[Andrew_WOT]

Well, that’s Windows. There is no upsampling in iOS, it always works with native sampling rates. The upsampling is done by amazon‘s app itself, and seems to be good, at least to my ears. No way to measure it though, you can‘t force your content through an amazon‘s app...

There is yellow HD badge, when you click it it shows track bitrate, device capability and quality at which it is sent to OS.

 

[a-LeXx]

There is yellow HD badge, when you click it it shows track bitrate, device capability and quality at which it is sent to OS.

sorry, I don‘t get what you want to tell me, I perfectly know how to operate the app and didn‘t ask any questions... Are you sure you replied to a correct post?

 

[Andrew_WOT]

sorry, I don‘t get what you want to tell me, I perfectly know how to operate the app and didn‘t ask any questions... Are you sure you replied to a correct post?

"The upsampling is done by amazon‘s app itself, and seems to be good, at least to my ears. No way to measure it though".
On Windows and Android app doesn't do any upsampling relying on OS, the bitrate sent to OS mixer is shown in "Currently playing at" field. What does it show on MacOS?

 

[csglinux]

On Windows and Android app doesn't do any upsampling relying on OS, the bitrate sent to OS mixer is shown in "Currently playing at" field.

My experience with the Android app is that you can't trust that "Currently playing at" information. For example, look at the following:



In all three cases, this is what it was actually doing:

Output thread 0xe1bfc000, name AudioOut_75D, tid 18455, type 1 (DIRECT):
I/O handle: 1885
Standby: no
Sample rate: 48000 Hz
HAL frame count: 3840
HAL format: 0x5 (AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_FLOAT)

Amazon's app seems to be handling the upsampling itself, and to their credit, they're at least doing this with floating point, which avoids some of the most egregious errors that are audible at low volume with 16-bit integer-based interpolation, which is what Android's mixer will usually do:

Output thread 0xe3883000, name AudioOut_15, tid 1321, type 0 (MIXER):
I/O handle: 21
Standby: no
Sample rate: 48000 Hz
HAL frame count: 1920
HAL format: 0x1 (AUDIO_FORMAT_PCM_16_BIT)

However, Amazon's Android app is still re-sampling almost everything. As a result of this silly oversight, its SQ is not as good as Tidal's or Qobuz's, even for redbook FLAC, and you are not getting Ultra HD from any Android device right now (even on Android devices that are perfectly capable of playing back 44/16, 96/24, 192/24, etc.). Amazon's Ultra HD claims in the Google Play Store are false advertising.

 

[exdmd]

On my laptop under the advanced tab in speaker/headphones properties for Win 10 I have the default format for sample rate and bit depth to be used when running in shared mode at 24/192 for the default device (my Yggdrasil DAC.)

Amazon Music HD runs in shared mode. Even though Amazon Music HD reports a song is being played at 16/44 that is incorrect as my DAC is correctly reporting 24/192. Either Windows or the Amazon app is upsampling. I assumed it was Windows as directed to by the settings for the audio stack.

If Amazon Music HD could run in exclusive mode like Qobuz and bypass Windows mixer the DAC would automatically play at the correct 16/44 rather than being upsampled,

@csglinux on laptop is the upsampling being done by the Amazon Music HD app or Windows mixer?

 

[csglinux]

@csglinux on laptop is the upsampling being done by the Amazon Music HD app or Windows mixer?

You might guess from my username that I'm not much of a Windows fan I've not tested anything on a Windows machine, but my guess would be Amazon is up-sampling via their own software on all platforms. Hence the extra power/battery drain people are noticing.

 

[exdmd]

You might guess from my username that I'm not much of a Windows fan I've not tested anything on a Windows machine, but my guess would be Amazon is up-sampling via their own software on all platforms. Hence the extra power/battery drain people are noticing.

Yeah the app on Win 10 is using 5-20% CPU. Audirvana+ playing Qobuz stays around 5%. And sounds better but we have already covered that.

 

[jt25741]

My experience with the Android app is that you can't trust that "Currently playing at" information. For example, look at the following:



In all three cases, this is what it was actually doing:



Amazon's app seems to be handling the upsampling itself, and to their credit, they're at least doing this with floating point, which avoids some of the most egregious errors that are audible at low volume with 16-bit integer-based interpolation, which is what Android's mixer will usually do:



However, Amazon's Android app is still re-sampling almost everything. As a result of this silly oversight, its SQ is not as good as Tidal's or Qobuz's, even for redbook FLAC, and you are not getting Ultra HD from any Android device right now (even on Android devices that are perfectly capable of playing back 44/16, 96/24, 192/24, etc.). Amazon's Ultra HD claims in the Google Play Store are false advertising.

Thanks for sharing this insightful post. I never would have thought the app was resampling just munged by the OS. At least they may be kinda trying at Amazon LoL

 

[runssical]

Well, there will be no objective answer to this, as I said, you can't source your content through the app to measure. But subjectively I don't perceive any sound degradation. Sometimes, when upsampling is involved (with other setups) there is an unnatural sense of air added, accompanied by dimensional cues getting smeared a bit. I do not hear this with amazon. And all that computing power wasted should be good for something, hopefully, as the amazon app is a power-hungriest streaming client across all the available platforms. Of course I would much more prefer no upsampling paired with decent battery life. But at least the SQ doesn't suffer with a current implementation. I'm using a DFR as a DAC on my ipod touch 6th gen (that can now barely play 3 16/44.1 records pre-downloaded into the flash memory with a fully loaded battery on Amazon Music HD ). That extreme battery drain is a real problem though.

I never considered the battery drain aspect of Amazon HD streaming. That's unfortunate. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

 

[tradyblix]

Audirvana might sound better because of its own upsampling settings tho. It would be cool of them to support this service in a new update, maybe for 4.0 since they did so much for us in 3.5 already.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

At least on Windows it's just shared mode, there is no resampling going on in app.

 

[a-LeXx]

"The upsampling is done by amazon‘s app itself, and seems to be good, at least to my ears. No way to measure it though".
On Windows and Android app doesn't do any upsampling relying on OS, the bitrate sent to OS mixer is shown in "Currently playing at" field. What does it show on MacOS?

Sorry, you got it completely wrong. I understand you are trying to help, so, no problem at all. But, as I said, I am perfectly clear on how to operate the app.
What I meant by ‚no means to measure‘, is - to measure the quality of the upsampling on a signal analyzer. To be able to do this, you need to be able to source your own content, with e.g. dual tone to measure IMD. And you cannot do this with an amazon app, because it would only play amazon‘s content, you cannot make it play your files...

 

[TK33]

Sorry, you got it completely wrong. I understand you are trying to help, so, no problem at all. But, as I said, I am perfectly clear on how to operate the app.
What I meant by ‚no means to measure‘, is - to measure the quality of the upsampling on a signal analyzer. To be able to do this, you need to be able to source your own content, with e.g. dual tone to measure IMD. And you cannot do this with an amazon app, because it would only play amazon‘s content, you cannot make it play your files...

Not sure if this is the same thing that you guys are discussing but my Amazon app actually shows local files stored on my microSD card and when I play those songs, I don't get the SD/HD/Ultra HD box that you can click on. Is there a way you can set the app to only play Amazon content (sorry if I misunderstood)? I am using a Samsung Galaxy S9. I have been recreating my Amazon playlists and deleting the files off my phone to force the Amazon app to use Amazon content since some of the files it is picking up are mp3 files and I would prefer to actually try out the HD/Ultra HD content during my trial period.

 

[a-LeXx]

Not sure if this is the same thing that you guys are discussing but my Amazon app actually shows local files stored on my microSD card and when I play those songs, I don't get the SD/HD/Ultra HD box that you can click on. Is there a way you can set the app to only play Amazon content (sorry if I misunderstood)? I am using a Samsung Galaxy S9. I have been recreating my Amazon playlists and deleting the files off my phone to force the Amazon app to use Amazon content since some of the files it is picking up are mp3 files and I would prefer to actually try out the HD/Ultra HD content during my trial period.

you need to uninstall and reinstall the app. Next step, after you reinstalled, you need to set the download quality to highest possible. Then re-download your music, then you will be able to play it from the local storage at the beast available quality...

 

[TK33]

you need to uninstall and reinstall the app. Next step, after you reinstalled, you need to set the download quality to highest possible. Then re-download your music, then you will be able to play it from the local storage at the beast available quality...

Thanks. Did that a few times already but it just detects the files again when I reinstall (also cleared data and cache before uninstalling). Guess I'll just continue removing files manually. I wish there were a way to designate which folders get picked up by the app. Appreciate the response.