Amazon Music HD (plug)

Personally, I believe the Mastering is far more important than the resolution or bitrate. Amazon push red book 44.1Khz/16bit as HD which is a bit naughty really and is just marketing words at play. They really should call that CD quality, but that doesn't sound as good when peoples ears are eyes are more focussed to HD. Give me a well mastered and well sourced 44.1/16 or 48/24 etc. format over poorly mastered "questionable source" UHD masters any day:

https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=7066

 

Absolutely this.

Lack of compatibility with LMS is an issue, certainly for me.

 

Link not working for me Tony - "We’re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site."

 

I'm buying all sorts from amazon tomorrow, am I right in thinking to enter the site via a link here, purchase and PFM benefits?

 

i used amazon music during the first lockdown as there was a free 3 months offer. the ' uhd' was excellent. i have never herd starless (king crimson) sound so good. I have the app on my 10+ year old macbp into my hifi. i dont like a subscription and i like to look through my lps to choose what to play. so i didnt subscribe. perhaps i should have for sq and ease????

 

I trialled this for a while, but it was hard to actually play bit perfect through any of the devices I have. They don't support chromecast, they don't recognise external DAC's on phones and so you had to buy a supported device (or playback on a PC) to get the benefit. The USB audio player pro app can't support it as the cost / practicalities make it impossible, as Amazon are so locked down.

Even the PC app was flaky when it comes to sample rates.

It's the main reason I went to Qobuz, which is more open, and supported on a wide array of devices. It's a shame, the pricing is great.

 

Only for those 'new' to Amazon Music unfortunately

My subscription is / was due next week but being realistic I don't use it often enough to justify it so have cancelled.

Jim

 

Waiting for the Naim app to be updated......

 

Hey. There's some good sounding stuff on there if you dig deep. £7.99 a month?

 

I’m on £7.99, bit of a bargain. Also have Spotify Family for the family and happy to retain that.

 

On a 6month trial of Music HD.

As everyone else has said it does seem completely pointless to offer an HD service (yes most is 44.1 but do have quite a lot of 96 & even 192 material) but offer no way to stream this other than via PC. I do agree that the quality of recording trumps the streaming format but nonetheless why bother offering hires streaming if its very difficult to access it? Presume an Echo device with digital output is on the way.

As with quite a few others my critical listening is through the HiFi & is based around LMS / Squeezebox Touch + RME ADI DAC, but obviouly no way to use this for Amazon. I do use it via Chromecast Audio (optical out) but it seems output is limited to the casting device (?) which if using Android phone is a bit messy 48k. It's convenient though. I don't know of any other streaming devices that can take advantage of the Hires stuff.
The only solution is to connect a PC with a decent didgital out to the hifi (which i'm prob not going to do).

I have had it running from my office PC / digital out to Chord Mojo (96k - the limit of my audio card I believe via optical) and it sounds pretty good via the office system.

It would be great value if only I could find a convenient way to take advantage of it.

 

I had the original free trial and had the same issue . However unlike many I only wanted to be able to stream from an Amazon Cube TV box through my Onkyo AV receiver and be able to get the Ultra HD streams not just the CD quality . Back them when they first started this service there was no way of switching the stream on to Ultra HD .

I have now just taken out a new 30 day trial and found that I can change the Audio settings to allow Ultra HD on my Onkyo and it works .

 

So is it now possible to get the audio stream from Amazon into your network and from there into your DAC via USB, coax or AES/EBU, all without passing through your operating system's mixer?

 

I do most of my listening using Qobuz via Roon. However, there are times with my wife when we just want to use voice commands from a digital assistant to play a single song to our living room set up rather than through a disappointing small speaker. If I could cast Amazon Prime Music via an Amazon echo device to a chromecast device, that would be a good cheap option. But I can’t because Google and Amazon don’t want to play ball with each other.

This rather discounts Amazon music for me.