[Left Channel]

Do audiophiles themselves know what they need?

More. By definition, audiophiles need more.

 

[senorx12562]

should everyone chuck their money at amazon tho ? at least tidal is artist owned. amazon already owns too much.

Now this is hilarious.

 

[tradyblix]

Now this is hilarious.

And why good sir, is it hilarious ? Are you going to back your post up with some actual content, nay, dare I say counterpoint ? Or at least a worthy argument ? Or is it just gonna be a sneer and mudslinging ? Hmmm ?

How is Amazon better than Tidal ?

 

[senorx12562]

And why good sir, is it hilarious ? Are you going to back your post up with some actual content, nay, dare I say counterpoint ? Or at least a worthy argument ? Or is it just gonna be a sneer and mudslinging ? Hmmm ?

How is Amazon better than Tidal ?

Nah, I will just stick with sneering and mudslinging. Thanks for asking tho. Guess I am not a "good sir" after all, although you didn't really mean that anyway, did you? Cheers.

 

[Romi54]

Does Amazon music sound better than Tidal?

 

[Brava210]

Does Amazon music sound better than Tidal?

NO.......well if you like a bright, harsh, poor detail,
Then yes

 

[Romi54]

Ok thank you!

 

[Soundizer]

Does Amazon music sound better than Tidal?

No, TIDAL sounds better. On 16 bit/44/1 there is less difference, but Amazon Music - ULTRA HD vs TIDAL MASTERS I hear a much bigger advantage with TIDAL [depending on the Album].

However Amazon has ULTRA HD Albums which are only available in 16bit/44.1 on Tidal HIFI, such as many of Michael Jackson Albums. In this case it is hard to say which sounds better on my gear. Audioquest Cobalt to Focal Clear headphones.

all the above is based on download in highest quality, since Amazon can’t stream in full quality for over 2 minutes. The quality goes to STANDARD which is horrible.

 

[a-LeXx]

If anybody is poised to take control of the nascent HD audio streaming world, assuming Amazon is fine with their halfazz budget approach, it would be Apple. They have the music library in their own cloud, and the ability to improve their iDevices' audio hardware capabilities. Amazon has more reach, but if Steve Jobs was alive this would already be happening. Amazon needs competition. Perhaps Qobuz & Tidal will merge with Roon.

First thing, Apple is hosting a biggest part of it‘s own iCloud and Apple Music at Amazon‘s AWS cloud. They are paying amazon around 30.000.000 USD monthly for hosting alone. Apple is just now struggling to establish their own cloud storage, a long way to go for them...

Secondly, no iOS device does support more than 24/48 natively in the hardware. And Apple tries to move all audio to BT. There is no point in losless or even hires, if at the end it‘s used for lossy BT. And all BT formats are lossy.

What I‘m trying to say, is - I don‘t believe Apple would go for lossless or hires any time soon, and by soon I mean at least next 5 years...

 

[a-LeXx]

No, TIDAL sounds better. On 16 bit/44/1 there is less difference, but Amazon Music - ULTRA HD vs TIDAL MASTERS I hear a much bigger advantage with TIDAL [depending on the Album].

However Amazon has ULTRA HD Albums which are only available in 16bit/44.1 on Tidal HIFI, such as many of Michael Jackson Albums. In this case it is hard to say which sounds better on my gear. Audioquest Cobalt to Focal Clear headphones.

all the above is based on download in highest quality, since Amazon can’t stream in full quality for over 2 minutes. The quality goes to STANDARD which is horrible.

I already mentioned this in this thread - that is because Tidal‘s MQA masters per definition differ from any other. For MQA they have to re-master, so the chances are high it would sound differently. So, it‘s comparing apples to oranges. Those MQA albums on Tidal can easily sound better to you, but that because they are MQA, and no Big One would ever jump on MQA, they would either stay lossy or offer true lossless.

 

[a-LeXx]

NO.......well if you like a bright, harsh, poor detail,
Then yes

I cannot confirm this experience on my HW (using iPhone + DFR). Amazon Music HD sounds perfectly fine to me. I compared multiple albums to Apple Music (and I would consider them a golden standard in terms of used masters) doing instant A/B switching, and there was no difference in tonality, it was neither brighter nor darker, also the same dynamic range. While Apple Music has a bit of ‚digital‘ in the sound, Amazon Music sounds absolutely organic.

But we know Amazon‘s apps are still very buggy, so YMMV depending on used HW...

 

[mixman]

I cannot confirm this experience on my HW (using iPhone + DFR). Amazon Music HD sounds perfectly fine to me. I compared multiple albums to Apple Music (and I would consider them a golden standard in terms of used masters) doing instant A/B switching, and there was no difference in tonality, it was neither brighter nor darker, also the same dynamic range. While Apple Music has a bit of ‚digital‘ in the sound, Amazon Music sounds absolutely organic.

But we know Amazon‘s apps are still very buggy, so YMMV depending on used HW...

I can also attest to the Amazon jacking up their high end, lacking detail, compared to Qobuz and Tidal. There is a fuzziness in the treble with less detail.

 

[exdmd]

Amazon Music HD sound quality right now just does not compare with Tidal or Qobuz. You can most likely put this down to the program using the Windows audio stack in shared mode. Regardless of the native bit depth and sample rate of the song played in Amazon Music HD Windows up or down samples to the user setting in Sounds. You can confirm this if you have an outboard DAC that shows the sample rate it is being sent. You could go into Windows Sounds and manually adjust for each song but you will still have the files sent through the Windows audio stack with some degradation: you are not getting bit perfect sound. For that you need ASIO or Wasapi exclusive mode. Tidal and Qobuz both offer exclusive mode which bypasses Windows audio and lets the stream be sent bit perfect to the DAC with automatic sample rate changing.

Amazon has great engineers so it is a mystery why they did not enable Wasapi exclusive mode in the Windows desktop app. If they had and sound quality matched Qobuz or Tidal it would be hard for them to survive. Right now audiophiles are staying with Qobuz and Tidal because they sound better, and if you have money investing in a resolving system an extra $10 a month is small change for the better sound quality. Amazon has gotten plenty of feedback about lack of exclusive mode, now we just wait and see if they care enough about the audiophile market to make changes. If they did not want to update the Windows app they could just open their API to Roon or Audirvana for a licensing fee. I think this is unlikely but we'll see.

 

[grokit]

Amazon Music HD sound quality right now just does not compare with Tidal or Qobuz. You can most likely put this down to the program using the Windows audio stack in shared mode. Regardless of the native bit depth and sample rate of the song played in Amazon Music HD Windows up or down samples to the user setting in Sounds. You can confirm this if you have an outboard DAC that shows the sample rate it is being sent. You could go into Windows Sounds and manually adjust for each song but you will still have the files sent through the Windows audio stack with some degradation: you are not getting bit perfect sound. For that you need ASIO or Wasapi exclusive mode. Tidal and Qobuz both offer exclusive mode which bypasses Windows audio and lets the stream be sent bit perfect to the DAC with automatic sample rate changing.

I wonder if the app sounds worse in Windows for these reasons, than it does on the Mac OS. Seems like we could be talking about apples and oranges here.

 

[a-LeXx]

I wonder if the app sounds worse in Windows for these reasons, than it does on the Mac OS. Seems like we could be talking about apples and oranges here.

I guess we really do, it seems sound quality is really suffering on windows. I do not perceive anything similar on my iOS devices. The app has many problems, SQ is fortunately not among them...