High resolution audio from Amazon

They already have.

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For me it is not working either, complains that Amazon Music is not available in my region. Works fine on iPhone and Echo though…

Spotify and Tidal of course work here as well. Amazon Music HD is not available yet either (but the regular Amazon Music Unlimited is).

Qobuz is not any better:

So with Roon, Tidal is the only option at the moment…

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@Craig_Palmer thanks for your insights… please keep sharing if you hear anything new from your connections!

I thought I had a pretty good vision here (get Jeff Bezos into Roon!):

Spotify or Spotify HiFi in Roon [spotify will not allow this]

What is clear is much change ahead with 5G and emerging technologies.

Agree that Tidal, Qobuz, and Roon are all in precarious position even though they may want to remain independent.

My perfect scenario:
Sharing, playlist, discovery features of Spotify + HiRes + Roon + dynamic mobile solution + multi room slickness of Sonos + artist getting max $

Hard to get it all!

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Well I’m back. After a good effort to use Amazon music I just couldn’t take it. It’s sound quality is good but the navigation in the app is terrible. Also I couldn’t find an affordable way to stream the HD music to my system, Roon gives me options for that. I rejoined Tidal my son in college used his student status for a discount.

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Jim from the 901 to any other Bose products I would not own one. However if you don’t high performance system it might be the good way to go. Maybe

A post was merged into an existing topic: Integration of Amazon Music High Resolution

The latest version of the windows app has exclusive mode. This would allow Roon to work properly with the service.

Saw this today on another forum:

I can’t access Amazon Music HD from my country.

Maybe someone could test and confirm?

The new version allows exclusive mode.

@steveoat87 can you share screenshots of the options/settings for it?

It does not set the bit-rate on my Pro-Ject Pre Box S2, so no bit perfect,

image

It also appears not to remember the selected settings across app restarts :unamused:

This is actual more like hog mode. It takes full control of the volume and doesn’t allow other programs to output sound. It’s not auto changing sample rate like Qobuz or Tidal does. So still useless for hires.

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I am using the exclusive mode with my Oppo HA-2SE DAC. Unfortunately, the Amazon Music app believed the DAC’s capability tops out at 24 bit/48 kHz…obviously wrong. I realized then that Amazon is looking at whatever the Windows properties are for the device which sets a default bitrate. So, it looks like the “exclusive” mode Amazon is using still relies on the Windows sound output and it seems all music is getting resampled to the max Windows output rate. I have mine now set at 24 bit / 192 kHz but I believe this isn’t bitperfect still.

Same behavior on MacOS. If you set a bit rate (using OS util), then set exclusive mode in Amazon app, the app adopts whatever rate you set, and actually will not let you change it.

This may be a good sign, as the app is in some sense controlling the bit rate, just not switching it per song (yet). One would think that capability will be coming down the pike sooner rather than later.

That behavior is the same as iTunes and is not a good thing. You want the app to control the output like roon does in exclusive mode. So no matter what the utility is set that app will change it based on the actual file it’s playing.

Not sure if any updates were made to the mobile software but it also didn’t change sampling rate. Even though software claimed it does, the dac would should the same input not matter what.

Also, does not support upNp

Amazon has not shown any interest in adding bit rate conversion to its service. That is really the crux of the matter for many of us who are accustomed to using music services that utilize that feature.

No MQA :slight_smile:

Strange & somewhat irrational reason!

This is a Roon forum, so I suppose it is fairly reasonable to assume that you use Room as a front end for your streaming system. So, you would abandon Roon and move to Amazon just to avoid the remote possibility that you accidentally play an MQA encoded track from Tidal from time to time?

Weird!

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Neither strange nor irrational :slight_smile:

MQA has well documented shortcomings. Lossy “hires” is pointless to me. I have no need for a faux hires solution as bandwidth is adequate for my streaming needs. Others may need what MQA offers and those needs may outweigh the disadvantages the format offers. My chief complaint beyond it being lossy, is the vendor lockin. I don’t want to see a Dolby situation happen in music. It will help nobody except Meridian.

I have a lifetime license to Roon, I have zero plans on abandoning it. I supported it a few years ago and haven’t looked back. I have no reason to move to Amazon as Qobuz suits my needs just fine, and accidentally playing MQA would indeed be a disaster :wink: Those distortions aren’t suited to a HiFi setup.

Nothing weird about this. I think it’s weird people are willing to put up with yet another lossy scheme when we have a perfectly good choice of lossless codecs.