[GlennDS]

Pre-Made from what? Some of my tracks some are new artists. I don't think these are pre-made but maybe I don't fully understand.

Pre-made means that Tidal has made a playlist for you based off of your library, they will introduce new tracks and new artists. Each of the playlists is based off of a general genre (you are not going to find an old country track mixed in with a new heavy metal track). If there are 15 tracks in your playlist, that's what you get, 15 tracks. Yes the tracks in the My Mix will change every once and a while. You can take the different playlists and put them together but Tidal doesn't make it easy to do depending on which device you are using.

Amazon's 'My Soundtrack' is a radio station based off of all my tracks (including all genres). When I start playing the 'My Soundtrack' station, it will play a continuous stream of mixed music until I stop it, it'll play mixed content for over 12 hours if I wish it to do so.

I get out of bed before 4:30am and that early in the morning I just want to push one button to get my stream of music playing (this is Amazon's My Soundtrack), I do not want to go to several different playlists and have to put them together and mix them myself every few hours (that is Tidal My Mix).

But, to each his own.

 

[3Putter]

Thanks for the detail. A good way to discover new music and sounds exciting. Enjoy!

 

[Soundizer]

That must be frustrating as heck. I don't know what to make of it, but your suggestion that the feed in Germany may be different is a plausible explanation. If I experienced any of this downgrading behavior, I would drop Amazon like a hot rock and not try it again until I knew it was fixed.

Someone else mentioned that Ipads function a little differently as a USB streaming server and that they might not be "bit perfect." Using Apple's CCK adapter it will in fact be bit perfect provided your DAC works driverless and its usb input is powered in such a way that it passes the Ipad's power check (you can search Head-Fi and find plenty of threads on this). This is very hardware/firmware dependent, so that is why I listed my gear and the chain of connection very specifically. In my case, when I connected the usb cable directly into the Tanly DDC, it didn't work, but when I used the Regen before it, it functioned perfectly. I suspect that the Regen acted like a powered hub that so many Ipad users say they need to get their DAC working. When I then tried adding an Audioquest jitterbug into the mix, the whole thing was borked again. I then tried bypassing the Tanly and ran the Ipad's CCK feed into the Regen and then into the Gustard's USB input. Nope, nothing....then removed the Regen and much to my surprise, it worked fine again. I then added the Jitterbug back in and it continued to work perfectly. Zut Alors!!

This is maddening, folks, and the only reason I'm sharing this dribble is to impress upon some that not only is usb playback a persnickety matter that is VERY hardware/firmware dependent, but apparently, so too is the performance of Amazon Music HD. If you follow the DAP threads like I have, you will know that the functionality and quality of playback on various Fiio, Ibasso and Hiby DAPs varies widely. (We can reasonably assume that the same holds true for all kinds of playback devices). The Amazon and DAP forums are all over the place on what the real problem is. Some say the DAP software has to be fixed to work with Amazon HD because certain DAPs in their lineup work great with it and others don't. Then there are some DAP manufacturers (Fiio) laying the blame squarely on Amazon's shoulders and still others, like Hiby, that release a firmware upgrade for the R5 that fixes nearly everything.

So, in my (very) particular case, Amazon HD is working quite well in both functionality and sound quality -- enough for me to ditch Tidal and appreciate the savings. Obviously, your mileage may vary.

I am in the UK and via my iPad/iPhone can see the quality dropping to Standard, but then going back up. It is fine over cellular.
Does not happen on my Mac - all fine.

Windows Computer users also reported this problem.

 

[muski]

Qobuz just dropped a bomb on the market and took the gloves off. $15 for highest teir...head to head with Amazon. A bit more, library is not quite there yet, but they got the sound working with Audirvana and others (no resample).... so it plays well with others. I cancelled amazon and went to Qobuz.

Last month I switched from Tidal to Amazon HD to Qobuz. I'm very happy with the Qobuz SQ, catalog, apps & their new lower price.

 

[originalsnuffy]

Does anybody know if any portable devices can directly download Amazon HD files other than phones? It sure would be nice to download files for offline playback on digital audio players.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Does anybody know if any portable devices can directly download Amazon HD files other than phones? It sure would be nice to download files for offline playback on digital audio players.

Amazon music app supports download on all platforms, including desktop. But obviosly you can play through app only.

 

[originalsnuffy]

Amazon music app supports download on all platforms, including desktop. But obviosly you can play through app only.

Andrew, do you have direct experience downloading to say, a FIIO or Shanling unit or something of that nature? I am not referring to phones. I could not get that to work with my Cayin and looking for scenarios that are proven to work; not just for streaming for for download. I have no issues with using the app for playback. With the iphone I also need to use an external DAC for full fidelity which is annoying.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Sorry, PCs (Win10) and Android tablets and phones only.
Not familiar with DAPs you are referring to (thought they are thing from the past).
What OS do they run, can you install Amazon Music app on them?

 

[435279]

Andrew, do you have direct experience downloading to say, a FIIO or Shanling unit or something of that nature? I am not referring to phones. I could not get that to work with my Cayin and looking for scenarios that are proven to work; not just for streaming for for download. I have no issues with using the app for playback. With the iphone I also need to use an external DAC for full fidelity which is annoying.

You don't say what Cayin model you have. It would obviously need to be an Android DAP that ideally supported the Play Store. For example the Cayin N6ii that I own, allows me to download music from Amazon Music for offline playback.

 

[a-LeXx]

I am in the UK and via my iPad/iPhone can see the quality dropping to Standard, but then going back up. It is fine over cellular.
Does not happen on my Mac - all fine.

Windows Computer users also reported this problem.

right, cellular works fine, because for cellular you can actually set it accordingly - you just hard code streaming rate to HD/UHD, and it stays like that.
For WiFi, there is no option to select streaming quality, it is always auto-selected by the app.

I have a suspicion that the problem is related to longer ping times from Europe to US-based servers. When I look at the app, how it's populating the buffer, it's always done in small chunks. Fast loading a chunk, than multiple seconds nothing happens. Then a next chunk. At some point of time, usually around 90s, this buffering would suddenly speed up, and the rest of the song will be downloaded in just couple of seconds. When playback reaches that point in the buffer, where it went from slow to fast, the sound quality would drop to 'standard'.

How I see it from a developer point of view: the app has standard size very small windows of few ms to download a chunk of streamed content. When a substantial part of that window is used up by a slow ping, the app would get fewer data than anticipated, even if the data rate is high. Based on that, it makes a decision: this internet connection is flawed, need to reduce the quality and download fast to fill up the whole buffer with low quality, to keep playback going...

Obviously, this is a bug in the logic. But also obviously, Amazon is not making any attempts to fix it. I opened multiple support tickets, have written this on amazon's own forum, multiple users confirmed this... Still nothing happening...

 

[originalsnuffy]

You don't say what Cayin model you have. It would obviously need to be an Android DAP that ideally supported the Play Store. For example the Cayin N6ii that I own, allows me to download music from Amazon Music for offline playback.

The unit is the orphaned Cayin N5II. The Play Store does not seem to be supported on my device. I sideloaded the app but it freezes before actually working. The version of Android is supposedly supported but no joy. Cayin has publicly acknowledged that the unit is at end of software support. So I am looking for a unit that really works. Your unit is the first I have heard of that definitely supports the app so thanks for that!

On the downloads with your N6II; does it work on SD cards or only on internal memory?

 

[435279]

The unit is the orphaned Cayin N5II. The Play Store does not seem to be supported on my device. I sideloaded the app but it freezes before actually working. The version of Android is supposedly supported but no joy. Cayin has publicly acknowledged that the unit is at end of software support. So I am looking for a unit that really works. Your unit is the first I have heard of that definitely supports the app so thanks for that!

On the downloads with your N6II; does it work on SD cards or only on internal memory?

It gives me the option for both, but at the moment I've saved Amazon offline music onto the internal memory so I can swap around my library of SD cards without affecting the offline music.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

7.8.6.216 was released for Win10.
Nope, no exclusive mode yet, but my initial impression is that brightness is subdued.
You can download it from here
Don't forget to turn off Loudness optimization and set app volume to 100% after install, it resets everything to defaults.

 

[tradyblix]

Yeah I’m not sure what the difference really is utility between playlists and and a stream. I guess if you run out of the playlist songs early....

 

[Andrew_WOT]

7.8.6.216 was released for Win10.
Nope, no exclusive mode yet, but my initial impression is that brightness is subdued.
You can download it from here
Don't forget to turn off Loudness optimization and set app volume to 100% after install, it resets everything to defaults.

The quality on Windows is quite impressive now, even with my lesser DAC.
Doing A/B with ripped flacs, can't say I can hear any difference at all.