[exdmd]

Does anyone know what Standard quality means in their app? HD and Ultra HD show the sample rate and bit depth, but standard shows no such info. Is it 320? Is it mp3? Could it vary?

Also, they need to incorporate custom sorting, because seeing albums by "most popular" is ridiculous.

So far I'm excited though. The price point is great coming from paying $20/mo for years.

Price is only a bargain if Amazon can match Tidal and Qobuz sound quality which they have not so far. I have already written customer support about why the lack of exclusive mode? It would seem trivial for Amazon to add Wasapi exclusive mode to their desktop app and only then could we really see if sound quality approached Qobuz and Tidal. They may not care however.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Standard is 256kbps mp3,
HD is 16/44 FLAC and Ultra HD is anything 24bit with sample rates 44-192 FLAC.

 

[stuck limo]

I'm signed up for the 90 day trial. I don't seem to have been charged the $7.99 (I am not an Unlimited member) that some other people mentioned.

The selection seems great and the "search" bar function works flawlessly. However, the UI seems WAY underbaked and I can't believe anyone at Amazon thought this would be acceptable to release as a competitor to Spotify or Tidal. The major things that are bothering me:

1. Lack of "Similar Artists" functionality -- only 4 other artists listed per artist???

2. Lack of Scrobbling (last.fm connectivity)

3. The Play/Pause button looks nice but it should be at the center of the screen/progress bar like Spotify

4. Lack of user generated playlists (I hope this gets fixed)

5. No feature like "Spotify Connect"

6. UI looks haphazard and not well thought out. Not slick at all.

7. No way to search for "Ultra HD" titles

Sound quality seems fine, I haven't really done any hard comparison between Spotify and Amazon. I did do a brief test and I couldn't hear the differences. I'll be listening to it more over the trial period before I make a final call, but I'll probably stick to Spotify because of ease/use of functionality and ubiquity.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

You probably didn't use Qobuz Spartan UI.
Tidal UI is all right, but they use some non standard ports that get blocked by most corporate firewalls.
Out of all lossless I liked Deezer UI the most, flow, personalized playlist, genre based selection, almost flawless.

 

[rkw]

I can't believe anyone at Amazon thought this would be acceptable to release as a competitor to Spotify or Tidal.

I agree that the Amazon interface lags behind the others, but the bottom line is that Amazon is more than competitive and in a strong third place behind Spotify and Apple Music, and growing at a faster pace than Spotify.

2. Lack of Scrobbling (last.fm connectivity)

I know about scrobbling and last.fm, but I don't see its appeal. What do you like about it?

 

[stuck limo]

You probably didn't use Qobuz Spartan UI.
Tidal UI is all right, but they use some non standard ports that get blocked by most corporate firewalls.
Out of all lossless I liked Deezer UI the most, flow, personalized playlist, genre based selection, almost flawless.

You posted this after my comments. Who is this post in reference to?

 

[stuck limo]

I know about scrobbling and last.fm, but I don't see its appeal. What do you like about it?

I like to keep track of what I listen to. I listen to thousands of artists and I can't keep track of them all. I like to see my listening reports and see what artists/albums/songs I've been listening to the most. I also like tracking other peoples' listening choices and seeing how my taste lines up or perhaps listening to their artists if I'm unfamiliar with them.

From my desktop, I have no way of tracking (to my knowledge) Amazon Music plays, even with a third party app. On Android, I can use Pano Scrobbler and it works fine for Amazon Music.

For those who are unfamiliar with Scrobbling, it is done through Last.FM and tracks what you've listened to. If you're on Spotify or Tidal, you simply go into "Settings" and input your Last.FM account info into the Scrobble field. Here is mine:

 

[DevilofLife]

I tried it on my Hiby R5 and Ibasso DX220 which both bypass the android sample rate and use the app sample rate to play music

The Amazon Music app just plays everything 16Bit 44kHz not matter what sample rate the song is so I think the app just downsample everything to 16Bit 44kHz

 

[stonesfan129]

I'm curious when the download sites (Amazon, Google Play, iTunes) will start offering CD-quality lossless downloads. I don't mind 256kb/s AAC or 320kb/s MP3, but would prefer to keep a lossless file on my server as it gives more flexibility in encoding to other formats.

 

[clerkpalmer]

Any thoughts on whether its time to ditch tidal? I've always pulled for them as the underdog but 40 percent cheaper is significant.

 

[csglinux]

Any thoughts on whether its time to ditch tidal? I've always pulled for them as the underdog but 40 percent cheaper is significant.

I'm sticking with Tidal. The SQ from Amazon's service isn't there yet. If it gets there one day, I'll certainly reconsider.

Right now, if you're using Android, Amazon's service doesn't offer what's advertised. It seems to be impossible to get any Android device to give anything over 48 kHz.

 

[exdmd]

Any thoughts on whether its time to ditch tidal? I've always pulled for them as the underdog but 40 percent cheaper is significant.

I don't think just yet. Tidal has advantages over Amazon Music HD. Better sound quality since Amazon Music HD uses Windows Sound Mixer in shared mode, the UI is nowhere as nice as Tidal's. Tidal has videos, etc. If you already have Amazon Prime you can get a 90 day free trial to Amazon Music HD (as long as you were not a previous Amazon Music customer) so try it if you want to but I would not drop Tidal yet. Let's see what Amazon does over the next three months in response to complaints and If they change the desktop app to allow exclusive mode and open their API so Roon and Audirvana can integrate.

 

[clerkpalmer]

I'm sticking with Tidal. The SQ from Amazon's service isn't there yet. If it gets there one day, I'll certainly reconsider.

Right now, if you're using Android, Amazon's service doesn't offer what's advertised. It seems to be impossible to get any Android device to give anything over 48 kHz.

Is the issue software related? Can't be hardware can it?

 

[clerkpalmer]

I don't think just yet. Tidal has advantages over Amazon Music HD. Better sound quality since Amazon Music HD uses Windows Sound Mixer in shared mode, the UI is nowhere as nice as Tidal's. Tidal has videos, etc. If you already have Amazon Prime you can get a 90 day free trial to Amazon Music HD (as long as you were not a previous Amazon Music customer) so try it if you want to but I would not drop Tidal yet. Let's see what Amazon does over the next three months in response to complaints and If they change the desktop app to allow exclusive mode and open their API so Roon and Audirvana can integrate.

Thanks - interesting about a lack of ultra HD for android. Seems like a major misfire particularly since I would imagine the vast majority of subscribers will be using android.

 

[CANiSLAYu]

Let's see what Amazon does over the next three months in response to complaints and If they change the desktop app to allow exclusive mode and open their API so Roon and Audirvana can integrate.

I'm optimistic they'll improve their apps, but the timeframe is probably the bigger question. I have Tidal (for just me), Apple Music (family uses it) and Amazon HD trial. They all have their limitations and niggles, so it's a bit of an ugly man contest and it seems like no one is in a rush to deliver a top notch UX that is a real differentiator.

On the latter piece though, as a Roon lifetime subscriber I certainly hope they integrate (I already dropped my suggestion box comment), but I never see that happening. Amazon is just too big to care about the (by comparison) paltry user base. Also they have capabilities in their app to link out to buy the songs, etc. I bet in the future they do things like link to concert tickets and artist merchandise (that they'll sell you of course). They want the eyeballs on their app, not someone else's.