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Article: Amazon Music HD Launches


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15 hours ago, Jeremy Anderson said:

My experience isn't about bluOS per-se, but have found it possible to get 24/192 (in 'shared mode') via the Windows 10 Amazon Music app:

Yes but the procedure that you provide does not mean that the Windows sound engine will allow or support streams up to 24/192 rather  that everything will be upsampled to 24/192. If you set a lower rate in Windows then everything will be downsampled to that. Most of us just want bit perfect audio.  So in order  to get this using your method it means carrying out that reconfiguration each time that the source resolution changes, album to album or even track to track.

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I do have  DAC that reports bit depth but unfortunately I can't access my audio system until the builders that are carrying out work at my place quit. However,as a corollary I haven't found any 24/44.1 files from Qobuz that display as 16 bit when played.

 

Nevertheless I have always had a suspicion that there is something odd about 24/44.1 recordings. After all if you are going to master @24 bit why do this with a sample rate of 44.1 when, almost certainly if you have a 24 bit ADC , 96KS/s is available to you? It is also not a standard for supplying to clients  in the A.E.S. guide to studios where 24/96 is the recommended minimum.

 

Having met many administrators at record companies over the years I have to say that not all are particularly technically savvy. So imagine that Amazon asks or even requires a record label now to send it 24 bit files in preference. That instruction gets passed to whoever sends out files to radio stations, streaming services etc. They therefore ask the studio ( nowadays probably independent) to send them a copy file of a given album but in 24 bit. The studio finds that their copy master is 16 bit. But their client has requested 24 bit. So they take the master and run it through a sample rate converter and , hey presto, 24 bit. The studio has met its client's request and the record label Amazon's. Everyone is happy. Nobody outside the studio  is any the wiser until somebody analyses it.

 

Fictional?  The record industry will supply whatever format is wanted, just how it does it can be open to question; from LPs cut from CDs , CD's mastered from old LPs, mono recordings made into artificial stereo ones etc. etc.

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12 hours ago, Ajax said:

FYI the Society of Sound recordings, a joint venture between Peter Gabriele and B & W speakers, were originally distributed at 24/48 and sounded amazing.

No doubt. I am not claiming that high sampling rates are necessarily always better than ( reasonable) low ones. Firstly the quality of the original recording trumps the subsequent way it is treated ( again within reason). Secondly if there is an audible difference between ( keeping with your 48KS/s example), 48 and 96 KS/s rates then, aside from audiophile nit picking,  it is pretty subtle . In fact virtually inaudible for many people  and I suspect for many musical genres ( does Death Metal really sound better at 24/192 compared to 16/44.1 ?).

 

Of course 24 bits per se  and the available dynamic range ( 144dB) is overkill for musical reproduction purposes.  However there is an interesting corollary regarding bit depth that was proposed by Paul Miller ( editor of HiFi News and , I guess CEO  of Stereophile etc - he also has a PhD in electrical engineering) that 24 bit processors work better given 24 bit data. And the majority of  modern DACs use 24 bit devices.

 

Anyway all I was saying is that whilst the OP reported his DAC was showing 16 bit output from what were nominally 24 bit files from AmazonHD I Had not found anything similar from Qobuz.

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14 hours ago, photonman said:

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? 

There is a difference between being happy with something or if you want correct reproduction of the original source i.e. bit perfect. If you play 16/44.1 (Amazon HD) files with the sound engine set to 24/44.1 then 16/44.1 files will have the bit depth upsampled to 24 ( basically 8 digital zeros added as padding). All Amazon UHD files ( 24/96,176.4,192) will have the sampling rate downsampled to 44.1.  Of course there is no additional data created when converting 16 to 24 bit -  you haven't added any dynamic range so it isn't the same as real 24 bit sound. However if you have a 24 bit processor in your DAC then it may prefer to process a file to match and there may be some small audible improvement.

 

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 . This is a bit like a broken clock being correct twice a day. Nevertheless the majority of files at present will still be Amazon HD ( 16/44.1) and be bit depth converted.

 

If you are happy with that then fine.

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