[Ripper2860]

But a FLAC converted from an MP3 will have ALL of the information that the MP3 had. So LOSSLESS!

OK. I'm at a LOSS.

 

[macdonjh]

Nice! Do I spy the holy hand grenade in your eyepiece tray?

Excellent, I didn't know there were other amateur astronomers watching this thread. Not quite the Holy Hand Grenade, that's it's slightly smaller brother, the discontinued 26mm Nagler. For my scope it produces almost exactly 200x magnification. I'll save you the mental math: 350mm aperture, f/15, 5250mm focal length. A scope for sweeping the Milky Way this is not.

The 26mm Nagler has become my most used eye piece with this scope. The other one I reach for often is a Pentax 18mm SMC orthoscopic (appx. 290x). It is great for looking at globular clusters and planetary nebulae. I noticed it provides a strange "deep" view "into" globular clusters. Similar to those weird effects us audio geeks try to describe when discussing the virtues of unicorn tears and Aztec shaman in cable assembly.

 

[macdonjh]

Unicorn tears are a sonic disaster compared to things treated with cat dander. Only thing better than regular cat dander is a cryo'd cat's dander.

I used to use that, but then PETA started demonstrating outside my house. I switched to the slightly inferior cat dander cryo'd after collection from the cat.

 

[StimpyWan]

Excellent, I didn't know there were other amateur astronomers watching this thread. Not quite the Holy Hand Grenade, that's it's slightly smaller brother, the discontinued 26mm Nagler. For my scope it produces almost exactly 200x magnification. I'll save you the mental math: 350mm aperture, f/15, 5250mm focal length. A scope for sweeping the Milky Way this is not.

The 26mm Nagler has become my most used eye piece with this scope. The other one I reach for often is a Pentax 18mm SMC orthoscopic (appx. 290x). It is great for looking at globular clusters and planetary nebulae. I noticed it provides a strange "deep" view "into" globular clusters. Similar to those weird effects us audio geeks try to describe when discussing the virtues of unicorn tears and Aztec shaman in cable assembly.

Do you also do astrophotography, or image capture into a computer? 50,000 images captured over 26 years, and stitched together with Photoshop? I'm really impressed by armature astronomers that do that...! Awesome dedication...!

 

[ghfiii]

-I need to re-evaluate their player and see if it has improved

Still nothing to write home about

 

[Ableza]

Aztec shaman in cable assembly.

Aztec shaman cables sound a bit heartless.

 

[RickB]

I'm using it and the "Analyzing audio files" is taking forever. It's already restarted once because my internet connection went out and caused the program to crash. I find it hard to believe they didn't realize they should've made that a background process invisible to the user and with the ability to save its place if the process is interrupted.

The sound quality is great, it sounds warmer to me than 3.5.

Oh, here's a nice wrinkle: the "Analyzing audio files" adds a metadata tag to all files. If you backup your library to the cloud, your backup client will probably detect the change in the files and proceed to re-upload all the changed files. I use BackBlaze and I see this happening already. If you have cable internet with a data cap, this royally sucks.

 

[emorrison33]

Still nothing to write home about

Did Amazon ever add Exclusive Mode? I read somewhere they did, but it wasn't a "true" exclusive mode.

 

[bboris77]

Did Amazon ever add Exclusive Mode? I read somewhere they did, but it wasn't a "true" exclusive mode.

It did, but it is only truly bit-perfect if you manually set your DAC output settings in the "Sound" menu to match the bitrate/sample rate settings of the song being played. For songs that are labeled as "HD" it is simple: 16-bit/44kHz. Ultra HD is anywhere between 24/44, 24/96 up to 24/192. The app itself does not have the capability of controlling the output settings of your DAC. It is a very, very annoying thing and it is shameful that Amazon has still not fixed it. We all have to write to them and complain about it.

Another annoying bug is the fact that "exclusive mode" is always disabled when you start the Amazon Music application - it has to be manually triggered "on". Also make sure to disable the "loudness normalization" option. It is fairly obvious that their development team needs at least one nutty audiophile on it to ensure things run properly.

 

[axle11]

Let's let our ears and $$ decide.

 

[emorrison33]

It did, but it is only truly bit-perfect if you manually set your DAC output settings in the "Sound" menu to match the bitrate/sample rate settings of the song being played. For songs that are labeled as "HD" it is simple: 16-bit/44kHz. Ultra HD is anywhere between 24/44, 24/96 up to 24/192. The app itself does not have the capability of controlling the output settings of your DAC. It is a very, very annoying thing and it is shameful that Amazon has still not fixed it. We all have to write to them and complain about it.

Another annoying bug is the fact that "exclusive mode" is always disabled when you start the Amazon Music application - it has to be manually triggered "on". Also make sure to disable the "loudness normalization" option. It is fairly obvious that their development team needs at least one nutty audiophile on it to ensure things run properly.

Thanks! So then "exclusive mode" hasn't changed since it became available...And I used it last. I'm up for writing to them! I'll stick with Qobuz, for now though.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

Apple Lossless and Amazon HD new pricing (still not sure about sound quality--I need to re-evaluate their player and see if it has improved), and soon, Spotify lossless are all great news--more options that aren't lossy-hiding-in-lossless packaging maybe-defacto-music-takeover maybe-kinda-sorta DRM schemes.

What he said.

 

[valiant66]

Hmm. Adding fire to the BBQ…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/trav...out-texas-kansas-city-causes-stir/5078160001/
.

 

[Rensek]

Nice! Do I spy the holy hand grenade in your eyepiece tray?

When AndreYew asked about the holy hand grenade.....Did anyone else try to find a bottle of Blantons in the photo?

 

[oryan_dunn]

But what does BBQ even mean!??