Does Amazon Music Ever Actually Work?

[blueone]

I've used Amazon Music Unlimited on various devices for years, I think since it became available. I liked it better than Apple Music.

I use the Amazon Music app on iPads, using Apple AirPlay2 to stream over WiFi to a WiimPro WiFi access point, which sends the extracted digital stream over TOSLink to my Benchmark DAC3. AirPlay2 is limited to a 16/44.1KHz data rate.

On Macs I use the Chrome browser to access the Amazon Music web site, because Chrome supports HiRes music, while the best Safari supports is 16/44.1. Very odd. The Amazon Music app for MacOS is not as easy to use, IMO, so I deleted it.

I use the Chrome browser on Windows for Amazon Music too.

Over WiFi I never get dropouts or dropped connections with Amazon Music with any device.

I liked the Apple Music app API better, but some classical albums I wanted to hear were available on Amazon Music, but not Apple Music. I haven't tried Apple Classical Music yet, but may in the future.

 

[IsaacOscar]

Next problem with Amazon music. Albums contains mixed tracks, some are Atmos, other not. Volume level differences between them are like 12-18dB. you can listen to music at normal level and then get an unacceptable sound level at next track.
FireTV stick could cope with level differences, Pioneer AVR can't.

Amazon music doesn't have replay gain / volume normalisation? (Spotify does, but I turned it off as it wasn't really needed and it was significantly lowering the volume of my not very powerful dac/amp).

 

[popej]

Normalization depends on app for playback. App for Pioneer AVR is really simple, no normalization.