Amazon Music - 24/44.1 material is "Ultra HD"?

[ishmeister]

I'm on the free trial and I notice that 16/44.1 material is "HD" and 24/44.1 material is "Ultra HD". This is extremely boderline isn't it? At least with an Ultra HD TV there is a clear visible "benefit" if you get a bigger TV or stick your nose to the screen. This whole TV inspired classification system seems wrong to me.

 

[MZKM]

Some people want to pay more for "ultra", regardless if they actually benefit from it. My uncle buys the maxed out storage iPhone every year, I checked and he only uses like 10GB, he just wants to have the best no matter what (mostly to brag).

TIDAL used to label 320Kbps AAC as "Low", now it is simply "Normal".

At least with an Ultra HD TV there is a clear visible "benefit"

Tell that to my mother, I always catch her watching tv on the SD stations, despite having a 75" QLED.

 

[fieldcar]

From what I've found, anything higher than 44.1/48KHz and 16 bit, is a waste unless you can hear greater than -120dB SnR and past 24KHz, but you can't.

Article on why Hi-Rez audio is not worth it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200106153341/https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Worth a watch.

 

[Vini darko]

Main benifit of the ultra hd subsriction is access to the full catalog. Wich is still missing omni trio's albums . The higher resolutions are a brucie bonus. And it costs less than the others.

 

[Jimbob54]

Some people want to pay more for "ultra", regardless if they actually benefit from it. My uncle buys the maxed out storage iPhone every year, I checked and he only uses like 10GB, he just wants to have the best no matter what (mostly to brag).

TIDAL used to label 320Kbps AAC as "Low", now it is simply "Normal".


Tell that to my mother, I always catch her watching tv on the SD stations, despite having a 75" QLED.

This is what parents of all ages do. They are programmed to find the lowest quality version of anything and pretend not to notice when a far superior version is put in front of them.

 

[ishmeister]

Main benifit of the ultra hd subsriction is access to the full catalog. Wich is still missing omni trio's albums . The higher resolutions are a brucie bonus. And it costs less than the others.

Ah ok, I wasn't aware of that.

 

[Sukie]

I'm on the free trial and I notice that 16/44.1 material is "HD" and 24/44.1 material is "Ultra HD". This is extremely boderline isn't it? At least with an Ultra HD TV there is a clear visible "benefit" if you get a bigger TV or stick your nose to the screen. This whole TV inspired classification system seems wrong to me.

It's just a matter of terminology for audio that exceeds CD resolution. Amazon calls it Ultra HD, other streaming services, e.g. Qobuz, call it Hi-Res.

Whether or not there's an audible difference is another matter!

 

[ishmeister]

It's just a matter of terminology for audio that exceeds CD resolution. Amazon calls it Ultra HD, other streaming services, e.g. Qobuz, call it Hi-Res.

Whether or not there's an audible difference is another matter!

That's fine. If they reserved the label for sampling rates of 48khz+ I'd be ok with it. But I've played a lot of tracks that are 24/44.1. Are these really higher resolution? You can make it "ultra HD" just by padding extra zeros? Do these tracks get more royalties if the subscription is higher?

 

[Sukie]

That's fine. If they reserved the label for sampling rates of 48khz+ I'd be ok with it. But I've played a lot of tracks that are 24/44.1. Are these really higher resolution? You can make it "ultra HD" just by padding extra zeros? Do these tracks get more royalties if the subscription is higher?

24/44.1 is higher resolution than CD quality and that's the key.

Personally I don't use Amazon Music so this isn't a defence of them, but it would seem that anything above CD quality is Hi-Res (or UHD in Amazon's definition).

I have no idea about royalty rates. I do know that streaming isn't hugely lucrative for artists, but it's the world we live in.

 

[cathodeb]

[QUOTE="fieldcar, post: 524070, member: 9930"
Article on why Hi-Rez audio is not worth it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200106153341/https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Worth a watch.

[/QUOTE]

This should be mandatory reading for everyone who comments on this issue. It seems that about half the people that post at ASR are under the impression that lossy does not sound as good as lossless.

 

[valerianf]

Interesting article, but speaking only about non compressed digital signal in a engineer lab.

My own experience is completely different.
I was working on a custom class D amp and a custom transducer.
The source material was a MP3 file provided by a professional studio specialized in sound production for commercials .
First delivery was at 48 kHz and the high frequencies were sounding horrible.
Luckily I had Adobe Premier and was able to generate my own soundtrack: clearly it was not the amp+transducer that were faulty.
Also I asked the studio to provide me mp3 files with higher sampling rates.
Only the 128 kHz MP3 file had proper high frequency rendering.

You never now what the producing studio is doing.
Studio masters are 24 bit/96 kHz.
I just hope that one day a streaming service will provide the studio quality (24/96) to my home.

For now I am satisfied with Amazon music HD that provide DD+ (48 kHz) through the last generation Amazon Tv Fire stick.
It is a progress.

 

[Chrispy]

Marketing is so much fun but no so useful...

 

[Beave]

Interesting article, but speaking only about non compressed digital signal in a engineer lab.

My own experience is completely different.
I was working on a custom class D amp and a custom transducer.
The source material was a MP3 file provided by a professional studio specialized in sound production for commercials .
First delivery was at 48 kHz and the high frequencies were sounding horrible.
Luckily I had Adobe Premier and was able to generate my own soundtrack: clearly it was not the amp+transducer that were faulty.
Also I asked the studio to provide me mp3 files with higher sampling rates.
Only the 128 kHz MP3 file had proper high frequency rendering.

You never now what the producing studio is doing.
Studio masters are 24 bit/96 kHz.
I just hope that one day a streaming service will provide the studio quality (24/96) to my home.

For now I am satisfied with Amazon music HD that provide DD+ (48 kHz) through the last generation Amazon Tv Fire stick.
It is a progress.

Am I misreading this, or are you confusing MP3 bit rates with sampling rates?

What were the MP3 *bit* rates of the files sent to you?

 

[MarcT]

This is what parents of all ages do. They are programmed to find the lowest quality version of anything and pretend not to notice when a far superior version is put in front of them.

I beg to differ. It seems to be just the opposite for me. I have four adult children, and three of the four don't care much about audio or video quality at all. They will sit there and watch a 2.35:1 aspect ratio movie on a 6 inch cell phone screen! When I got my 75" Sony 4K TV, they were meh about it. They also are quite content with doing their photography on their cell phones, while I use my Nikon D7200 with multiple lenses.

 

[GDK]

Tell that to my mother, I always catch her watching tv on the SD stations, despite having a 75" QLED.

That actually made me LOL

 

[MarcT]

It's just a matter of terminology for audio that exceeds CD resolution. Amazon calls it Ultra HD, other streaming services, e.g. Qobuz, call it Hi-Res.

Whether or not there's an audible difference is another matter!

For me, it's not about the highest frequencies, but rather that high res music seems to have a smoother, more natural sound to it. Certainly, at my age, my ears would not be able to pick up any advantage in the highest frequencies, anyway. I also notice the same increased smoothness and more "organic" sound of the music in the lossless Blu-ray formats, compared to the old Dolby Digital 5.1 discs. I guess this all could be due to expectation or confirmation bias, but I don't think so, as I'm pretty skeptical of claims of superior audio performance due to new technologies.

 

[Beave]

For me, it's not about the highest frequencies, but rather that high res music seems to have a smoother, more natural sound to it. Certainly, at my age, my ears would not be able to pick up any advantage in the highest frequencies, anyway. I also notice the same increased smoothness and more "organic" sound of the music in the lossless Blu-ray formats, compared to the old Dolby Digital 5.1 discs. I guess this all could be due to expectation or confirmation bias, but I don't think so, as I'm pretty skeptical of claims of superior audio performance due to new technologies.

The "smoother, more natural sound" could be simply a result of a different mix or mastering, possibly with different EQ, and not a result of the higher bit depth and/or sampling rate.

 

[Jimbob54]

I beg to differ. It seems to be just the opposite for me. I have four adult children, and three of the four don't care much about audio or video quality at all. They will sit there and watch a 2.35:1 aspect ratio movie on a 6 inch cell phone screen! When I got my 75" Sony 4K TV, they were meh about it. They also are quite content with doing their photography on their cell phones, while I use my Nikon D7200 with multiple lenses.

I commend you.

 

[valerianf]

There is something that is very clear: the CD quality is 16/24 bits 44.1 kHz when studio masters are 24 bits 96 kHz both uncompressed.
But is the modern world (streaming), the sound track arrive to your home using the broadcast/IT architecture of your provider.
This architecture quite always use a compressed media pipe line.
And here comes my mp3 example: you need a very high sampling rate for the compressed media to to get at your home a sound quality close to what you get with a CD.
When you compare a movie soundtrack from a streaming service and the soundtrack of a BR in DTS HD-MA there is no match.

So for music streaming, ask your provider the highest possible sampling rate.
I understood that some happy users are getting 96kHz from Amazon music HD.

 

[John Dyson]

The audible quality has little to do with 44.1k vs 48k vs 96k vs 192k... or 16bits vs 24bits vs FP vs DSD...
Even though datarate does have some effect --- it is all about the mastering... Almost all 'hifi' quality digital transport is MUCH better than the mastering on non-specialty consumer materials.