High resolution audio from Amazon

I don’t know. How big is the overall HD music market? Does Amazon hope to grow it? I note that already on day 1 it is listing on its description page a bunch of high-end hardware manufacturers but no Meridian, Chord, Linn, KEF etc which are all Roon endpoints. By working with Roon to enable Amazon integration it then gets a path to stream its content direct to all those Roon endpoints. Don’t underestimate the power of exposure at time of purchasing high-end audio equipment. I would never have heard of Roon or Tidal if I hadn’t seen them promoted by KEF when I bought my LS50 Wireless (admittedly I was living under a rock as far as streaming went until a couple of months ago).

I could even see a case for Amazon buying Roon. “What devices can I watch/listen-to your service on?” is a pretty crucial FAQ for most services and having a broad range of devices and making it easy to set up on those devices can be critical to success. Roon brings some useful end points to the game and also its integration with locally stored purchased music could play nicely in the Amazon ecosystem if Amazon were to also offer a download store because Amazon could integrate one-click purchasing into Roon to buy HD downloads and put them into your Roon library automatically. Amazon also has AWS so could offer a remotely hosted (on Amazon servers) option for a user’s Roon Core which would make setup way easier for non-technical users. With all that combined Amazon could put together a pretty comprehensive set of high-end hardware partners and get a pretty strong lock on a customer’s music streaming and purchasing activity.

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What happens if you choose wasapi or asio drivers as the default output device on your PC? And if you also disable the other audio outputs (under “sound” in Windows).

Well disappointing the App does not get exclusive use of the DAC on a pc so is sending all audio at the soundcards set rate, no SR switching, Very disappointig. I sent feedback from the app about this. Maybe they will listen.

Makes no difference it has no exclusive mode. I just used my Dragonfly and its using System audio as everything is 96/24. ,

It wont do this on windows either.

Yeah, can’t find it right now, but someone (danny, I think) mentioned it in passing.

Since then, it’s been linked to a couple of times.


andybob says "next milestone’, but I think that’s been cracked.

Also -

Thanks for the info, @CrystalGipsy, and thanks @danny2 for the response.

This is unfortunate, but, it’s early days yet. If Amazon wants to bring higher quality audio to the masses, these are hurdles that the average user will not care to navigate, but, options such as output selection need to be there, at least for the initial group of users who will drive this service.

To be fair, it took Spotify YEARS to allow output selection…Anyone remember a little program called “Fidelify”?

I signed up for a trial. Played it last evening on my Devialet Expert 220 Pro via AirPlay. Interestingly, when a song plays, you have the option to click “HD” or “Ultra HD” and find out: Track Quality, Device Capability and Currently streaming at. For example, on one song, which was listed as an Ultra HD track, all the indicators were 24/96. On another occasion, I played an Ultra HD track and the first two indicators were 24/96 but the Currently streaming at indicator was “Standard.” The last indicator seems to output randomly, which Amazon attributes to “varying network conditions.” I would hate to pay for a service and not have it deliver consistent HD or Ultra HD. This will bear watching.

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Thanks for the report, Michael.

Putting two and two together here, and, I have no insider info, but, this sounds very much like Amazon is using Orastream for its back-end.

Orastream does adaptive bit-rate streaming, and handles the back-end for Neil Young’s service.

Who was in Amazon’s press release yesterday saying Amazon HD was going to “save the earth”, or some such nonsense? Why, it was Neil Young, himself! Interesting…:thinking:

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Playing around with the Windows app. As mentioned, can’t select output device, no exclusive mode. Uses default sound device and Windows mixer. Must set default bit rate/depth for shared device in Windows to max for your dac/device and Windows resamples everything to that. Sound quality is ok, not quite as good as roon but pretty good. Hopefully Amazon will fix this. Bonus: responds to standard media player remote controls.

UI isn’t horrible. Can’t turn off annoying lyrics on now playing screen. Search is fast and flexible.

Bonus: can import your library. Plays flac files fine. Combines your local and your Amazon albums under “my music”. Has a metadata editor. Not sure shere changes are saved, probably your cloud.

There are a lot of curated playlists that are pretty good. Their radio stations are very nice. Lots of relevant variety.

Catalog looks pretty extensive. Haven’t been able to stump it yet.

There are “buy from store” links everywhere. Seems to all be the mp3 store so far, though.

Windows player app is actually pretty nice and easy to use. Roku app seems limited, not sure if it has hd support, fixed 48k output. No hd support for Chromecast from android tablet. Will be trying firestick tomorrow.

Overall, pretty impressed.

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I think combinig your own and streaming is a great Roon like feature.

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Today noticed that Amazon are now offering Hi-Res streaming up to 24/192 with very competitive pricing, £129 per year or £12.99 per month with a free trial. At the moment subscribe to Qobuz Sublime which ends in December and was thinking of downgrading to CD quality for £199 per year. Considering the huge price difference and some would say aggressive pricing could we see a price war in the near future with certain sites going out of business?. Watch this space quote comes to mind. Your Thoughts!.

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You can change the settings to only play at highest level. The issue is have on the Mac is it doesn’t automatically change the output rate settings. Same goes for the iPhone. Think there needs to be some software upgrades soon for this to work properly. Didn’t matter when just offering mp3s. At least I have 3 month trial so can see what progress they make in that time.

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I’m committed to Roon (lifetime membership & Nucleus), Qobuz (Sublime+), and I also have a large collection of High-Res files on my SSD & HDD that I have bought over the last few years. I use a USB DAC from the Nucleus. And I’m very, very happy. I wouldn’t change a thing.

However if I hadn’t committed to the above, and I was effectively ‘starting again from scratch’, the prospect of an Echo Link, with a subscription to Amazon Music HD, connected via TOSLINK to a DAC, controlled from my iPad would like mighty attractive, on a cost basis at least.

It’s a completely different class of product from Roon, but I think the Amazon product will appeal to many on a cost-basis, especially if you use Roon in a single zone only.

I think Roon needs to ‘watch out’…

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I’m mostly using roon as a single zone and would consider just using Amazon for the price. But their software need to work right first. Would also like iPhone remote access to desktop. Still not sure this would be ideal when roon and Qobuz get me most of the way there.

I’m either hoping for Amazon integration or that Qobuz ups their game by offering comparable catalog and/or lower prices.

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+1. Put me down for this too… if I can’t bypass the Windows mixer and the native Android Audio Renderer, I’m not sure there’s much value to lossless compared to high-bit-rate-lossy… WASAPI Exclusive, USB Audio Player Pro, and Roon controlling the streams to my CCA’s and OPPO are where the benefits of lossless really shine, for me at least…

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Let’s give it some time and see where this service is a few months from now. Amazon is accepting user feedback via the app. If enough people mention output selection and bit-perfect output as requirements to retaining a subscription, I am sure they will take notice.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer!

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I just got the 90 day free trial .Ill see how good it is.

If Amazon gets the content, then most of the others will be in trouble. They have far too many resources and cash to throw at any effort. They also have an infrastructure in AWS that will allow them to make this offering global very quickly.

But, at the end of the day it’s all about content and quality of the content for us.

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