Amazon launches lossless high-res music service!

[FrantzM]

There were many excellent points made in this thread. The streaming vs owning was particularly interesting. I am a between-er. I have about 3000 CD on my HDD and about 2000 LP I dream of, but will likely never digitalise... I have Spotify and Tidal and they cover all my musical ground. If I truly like something, I buy it> I also have pieces I like that remain in the Cloud since I do not foresee not streaming anytime soon...

I am somehow bothered to how much of our lives those giants corporation own: Be it Google who seems to know everything about us , Amazon, Apple, Facebook ( I use this one rarely ... perhaps less than 10 time a year ); they know us too much and let's face it: they are at a point where they can and do modify our behavior. Not merely suggesting behavioral changes but encouraging , even forcing new model of consumption on us. I believe we are reaching a point of deliberate malfeasance from many of those. We are simply fodder for their profit machines ... We need to be more conscious of people that are watching our very moves and lives. They cannot be all benevolent.Sorry about the rant...

 

[pjug]

I don't see any way to see what bitrate/depth is being streamed. I only see a 'CD' or 'HR' icon. There's no options in my BluOS app. I have no idea why it's sounding bad. I agree it makes no sense. Maybe I listened to 5 poorly remastered titles.

If you cannot use an external dac that tells you, another option is looking at the diagnostics log. It is in the help menu. It's not the easiest thing to look through, but it will give you track bit rate and format.

 

[audimus]

I am somehow bothered to how much of our lives those giants corporation own: Be it Google who seems to know everything about us , Amazon, Apple, Facebook ( I use this one rarely ... perhaps less than 10 time a year ). They know us to much and let's face it they are at a point where they cam modify our behavior. Not merely suggesting behavioral changes but encouraging , even forcing new model of consumption on us. I believe we are reaching a point of deliberate malfeasance from many of those. We are simply fodder for their profit machines ... We need to be more conscious of people that are watching our very moves and lives. They cannot be all benevolent.Sorry about the rant...

I think this is a very valid comment, not a rant. But we have ourselves to blame.

It used to be that a company brought out a product, you paid for it, the company realized its profits from that sale and did more products. It didn’t need to monetize what they know about you or what they gathered from you as part of the business model.

And then Silicon Valley went rogue (and I say this as an insider not someone throwing stones at it from outside). The same financial considerations that corrupted Wall Street corrupted Silicon Valley because the money involved became so huge. So, business models morphed from value creation to preying on customers. The move to an advertising model was a cancer that metastasized. It became a race for who can provide the most targeting information.

Shaky business models that had no sustainability in the pricing tried to get market share by giving away the product or pricing it cheap and we fell into that trap hook, line and sinker. Who wouldn’t? When we learned that the business model involved monetizing our data, we said Ok what harm can come out of it if as they said it is only used to improve the service. When the same mechanism was used to harvest data and influence elections that affected our way of life, we said that is fine as long as I personally benefitted or was not affected and my opponent was crushed.

In other words, just like Wall Street that preys on ignorance, greed and hypocrisy, Silicon Valley (and I mean that generically now since this model is copied the world over) has been preying on the ignorance, greed, brand identity cultism and hate for others to monetize.

In other words, they exploited our descent into lack of intellectual honesty in ourselves and collected money that some of us with investments in the financial world also benefit from and so tend to ignore if not condone. No saints here.

 

[dmac6419]

MQA doesn't actually use any less bandwidth than a full quality FLAC file.

mqa is smaller than a flac file

 

[Julf]

mqa is smaller than a flac file

FLAC of what sample rate and number of bits?

 

[day7a1]

16 bits of resolution sufficient

Oof, could you imagine listening to such a thing? You'd have to sit in a chamber, trying to not breathe just to hear the quiet parts, then BOOM!!!! 96dB in your face. Sitting there trying to get your earplugs in.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Oof, could you imagine listening to such a thing? You'd have to sit in a chamber, trying to not breathe just to hear the quiet parts, then BOOM!!!! 96dB in your face. Sitting there trying to get your earplugs in.

It would be like cranking up the volume on Tchaikovsk's 1812 Overture, which ruined more than one set of listener's speakers during the vinyl era.

Sound intensity doubles every 6 dB. So 16 bits, or 96 dB, is a huge range.

 

[Webninja]

I'm on the trial - current Roon/Tidal users, but I wouldn't mind saving a few bucks. The Mac Desktop app is ok, doesn't have direct mode (like someone mentioned also missing from Windows App).

For playlist conversions, I've been happy with Soundiiz - has worked to transfer/sync from Spotify to Tidal - https://soundiiz.com/

 

[Blumlein 88]

mqa is smaller than a flac file

I believe what Julf is referring to is that you can have a 16 bit 96 khz FLAC file which is a bit smaller than MQA. And it has the full 16 bits of range, and full frequency response while being lossless. MQA will be lossy at the higher frequencies and I seem to recall is really only 16 bits with the lossy stuff folded into the noise below 16 bits. On the CD versions of MQA I think you are only getting 13 bits. The lossy part is everything over 24 khz.

 

[ripvw]

Tidal vs Amazon:

Was listening to Cat Stevens Teaser and the Firecat last night on Amazon - they had several versions of the album including some in "Ultra HD". It sounded great until I got to "Peace Train" - the original studio version is GONE! All copies of "Peace Train" on Amazon no matter what album, even a "Hits of the 70's" type album with lots of artists on it - had a live version of "Peace Train".

I went to Tidal and noticed that there were no "Master" copies of Teaser and the Firecat available, however the original studio version of "Peace Train" was there on the album.

Giving me lossless and HD versions of music I love is wonderful - but messing with the original songs is not. If this is Cat Steven's (Yusef) wish and not Amazon's then I guess it is only a matter of time before Tidal and all the other services will have to capitulate. Either way, I don't like it...thank God I have the original CD copied and stored on my Mac and in the cloud.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Tidal vs Amazon:

Was listening to Cat Stevens Teaser and the Firecat last night on Amazon - they had several versions of the album including some in "Ultra HD". It sounded great until I got to "Peace Train" - the original studio version is GONE! All copies of "Peace Train" on Amazon no matter what album, even a "Hits of the 70's" type album with lots of artists on it - had a live version of "Peace Train".

I went to Tidal and noticed that there were no "Master" copies of Teaser and the Firecat available, however the original studio version of "Peace Train" was there on the album.

Giving me lossless and HD versions of music I love is wonderful - but messing with the original songs is not. If this is Cat Steven's (Yusef) wish and not Amazon's then I guess it is only a matter of time before Tidal and all the other services will have to capitulate. Either way, I don't like it...thank God I have the original CD copied and stored on my Mac and in the cloud.

Yeah, welcome to version control. I would imagine the good versions accrue a higher royalty, less for the marginal ones. Then, on top of that, there is probably a quality factor. High DR vs low DR masters.

This doesn't surprise me in the least. It's something I experienced before on iTunes, where you can get the single release version and not the full play one (different intro, length, etc.).

The future is here. Isn't it great?

 

[GrimSurfer]

Cat Stevens Greatest Hits DR ratings:

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Cat+stevens&album=Greatest+hits

Ignore the vinyl. The DRMAAT software was never designed to measure vinyl (but this doesn't stop ppl from trying).

Hint: The one with the lowest DR is the remaster. No surprise there!

 

[audimus]

So, all these measurements on this site and search for perfection is just so people can listen to Cat Stevens?

 

[Eirikur]

Wow, disc 1 (studio) of the “deluxe” version of Teaser and the Firecat has the lower DR rating by a good margin!!!
That’s an eye opener. That’s messed up.

If you think that's bad, look at the ongoing remaster massacre of T.Rex albums
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr?artist=rex&album=electric

... and even my beloved Yes albums (thank you Steven Wilson for fixing that!)
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr?artist=yes&album=fragile
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr?artist=yes&album=close

Should I go on? Punk rock albums from Bad Religion
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr?artist=religion&album=generator
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr?artist=religion&album=grain

OK, I'm going to bed now, before I wind myself up too much.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Steve Wilson deserves great credit for his remasters of Yes Albums.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Wow, of the studio versions disc 1 (studio) of the “deluxe” version of Teaser and the Firecat has the lower DR rating by a good margin!!!

That’s an eye opener. That seems messed up. Thanks for the link to the database.

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Cat+stevens&album=Teaser+and+the+firecat

My pleasure @StevenEleven. I find it interesting that, yet again, the best CD DRs are those produced in Germany. Japan has hits and misses. Sometimes Canada does OK. US, not as good as those previously mentioned.

Since most pressings in the analog tape era were from copies of masters, I wonder if a big producer like the US (with many pressing facilities) used "copies of copies of masters"? It might explain why US pressings don't rival those of Germany.

Just spit balling here...

 

[Sal1950]

Steve Wilson deserves great credit for his remasters of Yes Albums.

AMEN,
I have the Definitive releases of The Yes Album, Close, Fragile, Topographic, and Relayer. All deliver the best there is in stereo masterings, plus awesome 5.1 BluRay remasters with the original set list and sort of extras.
Between Steven Wilson and Alan Parsons, the catalogs of classic Progressive Rock works has been truely blessed.

 

[jasonq997]

My review:

I am happy Amazon introduced a lossless service on the back of the "unlimited" service I am already subscribed to. I liked that service because it was cheap on top of the Prime subscription. A few bucks more a month is fine (or maybe I will just switch to yearly).

The tracks are all mostly there. I am a classical fan first and foremost, and the big problem is obviously with navigation. The applications for all of these services are terrible in this respect but Amazon is the worst. They have the big catalogs on hand but they are hell to navigate. However I will keep subscribing because they are cheap, and I trust them to improve. Lossless is better than lossy in the rare instances where I notice a difference. That is my review.

P.S. I hope that they open the system up to outside applications to fix the album navigation problem and add more features.

 

[SIY]

AMEN,
I have the Definitive releases of The Yes Album, Close, Fragile, Topographic, and Relayer. All deliver the best there is in stereo masterings, plus awesome 5.1 BluRay remasters with the original set list and sort of extras.
Between Steven Wilson and Alan Parsons, the catalogs of classic Progressive Rock works has been truely blessed.

I have his remasters of the early Tull albums. Superb.

 

[Bamyasi]

I have just ordered Amazon Fire 7" Tablet (2019) as this seems to be the only non-desktop device officially supported for HD and Ultra HD playback. There is no definitive information yet whether something like bitperfect transfer would work but it looks like USB DACs can be connected using USB OTG adapters. The tablet is currently on sale, with Amazon Prime offering it for just $30.

I do not have computers in my living/listening room and I would like to keep it this way hereafter.