Article: Amazon Music HD Is Still Lossy

[atmfrank]

I am happy to be in complete agreement with Chris' article (shall we say rant?). I took up the free 3 months offer to play around with it: clunky interface, no direct hardware control (sampling rate issues), and dismal search. In short, the same disappointments. 

 

There is one aspect I do appreciate. By commoditizing the "hi-res" streaming audio market, the potential impact and market share of MQA is challenged!  And that's a good thing, but for different reasons. 

 

I also belong to the camp of disagreers of misleading or false claims about the superiority and benefits of "re-mastered" audio. I put those in quotes because most people don't want to, or don't have the time to understand what level of care goes into the re-mastering process. Once you understand about the sources and the processing chain (from recording studio to the human ear), one can make better decisions. In theory, I can simply rip a Redbook CD of my favorite music and run it through an upsampling routine, store the output in FLAC 24/96 and call it "re-mastered hi-res bull BS".

 

Conversely, when you read about Miles Showell's re-mastering project of 8 Rolling Stones albums at Abbey Road Studios (example), you can understand and appreciate what is meant by "re-mastering". But then....I go out and spend $35 on the results in vinyl.