Amazon Music HD

[ktm125]

I'm streaming Amazon thru a Windows PC to a DAC3L via USB cable.
Anyone have experience with this setup?

I've read where Amazon doesn't have any options to by-pass the Windows mixer.
Is there anything I can do with the PC to get unprocessed audio to the DAC?

 

[Ratatoskr]

Unfortunately not as long as the Amazon Music HD desktop app uses shared mode. Waiting to see if they enable exclusive mode in an updated app or open their API to Roon or Audirvana (doubtful but we'll see.)

Regardless of native sample rate and bit depth of the file it will be up or down sampled to the setting you have in Windows Sound control playback for your DAC as default device. You can't trust what the app is displaying: your DAC will tell you what sample rate is being sent it and that will match your user setting in Windows sound control panel.

I have no idea why Amazon developers did not match Tidal and Qobuz in offering exclusive mode playback. As Amazon Music HD is right now I like the depth of their catalog but sound quality falls short of Qobuz played through Audirvana+ for me.

 

[ktm125]

Unfortunately not as long as the Amazon Music HD desktop app uses shared mode. Waiting to see if they enable exclusive mode in an updated app or open their API to Roon or Audirvana (doubtful but we'll see.)

Regardless of native sample rate and bit depth of the file it will be up or down sampled to the setting you have in Windows Sound control playback for your DAC as default device. You can't trust what the app is displaying: your DAC will tell you what sample rate is being sent it and that will match your user setting in Windows sound control panel.

I have no idea why Amazon developers did not match Tidal and Qobuz in offering exclusive mode playback. As Amazon Music HD is right now I like the depth of their catalog but sound quality falls short of Qobuz played through Audirvana+ for me.

thanks!

So would a MAC or Raspberrypi have the same problem?

 

[Ratatoskr]

Yes, until Amazon Music HD enables exclusive mode or opens their API to a player like Roon or Audirvana.

 

[Fluffy]

Is there any reason to assume that their music files are anything but 44.1 khz? Cause if not, just set your dac to 44.1khz in the mixer and don't worry about it.

 

[somebodyelse]

So would a MAC or Raspberrypi have the same problem?

Reports in the other thread are that the Mac app doesn't have the same problem. I'm not aware of an app for the Pi.

 

[Ratatoskr]

Chris at AS posted a review of Amazon Music HD across different platforms which answers some questions and raises more. Apparently you can get bit pefect playback on macOS if you go into Audio Midi and manually set the sample rate for each song.

TLDR:

Given that these are early days for Amazon Music HD, I expect things will improve. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. Communication with Amazon has been nearly impossible and the company has shown zero interest in the consumers of its HD tier. There isn't a platform I know of that works perfect with Amazon Music HD, although BluOS likely has the best shot at getting things right. I need to get a Bluesound Node 2i for further Bluesound testing. For now, all other platforms are severely limited in either capability or usability with Amazon Music HD.

 

[ahofer]

Chris at AS posted a review of Amazon Music HD across different platforms which answers some questions and raises more. Apparently you can get bit pefect playback on macOS if you go into Audio Midi and manually set the sample rate for each song.

TLDR:

Convenient.

 

[JoachimStrobel]

I have a 7“ Kindle 7. Generation. Can I connect a USB OTG and convert to Hdmi? Can I stream to something in HD ( Alexa is not HD)?

 

[MarcT]

I'm using a Windows 10 HP laptop. I had to go Control panel, Hardware and sound, Sound, then the DAC should appear, then highlight that DAC and then select Properties, then select the Advanced tab, then a drop down list of sample rate and bit depth should appear. For my PS Audio DAC, I selected 24 bit/384,000 Hz. You can set your DAC to be the default device. Sounds pretty good to me, but I am no expert, as I just started this streaming stuff when Amazon came out with their HD Audio service.

 

[MarcT]

I'm using a Windows 10 HP laptop. I had to go Control panel, Hardware and sound, Sound, then the DAC should appear, then highlight that DAC and then select Properties, then select the Advanced tab, then a drop down list of sample rate and bit depth should appear. For my PS Audio DAC, I selected 24 bit/384,000 Hz. You can set your DAC to be the default device. Sounds pretty good to me, but I am no expert, as I just started this streaming stuff when Amazon came out with their HD Audio service.

Update: It was explained to me on another forum that with a Windows 10 machine, if one selects 24/384,000 in the Windows drop down list, then Windows will upsample whatever the track quality is to 14/384 and send that to the DAC, and that the upsampling in Windows might not be very good. I was advised that, since Amazon Music does not allow exclusive mode, I should go into the settings and choose from the drop down list the actual resolution of each track being played. Yes, quite a hassle. So, I have been doing that lately and the quality does seem noticeably better. Is this possible?

Also, after the last update, Amazon HD Music seems to be using noticeably less CPU than before, which is good because it was making my cooling fan race a bit.

 

[krabapple]

I have no idea why Amazon developers did not match Tidal and Qobuz in offering exclusive mode playback. As Amazon Music HD is right now I like the depth of their catalog but sound quality falls short of Qobuz played through Audirvana+ for me.

Because of Windows resampling? Really? You can hear that? In a blind, level matched comparison, I mean.

What if you set it to 96/24 and listen to 96/24 files from Amazon?

 

[krabapple]

I'm using a Windows 10 HP laptop. I had to go Control panel, Hardware and sound, Sound, then the DAC should appear, then highlight that DAC and then select Properties, then select the Advanced tab, then a drop down list of sample rate and bit depth should appear. For my PS Audio DAC, I selected 24 bit/384,000 Hz. You can set your DAC to be the default device. Sounds pretty good to me, but I am no expert, as I just started this streaming stuff when Amazon came out with their HD Audio service.

*384* kHz? That's hilarious.

 

[MarcT]

*384* kHz? That's hilarious.

Yeah, when I first got the PS Audio DAC, I didn't know anything about streaming audio on computers. I just assumed setting it to the highest setting would be best. After a while, it seemed like CD quality files didn't sound so good like that, so I lowered it. Perhaps my HP laptop is not so good at upsampling that high.

Because of Windows resampling? Really? You can hear that? In a blind, level matched comparison, I mean.

What if you set it to 96/24 and listen to 96/24 files from Amazon?

I found that it sounds great by matching it up like that, but it's a hassle to change it every time the resolution changes. I find that if I just leave it at 24/96, pretty much everything at 24/96 and below that sounds good. Now, there are a fair amount of 24/192 tracks on Amazon, and for those I always change the setting to 24/192, which sounds amazing, so smooth and natural sounding.

 

[Brantome]

Looks like they’re starting work on it, but maybe not quite there yet... https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonMusic/comments/fi3j0r

 

[MarcT]

Looks like they’re starting work on it, but maybe not quite there yet... https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonMusic/comments/fi3j0r

Interesting. I saw this also posted on another forum. Apparently, that feature is not offered on the Windows version. I just updated to the newest version the other day, and there is no such button there.

 

[Brantome]

Yeah, maybe it’s a partial rollout/ beta. I guess it wasn’t v7.11 you upgraded to, but as I say, it least shows that they appear to be working on it...

 

[MarcT]

Yeah, maybe it’s a partial rollout/ beta. I guess it wasn’t v7.11 you upgraded to, but as I say, it least shows that they appear to be working on it...

Hmm, my version shows to be 7.10.1.2195, despite having done the update it prompted me to do. Perhaps in order to get v7.11, I will have to uninstall my app and reinstall it. I previously had to do that in order to get the newest version.

 

[Brantome]

I’ve noticed for a while that the help dialogue shows that there’s an update available but doesn’t do anything when you click on it, even after deletion/ re-installing...

 

[TomB]

I have tried Tidal, Qobuz and Amazon. I am streaming from a dedicated PC built for audio and so far Qobuz seems to be my choice, though I like the Tidal app more than the others.