Article: Amazon Music HD Is Still Lossy

[Miska]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This is where someone like @Miska could probably give a much better answer, but I’ll give you mine. 
 

Setting Windows to 192 means some DSP is taking place. Is the resampling done by the Amazon app or Windows? I’m guessing by Windows but I’m not totally sure. Either way, the DSP is likely of very low quality compared to the advanced processing of something like HQPlayer or a dCS Upsampler. I prefer to have a real high end app or component handle DSP rather than something that’s designed to increase compatibility like Windows processing. 

 

Setting default output format in Windows control panel to 192 for example means that is the format Windows audio engine doing software volume, mixing and rate conversion, outputs. It has certain output format because you could be playing hires content at the same time as email application needs to play "ding, you've got new email" notification and you watching a YouTube video on web browser. All three things mixed together into single output, although at different sampling rates from their respective applications.

 

macOS has equivalent control for CoreAudio engine.

 

Audiophile players use WASAPI Exclusive mode or ASIO driver to bypass this audio engine and claim exclusive control of the audio device. Also means that you won't get mixing of different source applications.

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, audiobomber said:

All "sounds" are muted in my Windows settings.

 

That doesn't matter, because if the audio path goes through the audio engine, it is always ready for some other application to jump in and begin feeding audio. Be it web browser with YouTube or whatever. Audio engine itself is designed primarily to have "decent" audio quality and minimal system resource usage. Same goes for the audio engines powering mobile phones and such. Fidelity is not top priority design factor for these.

 

In order to bypass the audio engine, specific support is needed from the applications.