluesound devices have been asking to update for a few days now.

 

Jay-Z wont be sleeping tonight. Will Tidal lower their price tomorrow?
 

RIP Qobuz. You never had a chance. Roon integration would be nice, but i doubt it.

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Just tested it with my Bluesound POWERNODE and it works Great. Shows up as HR and CD. Wish Bluesound had a category for all HR tracks. 

 

I tested Qobuz a few months ago and I always thought FLAC sounded better than MQA. Well, after listening to Amazon HD I can definitely confirm that I like FLAC better. More detailed IMHO than MQA. Tracks seem louder as well. What do you guys think?

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Just tested it with my Bluesound POWERNODE and it works Great. Shows up as HR and CD. Wish Bluesound had a category for all HR tracks. 

 

I tested Qobuz a few months ago and I always thought FLAC sounded better than MQA. Well, after listening to Amazon HD I can definitely confirm that I like FLAC better. More detailed IMHO than MQA. Tracks seem louder as well. What do you guys think?

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Just tested it with my Bluesound POWERNODE and it works Great. Shows up as HR and CD. Wish Bluesound had a category for all HR tracks. 

 

I tested Qobuz a few months ago and I always thought FLAC sounded better than MQA. Well, after listening to Amazon HD I can definitely confirm that I like FLAC better. More detailed IMHO than MQA. Tracks seem louder as well. What do you guys think?

 

It's too early to say, but think this is a winner from Amazon. Now what to do I do with my Raspberry Pi Ropiee? Roon unfortunately doesn't support Amazon and I doubt that they will.

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7 hours ago, Jud said:

So, who should be worried?

 

- Maybe Apple.  Does anyone doubt if Steve Jobs was around that Apple would have been first to do this?  Apple's always been the boutique brand and has been very closely identified with music, but now Amazon has the boutique service for music. Vanishingly few people will want to pay for more than one of these higher end services.  What's Apple going to offer to get people to switch, if Amazon does indeed find a mass market at this price point?

 

- Obviously Tidal. What conceivably is Tidal's value proposition now (not that it had one before, but now that's going to be a lot more evident to a lot more people)?  Qobuz in the US, maybe, but for classical and jazz lovers and Europeans they may have enough market differentiation.  Let's see what Amazon may offer in the way of Redbook and higher resolution purchase/download. If they don't, that's the niche @firedog pointed out for Sublime+ members. And if Amazon does get into the Redbook/hi res purchase/download business, then HDTracks, etc., may be in trouble.

 

- Maybe Roon? They're probably too small for Amazon to notice. But if Amazon does notice, maybe they'll buy the service and give all the employees lousy (or no) healthcare. 😶

 

- Maybe the music industry. I remember one of my old bosses telling me a story about being invited to breakfast with the other side's counsel the morning of a hearing in which he was representing a smallish pipeline company suing a major petroleum corporation. (Hint: Never accept a breakfast invitation with opposing counsel representing a much larger company.) After buying him breakfast, they let him know that if he didn't settle on favorable terms, they'd just buy the pipeline company and make the lawsuit go away. Wondering if Bezos might have the same inclination with labels that start giving him trouble. (US anti-trust enforcement has been nonexistent, but this Administration hates Bezos, so hard to see where the chips would fall if such an acquisition was proposed.)

 

 

 

Yup! Roon needs to make a choice here. They may possibly lose subscribers because of this. I love Roon, but supporting only 2 music services maybe their downfall. Glad I didn't buy the lifetime subscription.

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16 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

I don't think Amazon cares about the audiophile market at all - nor should they. Hi-res IMO for them is just a checkbox item to say they could do it. Hi-res streaming with the bandwidth we have these days costs peanuts and if this is their way to differentiate themselves from everyone else and tell the world they can do it ALL - lossy, lossless, hi-res at a competitive price, it's a fine business tactic to grab as many customers as they can.

 

As we all know, bandwidth is not an issue. MQA was always barking up the wrong tree to claim that their proprietary compression scheme was anything more than a transitional step just slightly ahead of lossless 16/44 (ignoring the other nonsense like "authentication" and BS around "deblurring" to make us think there was anything more). Well, it looks like Amazon has now leap-frogged over everyone; including Apple, Tidal, Spotify and on the same streaming playing field as Qobuz.

 

This is clearly very big news. I feel bad for the little guys even though as a consumer, I'm happy to give this a try when it comes to Canada (which is still awaiting Qobuz).

If Amazon didn't care about audiophile then why did they create Amazon Music HD? I am an amazon prime member and never used their already free music service to prime members. This definitely caught my attention and i signed up for 90 days. 

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9 hours ago, Gus141 said:

Can’t Get 24/192 on Bluesound Node 2i.

 

Neil Diamond - 50th Anniversary Collection, Sweet Caroline:

AMZ app (iPad) says 24/192 available and plays that way to external DAC connected via CCK; added that track to library; played that track via BlueSound’s iOS app to Node 2i connected to RME ADI-2 DAC: the DAC reports it is playing 24/96 not 24/192. Play the same track via Qobuz through the same Node 2i/RME setup and the RME DAC reports it is getting 24/192.  Weird that the Amazon stream is downgraded to 96 for this 192 album (tried other songs on this album between AMZ and Qobuz: AMZ plays as 96 on Node 2i, Qobuz plays as 192 on same Node 2i). Maybe this is Amazon doing some dynamic quality control based on network speed, but if that’s the case funny that Qobuz didn’t have a problem with my network.

 

Another example.

J.S. Ondara, Tales of America:

24/192 on Qobuz ->Node 2i-(Coax)->RME ADI-2 DAC;

24/192 on Amazon iOS app on iPad-(CCK)->external DACs;

but, BluOS Amazon Music plays this album as 24/96 on Node 2i-(Coax)->RME ADI-2 DAC

 

@cscamp and @The Computer Audiophile have you been able to get 24/192 from Amazon Music out of your BluOS devices to an external DAC? What tracks? I’ll try them.

I'll try it later. As of last night there is no indicator on my BlueOS app if i am playing 24/192 or 24/96, I just says Amazon HR or Amazon CD. I did update my Bluesound devices last night.

 

I'll test it on my Node and PowerNode tonight. I have the 1st Gen Node N100 and PowerNode N150 by the way. Hopefully, Amazon and Bluesound will update the UI soon

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5 minutes ago, Gus141 said:

Thanks, but if you are using the built-in DAC there is no indication on the app except the “HR” in a circle for “Ultra HD”. I can monitor the stream’s resolution via the display on my external DAC being fed from the Node 2i over S/PDIF and it looks like the BluOS software is limiting output over S/PDIF to 96kHz from Amazon sources even if the track is 192kHz.

 

At the other end of the spectrum, the iOS app is upscaling and downscaling everything to match the highest capability of an external USB DAC (attached with Lightning-to-USB3 connector). So for a DAC that supports 96kHz max (Dragon Fly Cobalt), the LED on the DFC indicates it is receiving max res even if the song is only CD quality 44.1 on Amazon; conversly, 192kHz Amazon-sourced content plays at 96kHz on the same DAC. With a DAC that supports 192Khz max, I was getting all music played from the Amazon app upscaled to 192kHz (even an old purchased album in my Amazon library in MP3). I guess it is behaving like the desktop apps and not auto switching, but instead of using a manually-set operating-system setting it is using the max sampling rate reported by the USB-DAC.

i have a dragonfly myself, but i haven't used it in a while. As far as i know you have a choice if you want the Dragonfly to upscale it or not. Don't you just set it to it's max res like 192 for example on windows sound setting or midi settings on Mac, then it will always upscale it? 

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3 hours ago, bbosler said:

and here is Living Loving Maid downloaded from HDtracks as a 24/96 file. The download from Amazon is only 5.4 Mb, from HDtracks it is 92Mb

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living jpeg 96.JPG

Can you confirm that the 5.4 Mb file you downloaded is a FLAC? If so, why are Amazon FLACs so low?

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42 minutes ago, Gus141 said:

I got excited when I read this because that wouldn’t be too bad of a workaround; however, it didn’t work for me. I tried at least 10 times going from 24/96- and 24/192-based songs to 24/44.1-based ones. Every time I switched to the 24/44.1 song the bit depth dropped to 16. I made sure to check that they weren’t “HD” (native 16/44.1) files. Nope, all 24/44.1.

 

Since your DAC is working, I’ll bet my RME ADI-2 DAC is the culprit. But what I don’t understand is that I have no issues with Qobuz showing the wrong bit depth for 24/44.1.

 

Anecdotally, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen something like this though. A file I purchased from Qobuz at 24/96kHz shows up as 16/96kHz on the DAC. And, a while back when I was messing around with mConnect DLNA control of TIDAL to an Oppo 205, with the Oppo doing the first unfold of MQA and passing the SR-doubled result out (S/PDIF) to the RME ADI-2 DAC, the result was shown as 16 bit at times (a firmware update made that less frequent). But that anecdote does make me wonder if the BluOS is manipulating 24/44.1 in a similar way the Oppo was messing with the digital stream.

 

Thanks for working this with your contacts at Bluesound.

Cheers,

Gus

Gus,

 

Don't lose sleep over this. Tomorrow will be better :P

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