High resolution audio from Amazon

Oh,the streaming is supposed to be better than cd 16/44.1. Sweet!

Amazon should just buy Tidal.

Once Amazon is in ,all the major players will go Hi res ,except maybe Apple who are behind the time in AI and many other things.

Apple might. There were previous discussions

According to the report here
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/amazon-is-readying-a-hi-def-music-streaming-service/

Amazon is preparing to launch a high res streaming service soon. Cost is predicted to be $15 a month and quality “better than cd”. No doubt you will be able to say “Hey Alexa …”. Anyone know anything? Will Roon be able to integrate this?

Amazon doesn’t really care about music so I’m doubting it’s a well designed service but we’ll see. It’s only a matter of time before all the services begin to roll out Hirez options.

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It occurs to me that Amazon may well host cloud services for the likes of Tidal, Qobuz and even Apple so they know exactly how popular these services are and who the customers are. Not accusing them of anything, just saying.

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This is probably true but if it gets most major players like Spotify and Apple to start offering cd quality or better streaming it is a huge win for us !

Has anyone seen this? Could end up worthwhile for prime users. Would love another option in Roon for streaming though I feel this is a long way off.

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According to several websites amazon is moving towards better than cd quality streaming.

Yep, been discussed on 3 different threads.

I personally would welcome Amazon. Tidal has lousy customer service and inconsistent streaming performance and I wouldn’t hesitate a moment to leave. Frankly, when Qobuz came into the market a couple of months ago, I was ready to leave Tidal, but their limited catalog is what kept me with Tidal.

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It’s a better bit rate! Reminds me of some of the hype around the pono music store pre launch… which turned out to be a real damp squib

I welcome it too as progress (hell - anything to bury mp3’s) but assume the reality will be mostly cd quality with a much smaller ratio of actual high res. Just like the others.

I’m fine with CD quality streaming, at least its lossless.

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Nice news. It might finally push spotify towards CD quality streaming. That would change the game, because honestly, nothing beats Spotify’s UI and algorithms. Spotify connect beats Roon hands down for ease of use. Almost true PnP. But… I’m not subscribing because of poor SQ.

As for being limited to Amazon devices: have you seen and heard what a humble Fire TV stick is capable of? Stick this in a receiver with a decent on board DAC and you’re up and running at a very low price point.

Crossing my fingers and hoping…

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the echo link supports tidal, and has a coax out, and supports Tidal, and sample rates of 44.1, 48.0, 88.2, and 96.0 kHz over optical and coaxial digital inputs.

i wonder about the coax output however.

Amazon has released its HD offering, which includes lossless and higher resolution FLAC.

I would really like to see Roon adopt this as an addition to Qobuz and Tidal.

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Looks compelling too:

Amazon is launching a new tier of its music service today, dubbed Amazon Music HD. It offers lossless versions of audio files for streaming or downloading at a price that aggressively undercuts Tidal, the main competition for this kind of audio. Amazon will charge $14.99 a month for the HD tier, or $12.99 if you’re an Amazon Prime customer. Tidal’s Hi-Fi plan costs $19.99 monthly. The new plan was rumored a few months ago.

Amazon says it has a catalog of over 50 million songs that it calls “High Definition,” which is the term it’s applying to songs with CD-quality bit depth of 16 bits and a 44.1kHz sample rate. It also has “millions” (read: less than 10 million, more than one million) of songs it’s calling “Ultra HD,” which translates to 24-bit with sample rates that range from 44.1kHz up to 192kHz. Amazon Music HD will deliver them all in the lossless FLAC file format, instead of the MQA format that Tidal uses.

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They have the deep pockets to undercut anybody. I can’t see them opening it up to Roon though as they will want to track it all but who knows. Being a prime subscriber it’s an interesting prospect.

How would they lose - they’ll know all they can about your music tastes whether you use Roon or something else to drive playback, not so?