Amazon Music HD integration

[Red]

Hi all, 

I'm looking for a decent way to use the newly launched Amazon Music HD service with my Hifi-setup. Almost all manufactures of Hifi components seemingly have been surprised by Amazon launching a service that is highly interesting to their customers. I am not fond at all of the Amazon Echo Link, especially since Amazon is not answering my questions if it is compatible with the HD offering. So I have discovered this class of Semi-DIY products.

 

My question is: Is it possible to create an Alexa Cast endpoint capable of playing 24/192 with your ecosystem? So I can select it for playback within the Amazon Music App?

[Listen2Listen]

Just a heads up... less than 10% of this Amazon service is actually high resolution music, actually only about 7%... the other 93% is merely cd quality.  That is perhaps the main reason no manufacturers are paying attention to it yet.

[Red]

Is this different with, let's say, Tidal? 🤔

[bamyasi]

On 9/27/2019 at 5:42 AM, Red said:

My question is: Is it possible to create an Alexa Cast endpoint capable of playing 24/192 with your ecosystem? So I can select it for playback within the Amazon Music App?

 

Alexa Cast does not support lossless streaming quality, it only streams in SD compressed format. Amazon web documentation and help pages state that you can stream Amazon Music in HD and UHD quality via Alexa cast on compatible devices but they lie. Maybe Amazon plans to implement it at some point in future but for now this simply does not work, neither with any of the Amazon's own Alexa-enabled devices nor with any third-party hardware.

[Red]

On 3/11/2020 at 5:32 AM, bamyasi said:

 

Alexa Cast does not support lossless streaming quality, it only streams in SD compressed format. Amazon web documentation and help pages state that you can stream Amazon Music in HD and UHD quality via Alexa cast on compatible devices but they lie. [...]

 

What exactly makes you think this? 

[bamyasi]

I have metered download speed for many Alexa streams on my router and they all matched compressed codecs, typically fluctuating between 256 and 320 Kbps. FLAC streams bandwidth should measure at least 3 times that for an average 16bit/44.1kHz PCM FLAC (HD). UHD FLACs will have even larger bandwidth utilization. See this Qobuz article for more numbers. Note, I have also tested direct playback on the device and it would show expected higher numbers for HD / UHD streams.

 

That said, I reported this bug to Amazon customer support about a month ago. Spent two hours on the chat with two Amazon reps. They eventually agreed this was a bug and promised me a fix soon. Indeed, two weeks later an OS update for my Fire 7 tablet fixed it. My F7 will now properly play HD streams at HD quality, directly as well as when controlled from AM app on my Android phone. Confirmed this by the same traffic meter analysis with my router.

 

Do not hesitate to complain to Amazon if you are finding issues, they do listen. Even if it sometimes takes quite an effort to find a customer support representative who understands what you are talking about.

[Red]

Thanks for the extensive answer. It's kind of you to refer to this as a bug and not as fraud.

 

In the meantime, I've had it with Amazon Music HD and have gone back to Tidal. When Alexa Cast stopped working with my Fire Stick 4K, I spent hours in support chats, just to learn later that they had simply disabled the feature on the Fire Stick, supposedly via an OTA software update. I have never ever had  a company take functionality away from me with an "update".

 

Also, Amazon doesn't provide an API, so the ecosystems and hardware offerings surrounding other streaming services are all but nonexistant with Amazon Music. I can't see any efforts on Amazons side to get their act together ...