Amazon Music to Mac Mini will not play above 24/48kHz - any trouble shooting tips?

[Jaimo]

Hello Folks, I am considering cancelling my Tidal/Roon subscription and switching to Amazon Music UHD but can’t seem to get Amazon to play at bit rates higher than 24/48.

I using an older Mac-Mini on MacOS Mojave feeding a Topping ES5 via USB.

Roon has no issues with playing back at rates up to 24/192 and the ES5 reports the correct bit rate.

The Amazon Music app reports that the device capability is 24bit/48kHz.

Is this a Topping issue or, something to do with the Amazon App. I am reluctant to upgrade to OS Monterey unless that will fix this issue and not cause me other headaches.

 

[mdsimon2]

Look in Audio MIDI Setup, my guess is you have the output set to 24/48. The other issue is that your Mac will always resample to whatever sample rate is in Audio MIDI Setup and I imagine this is the rate that your ES5 will report.

Michael

 

[Jaimo]

That’s disappointing. I will look into my Audio/MIDI settings when I get home.

Does this mean that the Amazon App will not change the bit rate to match the individual songs resolution.

I don’t have the issue with Roon.

 

[mdsimon2]

That is correct, the Amazon app will not change the bit rate, you can change it manually in Audio MIDI Setup but that is obviously a pain. This is something Amazon users have been asking for some time now but unfortunately it has not been implemented. That being said the apple resampler is pretty good so it is not like you are giving up tons of fidelity using it.

Michael

 

[Zensō]

SoundSource is a great little app that gives you more control over your Mac audio:

SoundSource - A Superior Sound Control

Access your Mac's audio devices, control per-app audio, and much more, all from the menu bar.

rogueamoeba.com

It doesn’t enable exclusive mode for Amazon like Roon, but it does make it possible to switch the sample rate directly from the menu bar. That said, as Michael mentioned above, the resampler in Core Audio is excellent and is highly unlikely to introduce any audible artifacts. I’d suggest setting it at 44.1 (or a higher sample rate if you prefer, THX recommends 176.4) and proceeding with enjoying the music.

MEASUREMENTS: Apple Mac OS X ("Yosemite") Software Audio Upsampling

A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.

archimago.blogspot.com

https://www.thx.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/THX-Onyx-for-Apple-Music-Lossless.pdf

An added benefit of SoundSource is that it can be used as a host for just about any plugin. I’m using it to host FabFilter Pro-Q 3 for headphone EQ, and IK Arc3 for digital room correction for my nearfield monitors.

 

[Jaimo]

Thank you MdSimom and Acbarn. This is very helpful. I will play with SoundSource during the holidays.

I’m going to miss Roon terribly but the cost savings are not insignificant. Besides, I really don’t care for the HD audio hype and my speakers have usable DSP support so I can take care of my room correction in the speakers.

The only other consideration is the fantastic artist information and smart links that Roon provides. I often spend hours navigating different music through Roon. Too bad Roon doesn’t work with Amazon or Apple Music etc. In this case, I think I will revert to my Penguin Jazz bible and seek out other reliable references for my other music genres.

I’m still not sure that I can live without Roon but for the cost of savings I’m certainly going to try.

 

[Jimbob54]

Thank you MdSimom and Acbarn. This is very helpful. I will play with SoundSource during the holidays.

I’m going to miss Roon terribly but the cost savings are not insignificant. Besides, I really don’t care for the HD audio hype and my speakers have usable DSP support so I can take care of my room correction in the speakers.

The only other consideration is the fantastic artist information and smart links that Roon provides. I often spend hours navigating different music through Roon. Too bad Roon doesn’t work with Amazon or Apple Music etc. In this case, I think I will revert to my Penguin Jazz bible and seek out other reliable references for my other music genres.

I’m still not sure that I can live without Roon but for the cost of savings I’m certainly going to try.

I left roon for similar reasons . I use pc but imagine the Mac app is similar .

There are 2 hidden benefits to Amazon desktop app that competitors native apps don't have :

1. In library album view ,you can shuffle all so it will play (seemingly random) tracks from your whole library .this is my preferred listening option .

2. Unlike others , AHD will integrate local files into your online library in album view . Spotify and tidal put them in separate views , meaning they don't get included for the purpose of no.1

Nowhere near the roon interface and library management , but also can be had for bargain rates

 

[Zensō]

Thank you MdSimom and Acbarn. This is very helpful. I will play with SoundSource during the holidays.

I’m going to miss Roon terribly but the cost savings are not insignificant. Besides, I really don’t care for the HD audio hype and my speakers have usable DSP support so I can take care of my room correction in the speakers.

The only other consideration is the fantastic artist information and smart links that Roon provides. I often spend hours navigating different music through Roon. Too bad Roon doesn’t work with Amazon or Apple Music etc. In this case, I think I will revert to my Penguin Jazz bible and seek out other reliable references for my other music genres.

I’m still not sure that I can live without Roon but for the cost of savings I’m certainly going to try.

I‘m with you on all the nice things Roon offers. The downsides are the too frequent irritations that come from what I think is the over-complexity of the Roon architecture. Just this week with build 880, many users had to deal with corrupted databases (myself included), the fix being a complete reinstall of ROCK and deletion of my existing database. Not really what I signed up for…

 

[Jaimo]

I changed my Audio MIDI sample rate to 24/196 and AHD reports the correct device capability and appears to be playing back at the correct resolution without me having to change the sample rate or bit depth.

When I play HD (as opposed to UHD) tracks, AHD reports the correct sample rate once again.

Can I assume that the Apple audio renderer is not changing the sample rate or altering the signal in any way?

 

[mdsimon2]

What does your DAC report? I would assume that your Mac is outputting whatever is in Audio MIDI Setup (and resampling to do so) unless the DAC said differently.

Michael

 

[Zensō]

Can I assume that the Apple audio renderer is not changing the sample rate or altering the signal in any way?

You can't assume that.

Amazon will report whatever it is sending, not what is output to the DAC post Core Audio (Apple Music does the same). Core Audio will resample to whatever is set in Audio MIDI from any source that is not in exclusive mode (that includes Amazon and Apple).

 

[tmtomh]

I changed my Audio MIDI sample rate to 24/196 and AHD reports the correct device capability and appears to be playing back at the correct resolution without me having to change the sample rate or bit depth.

When I play HD (as opposed to UHD) tracks, AHD reports the correct sample rate once again.

Can I assume that the Apple audio renderer is not changing the sample rate or altering the signal in any way?

Not sure if you meant to type 24/192 or 24/96, but either way the Apple OS is going to convert everything to that resolution. So if the Apple MIDI output resolution is set to 24/192, then everything - 16/44.1, 24/48, 24/96, 24/88.2 - will be upsampled to 192kHz, and any 16-bit source will have 8 bits' worth of zeros padded onto each PCM word to convert it to 24 bit.

The padding of the bit depth is totally irrelevant - in fact, most "bit perfect" software that claims to leave the original signal totally unaltered will still pad 16-bit (and sometimes 24-bit) content with extra zeroes to match the maximum/default/internal PCM bit-depth of the receiving DAC.

So the sample rate is the only issue. This is the major weakness of Apple's built-in core audio processing: it cannot do on-the-fly resolution switching. I used to be very concerned about this, and as a result purchased the $10 BitPerfect app, which sits between iTunes/Music app and the underlying MacOS, allowing on-the-fly resolution-switching (and also integer mode rather than floating-point mode, which keeps things bit-perfect).

However, thanks to @danadam and others, I have become a lot less concerned about sample-rate conversion since I became a member of this site. Even with non-integer conversion (like 44.1 to 96) it's not likely to produce any audible effect.

In fact, I keep meaning to turn off BitPerfect and do some listening to see if I can hear any difference even in a sighted/biased comparison test. I suspect I won't, but it will be an interesting experiment. (If I do hear a difference, even if it's just confirmation bias, I will keep BitPerfect in the chain, since it does no harm and the $10 I spent on it was spent long ago and was totally worth the peace of mind it afforded when I was under the impression that it mattered more than it actually does. Sometimes practicality outweighs the effort of trying to fight one's own confirmation bias . )

Personally I feel like upsampling philosophically just makes more sense since it's adding more data rather than removing it (though as a practical matter it doesn't matter). So I would recommend setting the Audio MIDI output to 24/96 and then forgetting about it. You could set it to 24/192 I suppose, but I think 192kHz (and 176.4kHz) sample rates are so unnecessary and dumb that I personally would choose 96kHz myself.

 

[Jaimo]

I totally agree with your views on high bit rates etc. I am frankly very happy with 16bit 44.1kHz recordings in any event.

My rationale for selecting 24/192 is that the Apple renderer will not have to perform any conversion on the incoming signal. Most of my preferred music is in UHD.

I do have two additional questions…

1. The AHD settings options have a checkbox for Exclusive Mode. What is this option supposed to do?
2. What are the pros and cons of disabling Hardware acceleration on my late 2012 Mac Mini? ( I have a SSD and 16Gb RAM) and currently run on Mojave. (my attempts to upgrade to Catalina have not been successful)

 

[Zensō]

I totally agree with your views on high bit rates etc. I am frankly very happy with 16bit 44.1kHz recordings in any event.

My rationale for selecting 24/192 is that the Apple renderer will not have to perform any conversion on the incoming signal. Most of my preferred music is in UHD.

I do have two additional questions…

1. The AHD settings options have a checkbox for Exclusive Mode. What is this option supposed to do?
2. What are the pros and cons of disabling Hardware acceleration on my late 2012 Mac Mini? ( I have a SSD and 16Gb RAM) and currently run on Mojave. (my attempts to upgrade to Catalina have not been successful)

Amazon's "Exclusive Mode" is a misuse of the term. Exclusive Mode by the usual definition bypasses the OS mixer and auto switches the device sample rate to match the music. In the case of Amazon HD, it only mutes the system sounds but doesn't auto switch.

It's so annoying when a company takes a technical term that has a widely agreed upon definition and misuses it in a way that causes confusion.

 

[Jimbob54]

I totally agree with your views on high bit rates etc. I am frankly very happy with 16bit 44.1kHz recordings in any event.

My rationale for selecting 24/192 is that the Apple renderer will not have to perform any conversion on the incoming signal. Most of my preferred music is in UHD.

I do have two additional questions…

1. The AHD settings options have a checkbox for Exclusive Mode. What is this option supposed to do?
2. What are the pros and cons of disabling Hardware acceleration on my late 2012 Mac Mini? ( I have a SSD and 16Gb RAM) and currently run on Mojave. (my attempts to upgrade to Catalina have not been successful)

Keep your eye on the actual sample rates in the amazon app when you click on the "hd/ultra HD" yellow text under the mini album art . You'll find uhd tag might be applied to as low as 24bit 44.1 /48. 24/96 is the most common I see. 24/192 is less common. So no, 24/192 won't mean minimal upsampling.

 

[tmtomh]

Following up on my prior comment, I'm now listening to my main system in its usual configuration except with BitPerfect disabled (my file streamer is a Mac mini running Apple's Music app).

I went to Audio MIDI to set the output to 24/96 (since 99% of my library is 96kHz or lower sample rate) and I discovered that Apple's Core Audio options seem to have come a ways since I last used them years ago. Now there are choices for integer vs floating-point mode, which is nice (even if it doesn't make an audible difference). And I was surprised to see that when I select my Oppo UDP-205 as the DAC, the mini automatically selects 32-bit output, which is exactly what BitPerfect does.

So in the years since I got BitPerfect, Apple's built-in setup seems to have taken care of 2 of the 3 main features BitPerfect originally offered: matching the DAC's maximum/"preferred" bit depth, and providing the option to use integer mode for the output.

That leaves only the lack of on-the-fly sample-rate switching.

So far, with BitPerfect off and the sample rate therefore locked to 96kHz, I am not hearing any difference in sound quality when playing 44.1kHz material, compared to when BitPerfect is active. This is not a surprising result I suppose, but still, interesting to me.

 

[Zensō]

If anyone has any lingering concerns about upsampling on the Mac, this should definitively answer the question.

MEASUREMENTS: Apple Mac OS X ("Yosemite") Software Audio Upsampling

A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.

archimago.blogspot.com

 

[tmtomh]

If anyone has any lingering concerns about upsampling on the Mac, this should definitively answer the question.

MEASUREMENTS: Apple Mac OS X ("Yosemite") Software Audio Upsampling

A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.

archimago.blogspot.com

Can't believe I never saw that writeup before - oh, well, only six years late.

Thanks very much - good to know. Although it does appear that without BitPerfect you take a 0.0017% hit in THD and a 0.0006% hit in IMD. I'm sure that's clearly audible to anyone with good enough ears and musical enough equipment.

On a serious note, I was also amused - but not surprised - to see confirmation of just how easy it is for modern CPUs to handle hi-res audio streaming, even with on-the-fly upsampling or downsampling. If that older Intel-based MacBook Pro was spiking at 10% CPU, the M1 Macs must handle it with just a fraction of that.

 

[Zensō]

Thanks very much - good to know. Although it does appear that without BitPerfect you take a 0.0017% hit in THD and a 0.0006% hit in IMD. I'm sure that's clearly audible to anyone with good enough ears and musical enough equipment.

... or a vivid audiophile imagination.

On a serious note, I was also amused - but not surprised - to see confirmation of just how easy it is for modern CPUs to handle hi-res audio streaming, even with on-the-fly upsampling or downsampling. If that older Intel-based MacBook Pro was spiking at 10% CPU, the M1 Macs must handle it with just a fraction of that.

Yeah, that old Intel MacBook is a jalopy compared the the M1. It's amazing how far Apple silicon has advanced in just a few years.

 

[tmtomh]

... or a vivid audiophile imagination.



Yeah, that old Intel MacBook is a jalopy compared the the M1. It's amazing how far Apple silicon has advanced in just a few years.

Indeed - the M1 series is just bananas. The combination of performance and energy efficiency is beyond what anyone imagined, especially since even the entry-level M1 is a total screamer for all non-pro uses and a good chunk of pro uses too.

One question I have for you and/or the group, related to the resampling question: when I disabled BitPerfect, I realized that I had Sound Check enabled in the Music app. (Recent versions of BitPerfect added the ability to detect and use Sound Check volume adjustments, but I never turned on that feature.)

So... I am wondering if it's a bad thing to have Sound Check on? I control my overall volume with my Oppo 205, which has an excellent 64-bit digital volume control. As for the Apple Music volume control employed with Sound Check, I have no idea how that works - it could be 32-bit float, or it could be 24-bit, or it could be 16-bit if the source material is 16-bit.

For pure performance/peace of mind the decision would be easy: turn off Sound Check and just use the Oppo's volume control. But Sound Check is so convenient, as I don't have to constantly fuss with the volume when going from song to song or album to album. And I use the iVolume app to set my Sound Check levels and overwrite the default Apple values - my understanding is that iVolume uses ReplayGain and is therefore more effective than Apple's default Sound Check algorithm (although for all I know Sound Check might have improved over the years and be as good as ReplayGain by now).

So what price convenience? So far I hear no discernible difference in sound quality with Sound Check enabled.