Glad I could help! It was quite enlightening to me as well when I discovered that function… I wish TIDAL had something similar, that was one of the reasons I purchased the Pro-Ject DAC, as it not only indicates you’re playing an MQA but also shows the specs for the particular song.
My Pixel phone also shows 24/48 as the device’s capability, but it certainly sounds good! I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the difference between HD and UltraHD while listening to my wired headphones on my phone. Don’t know whether Blutooth phones can do hi-rez, I’ll have to explore further.
Regardless, far better than the old cassette Walkman days eh?
I’ll give Qobuz a try James, thanks for the suggestion. Would be pretty hard to get me off TIDAL though, have a lot of playlists on there. I have decided to keep both Amazon MusicHD and and TIDAL though, as both have their advantages.
You can transfer playlist and favorites using Soundliz. Cost you $4 to do transfer. Issue is Qobuz is still missing about 20% of what Tidal or Amazon has. Even though I’ve canceled Tidal my account info is still available for transfer. So I’ve been syncing up each week filling in the missing albums. Last few times haven’t pulled in much. I’ll give it another try in 6 months.
I can’t seem to find that output preference. It’s not during installation nor the preferences. It installs and goes straight to the sign-in/homepage.
I do change the defaults away from Best Available to Ultra HD/HD. I find automatic adjustments not useful, especially on a 300+ speed tier. It should, in theory, always output Max but sometimes a download can cause the network to look slower.
For me, Amazon HD works flawless on a Marantz NA6006. It’s native to the device in high-resolution, and displays the artist information. They upgraded HEOS for Amazon HD.
David, might have been confusing on my part as it’s part of Windows 10 settings, not in the app settings. Go to Settings, System, Sound, Output (Choose your output device). You can set your default output volume there as well.
Unfortunately, it won’t allow you to transfer any playlists to Amazon Music, only from, which is the opposite of what i wanted to do. I’ve got a huge playlist in TIDAL that I wanted to pull over to Amazon as it has some tracks available that you can’t get on TIDAL. Hopefully that will change in the near future.
It’s interesting, the more I compare Amazon UltraHD and TIDAL MQA tracks, the vote is almost always in favor of the MQA. The UltraHD’s sound great, but maybe it’s the type of music I listen to (blues, rock and roll, and Americana) that sounds just a bit edgier with MQA… pretty unanimous among all of my friends as well. BTW, TIDAL has the new 2019 remaster/remix of “Let It Bleed” now since 11/1 and damn does that sound good, especially listening with headphones… I heard a bunch of stuff I never knew was there before and it added a lot to the quality of the songs, Gimme Shelter and You Can’t Always Get What You Want in particular.
This is really underireable as you have to chage it for each format you want to play or you not getting bit perfect playback for rates above or below the set rate. Its really not a solution as the applications should have direct acces to the DAC or soundcard and change the sample and bit rate automatically. But Amazon seem to think exlusive access is not important for HiFi playback, This is the reason any body with any sense should ignore this service until they get the fundamentals right.
Thanks Roy. That is my default, and the only option (LS50 Wireless). I had already disabled all my other outputs, such as my monitor, optical out, etc.
You also want “Device Properties” set to 192/24, or the highest for your setup. I noticed there is “App Volume Preferences” which allows me to change the defaults for each App, such as Amazon Music, Chrome, etc. So I could have Amazon default to LS50’s while having chrome and windows sounds default to my monitor (which I can then mute independently).
Out of curiosity, what are people using for MQA full decoding with Roon?
Hi David. I set my device properties to 24/192 also but my foggy brain couldn’t remember where the heck I had done it at! Thanks for pointing that out. I also set my volume preferences for each format/app to 100% so I could A&B them and have a reasonable assurance the output volumes to my DAC were the same, which they seem to be.
Haven’t experimented much with Roon and MQA’s yet, when I do I’ll post what works or ask what I’m doing wrong!
There are so many different settings in Windows and the various apps and devices I think someone like Sound & Vision or Stereophile could do us all a big favor by writing a comprehensive guide to what needs to be set and where for the OS, app, and device you’re using. I have the Stereophile article that convinced me to purchase the Pro-Ject DAC I’m using bookmarked as the article was the only location that told me the proper way to set things in order to “unfold” MQA’s… the Pro-Ject info was garbage and they make the device!
Another iOS update and still no fix for the forced over sampling. I’m just coming to cancel my trial.
Qobuz has actually shown some improvement in filling their back catalog and we also have roon 1.7 out. No mobile version yet but I’d hate to not use it at home just to run Amazon.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
790
I have to wonder about the size of these markets. 99% of music listeners must be using Spotify or YouTube or Pandora or something that has a reasonable free tier, because they don’t really care that much about SQ – MP3 is just fine.
Of the rest – the 1 % – Apple music has an existing chunk, then TIDAL and Amazon HD and Qobuz split up the miniscule portion that’s left.
I’d maybe bet on Spotify long term. They have the contracts, the advertisers, the customers. If they see a shift towards hi-res, they can simply shift their system to accommodate it. Amazon has the money and the heft to muscle them, but does Amazon really care about this?
I was thinking the same thing today. The way Amazon has rolled out HD it’s like they mean to intentionally insult “audiophiles,” saying “we don’t want you because you are more trouble than you’re worth.”
This makes me think the market must be really small. There are a lot of niche products for this small market, but they seem to be from small outfits that have to charge a lot for their products to survive.
These days it seems like home theater AV is the sweet spot at the intersection of marginally acceptable quality and economy of scale value. But even that’s becoming a niche market.
I doubt this was their intention but I don’t disagree if feels that way. I thought the way Amazon rolled out their hi-res service was a little strange but after some thought I believe their intent was NOT to cater to the audiophile community. They came up with alternative marketing terms like “HD” and “UltraHD” instead of the “Hi-Res” terms audiophiles use and recognize. I think they did this because it would resonate more with the people that have come to understand this from video/TVs. That’s the market they are targeting.
Ditto for me. I doubt that I have ever used Bandcamp for streaming even a single track, but I always now check there first to see if the artist’s work is available for purchase there. Over the last year the number of 24 bit downloads available on Bandcamp seems to have massively increased.
Although I am a prime subscriber have also cancelled my trial for two reasons,
Integration into BluOS not that good, Album art too small and adding albums a bit hit and miss.
OSX desktop app needs improving.
Doing a three month trial of Apple Music and although is only low bitrate sounds ok to me. The app is more intuitive and recommends more appropriate artists based on what I listen to also text on the iPhone X app is large enough for me to read whilst in bed about 18 to 24 inches away. Downside it is not integrated into Roon but I have used Bluetooth to the Pulse and is good enough for casual listening. Seriously considering trying a HomePod with Airplay to find out if the quality is any better than the Pulse. Is anybody here using one at the moment? if so give me some feedback.