High resolution audio from Amazon

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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I’m already seeing Amazon steam Tool and David Bowie in 192k vs the 96k of Qobuz. Also seeing cd quality albums that were completely missing from Qobuz. Only tested for about 5 min. Can’t quite figure out how to pull up lyrics yet or use Soundliz to sync favorites.

Edit: not sure what sample rates it’s outputting. Everything I play, even HD is showing blue light on my Chord Hugo. That’s supposed to be 192. Think something’s wrong.

So if you hit the HD Ultra badge it tells what the rate is but color lights not changing so something is not right with mobile app on iPhone using camera output.

I too would like to see Amazon Hi Res integrated into Roon if possible. Nothing wrong with having more choices, especially one with a gigantic catalog of music.

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To a first approximation, I’d agree. But having seen how authors have been squeezed with Amazon’s domination of e-books, I’m not so happy about what might happen to musicians.

It’s already happened. Spotify, Apple and others have already made it very difficult for musicians to earn a decent living.

Like Jeff Bezos? ;^)

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I pay $20 / month for Qobuz. AmazonHD is also $20 / month and has nowhere NEAR the classical library that Qobuz does. Also no discounts for high resolution downloads, included for free from Qobuz - in fact, no high resolution downloads at all (all purchases still MP3).

Don’t see how this even competes with Qobuz. Tidal, maybe.

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How is Amazon $20? It’s $12.95 for prime members, $14.99 for non-Prime members, and $20 for a family of 6.