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

[gvl]

Technically 24 vs 16 bit is a big improvement, so the "ultra" prefix is warranted given their terminology. Whether it matters audibly is a separate question.

 

[Beave]

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.

Once again you appear to be confusing sample rates and bit rates.

 

[Harmonie]

All you need is a well recorded lossless media.

 

[Kaiede]

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.

I’ll be honest, I’ve yet to find a hi-res album that is actually hi-res. It may be a 24/96 file, but so far, every time I’ve seen two clear things when I bring up the file in one of my audio editor tools:

- Rolloff starting at 20kHz and the noise floor being dominant by 22kHz. This tells me there’s zero content above 22kHz, which means a 44.1kHz sample rate would have worked fine.
- Noise floor at around -92dB. Or a total range of a little under 16 bits.

So, I’ve never actually had a true hi-res sound file wind up in my lap. Just files that are 3x the size so it can hold 8 extra bits of noise extending up to 48kHz. That alone is enough to make me jaded on the whole idea of hi-res.