Article: Amazon Music HD Launches

[photonman]

I am glad I have a better alternative to Spotify now for only a few USD more.  I think it is a little freaky how they automatically added all my CD purchases from years ago to "My Music" list  and their curated playlists seem to be pretty good, (not Spotify good) but close enough and I am betting they will get there soon.

 

I do think the loudness level is higher than Spotify.  Is that intentional or symptomatic of the higher bit rate and frequencies?

[photonman]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Check the loudness enable/disable feature in the Amazon app.

 

I have the "loudness normalization" off and also disabled hardware acceleration.

[photonman]

20 minutes ago, Jeremy Anderson said:

add 'Exclusive Mode' playback

On the Mac, we have to set the audio output to 24 bit 192 Khz in Audio Midi so this sounds like we are in the same situation with needing exclusive mode on the Mac application?

[photonman]

29 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

Yes, and then if you play a 16/44.1 track you'd best set AudioMidi Setup back to that--otherwise you end up with macOS Core Audio engine doing its poor-sounding upsampling!  This exact issue is what drove the initial market for the apps Ammara, Pure Music, and Aurdivana years ago. 

This stinks!  What if we just set it to 24 Bit 44.1 Khz.  I would be happy with that for everything. Or would it have to be 16 bit 44.1 Khz? 

[photonman]

On 9/20/2019 at 2:57 AM, PAR said:

If you are a rock/pop music fan, however , there are quite a lot of real 24/44.1 files available. So by setting your computer's sound engine as this you would have a fair percentage of incoming Amazon UHD files playing bit perfect .

yes, that pretty much describes me, pop rock and acoustical.   I do have a license for Amarra SQ+ I had tried to use with Spotify but it really did nothing good that I could hear.  I will try it with Amazon.  SQ+ basically swaps out the audio kernal to the Amarra SonicStream one.  So if I set the SonicStream to 24-bit/192 Khz that should be better than the core audio I hope.

[photonman]

5 hours ago, rn701 said:

I thought maybe Amazon's $13/month might be worth it. Not really. Especially since it isn't "audiophile" grade. Might as well use Spotify for $10/mo.

 

I synched up a couple of songs between Amazon and Spotify with the Mac desktop players and I could not hear any difference.  At least not enough for me to give up the better Spotify UI and playlists.  I used Norah Jones "I don't know why" and Leon Bridges "Beyond".  Maybe Spotify is secretly pushing out lossless as a social experiment, probably not.

 

The Amazon HD implementation kind of reminds me of when you buy things at Home Depot that say "Contractor Grade" when anyone in the know already knows that adding some badass plastic padding on a utility knife does not magically make it something you can proudly hand down to your grandkids.