[exdmd]

Qobuz costs $249.99 per year paid up front, $50 more than Tidal. How much do we spend on TV, internet and phones per month? Compared to how much I used to spend on vinyl and CDs a year Qobuz is a bargain. I think Qobuz is priced fairly for the sound quality. So is Amazon Music HD because it does not impress me at this time. Another example of you do sometimes get what you pay for.

 

[RickB]

Qobuz costs $249.99 per year paid up front, $50 more than Tidal. How much do we spend on TV, internet and phones per month? Compared to how much I used to spend on vinyl and CDs a year Qobuz is a bargain. I think Qobuz is priced fairly for the sound quality. So is Amazon Music HD because it does not impress me at this time. Another example of you do sometimes get what you pay for.

Considering that I can't find most of the indie and alternative music I'm interested in on Qobuz, I would say I wouldn't get what I paid for. Amazon's catalog is huge and sounds much better than Spotify. Totally worth it for me.

 

[Blueshound24]

Considering that I can't find most of the indie and alternative music I'm interested in on Qobuz, I would say I wouldn't get what I paid for. Amazon's catalog is huge and sounds much better than Spotify. Totally worth it for me.

Agreed! And the price is more in line with what I believe it should be for streaming CD quality files, especially in comparison with HD movie streaming site prices. I have no issues with the sound quality, and think it is way more than acceptable, even without exclusive. However, that would be very cool if and when Amazon implements it.

 

[SilverEars]

The streaming is either 44.1 or 48khz. I doubt that any of them are real 24bit masters. They must have up sampled the bit-depth and market them as UHD. It's for those consumers.

Any news on support of bit-perfect?

 

[Andrew_WOT]

The streaming is either 44.1 or 48khz. I doubt that any of them are real 24bit masters. They must have up sampled the bit-depth and market them as UHD. It's for those consumers.

Any news on support of bit-perfect?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-resolution_audio

High-resolution audio (High-definition audio or HD audio) is a technical and marketing term for audio with greater than 44.1 kHz sample rate and/or higher than 16-bit linear bit depth. It usually means 96 kHz or 192 kHz, sometimes informally written as "96k" or "192k", meaning a Nyquist frequency of 48 kHz. However, there also exist 44.1 kHz/24-bit, 48 kHz/24-bit and 88.2 kHz/24-bit recordings that are labeled HD Audio.

What amazon calls UHD is HD and HD is just lossless compression Red Book.

 

[exdmd]

The streaming is either 44.1 or 48khz. I doubt that any of them are real 24bit masters. They must have up sampled the bit-depth and market them as UHD. It's for those consumers.

Any news on support of bit-perfect?

Not yet. If they were going to give us exclusive mode included in the price I think they would have done it at product launch. Wait six months and let's see if they offer a $20 a month product with a new app and bit perfect exclusive mode. I don't think we are going to get it for free but I could be wrong. I can imagine the meetings "what we have now is good enough. If those crazy audiophiles want Exclusive mode give it to them but charge for it."

 

[mixman]

Not yet. If they were going to give us exclusive mode included in the price I think they would have done it at product launch. Wait six months and let's see if they offer a $20 a month product with a new app and bit perfect exclusive mode. I don't think we are going to get it for free but I could be wrong. I can imagine the meetings "what we have now is good enough. If those crazy audiophiles want Exclusive mode give it to them but charge for it."

Even if Amazon does do a Super HD music service and charge more for it, they would have to add more value than just exclusive mode. Maybe do this while offering Roon or their own server app for free. Other than a few Audiophiles there are not enough that care about exclusive mode. My bet is that they will eventually just add it to their regular service.....when that will be.....who knows?

 

[SilverEars]

Even if Amazon does do a Super HD music service and charge more for it, they would have to add more value than just exclusive mode. Maybe do this while offering Roon or their own server app for free. Other than a few Audiophiles there are not enough that care about exclusive mode. My bet is that they will eventually just add it to their regular service.....when that will be.....who knows?

I would luv some sort of Roon competition.

Two things Roon has that I want:

1. Parametric EQ built into the app itself. There is no Windows music player app that has it's own parametric EQ built in.

2. Control a network device. I realized this can be really useful if you have a bunch of devices connected into a network router. For example, Kef LS50 wireless, which can connect to your network via wireless connection. Let's say that you want to control the device that's connected to the network, you cannot through windows unless the device itself has a software built in for it or a windows software to control the network device. Roon is such software that is able to control devices on a network, which is rarely existent.

The problem with scenario is that you need software in Windows to control the device, and the network device need to communicate with this software. So, you see label for Kef LS50W that it's Roon ready.

3. Roon controls all these devices bit-perfect. I thought I throw this one in since its's important.

If Amazon makes their desktop software into a Roon type software, that would be awsome! Roon is too expensive! We need alternatives.

 

[originalsnuffy]

Why are we assuming that the Ultra HD tracks are just upsampled? For the most part the tracks they are labeling as Ultra HD are in fact available in HD on sources such as HDTracks. So I have no reason to think that Amazon is misleading us.

 

[grokit]

I'm using Amazon Music HD with a variety of setups, and prefer the desktop app for two-channel listening. I have an old Mac Mini core duo running it with a usb/spdif device, dedicated to my system. That computer also meets the minimum requirements for Tidal's desktop app. I forgot to turn off Tidal so I have it for another month. For me the main issue with Amazon is HD/Ultra HD in the same album, I think that should be fixed for sure. And I agree that if the stream is challenged it should time out, not go to lossy compressed just to keep it playing. Hopefully this is a work in progress and not the finished product.

I can also control Tidal with my phone via wifi and a Chromecast Audio, the re-clocked optical output actually sounds really good. I had issues with Tidal and Chromecast Audio at first, but they've been worked out.

I haven't gotten the Chromecast Audio device working with Amazon Music HD yet. I think they're supposed to work together. Is anybody using a Chromecast Audio wifi device with Amazon Music HD?

 

[Richter Di]

Short question. I just signed up for Amazon Music with Ultra HD with their 90 day offer.
I downloaded the App to my Samsung A8 and my FiiO M11. While the Amazon Music app works flawlessly on my Samsung it refuses to play songs on my FiiO M11 in most cases. Sometimes it works on my FiiO but most of the time if I start a song the Play/Pause button starts to spin.

The last time it worked on my FiiO M11 I had Amazon customer service on the line de-installed and re-installed the entire app. It then worked until I opened the Qobuz app at the same time and started a song there. Amazon Music stopped and Qobuz started but when I returned to Amazon it refused to work with the Play/Pause button spinning. Since then I have re-installed the app but it just does not work any longer. Any ideas?

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Amazon is shared mode (for now), Qobuz is exclusive, you would need to kill Qobuz process completely so other apps can play audio.

 

[rkw]

Why are we assuming that the Ultra HD tracks are just upsampled?

There is no "we". It was just one member who made this unfounded claim a few posts earlier.

 

[runssical]

Qobuz costs $249.99 per year paid up front, $50 more than Tidal. How much do we spend on TV, internet and phones per month? Compared to how much I used to spend on vinyl and CDs a year Qobuz is a bargain. I think Qobuz is priced fairly for the sound quality. So is Amazon Music HD because it does not impress me at this time. Another example of you do sometimes get what you pay for.

But the market shows us few people are willing to pay $20 for music streaming. Tidal and Qobuz lossless plans probably have only a 1% market share.

When Qobuz filed for bankruptcy in France a few years ago they were forced to reveal how many subscribers they had to their lossless streaming tier. It was about 3,000 people... That is sad

I doubt little has changed since then. They opened up in USA this year. That should provide a one-time boost. But there is no growth.

 

[runssical]

Considering that I can't find most of the indie and alternative music I'm interested in on Qobuz, I would say I wouldn't get what I paid for. Amazon's catalog is huge and sounds much better than Spotify. Totally worth it for me.

Yup and people in the Qobuz thread have been defending Qobuz for over 9 months by saying that they will update their catalog "quickly" and it hasn't happened. They have such glaring holes in their catalog since launching in the USA.