Many of the above impressions may be improved if loudness normalization is turned off. But the Amazon app also does not get around various kinds of system resampling even when an external DAC or the LG internal Quad DAC is available. The specifics are different across Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS, but in all or most situations the result in resampling, sometimes upsampling but in other cases downsampling.
On phones this includes resampling of the signal sent to external DACs and even high-end internal DACs, and no third-party apps yet have access to the Amazon API to help us find a way around this problem. On desktops the apps don't allow you to select anything but the main system audio, so no options like ASIO or exclusive, and there's no integration with third-party player apps possible there yet either.
This only makes sense when one considers that Amazon's main competitors in this space are Apple Music and Spotify. Many say it sounds better than those services. But it appears most Qobuz and Tidal users remain unimpressed.
