I agree with you that enjoyment is the goal. If you press play and your toe starts tapping then all is good.
At the same time what enables all this to happen is numbers and hardware.
On Windows, Amazon HD does not give you what you paid for - a selection of music formats from compressed, cd quality and above cd quality.
If your Windows is set to 16/44 when you start Amazon Music then when you play 24/96 tracks you are not getting 24/96. It seems like it says it’s playing 24/96 but If you look closely you will see it is only playing at 16/44.
What’s supposed to happen is Amazon Music should set your dac to the format of the track you select. Instead Amazon Music only plays at whatever setting you had when you started Amazon Music.
So, unless you want to exit Amazon Music, change Windows settings and then restart Aamzon Music every time you play a track at a different format you are not getting what you paid for. That is the issue people have with Amazon Music.
DAC setting changes from track to track were a major issue with Qobuz (Mac) when I tried it. It sometimes switched rates at first, but then got stuck and often crashed the app entirely.
On the Mac, each Amazon HD track shows a current and ever-changing bitrate, but I can’t confirm its accuracy with my DAC readout (it is just a colored light and not specific). Amazon HD does not crash for me.
I’m guessing some of this may be DAC dependent or OS dependent, and it may involve known compatibility issues. To the extent that Amazon gets stuck at a low rate or is not bit perfect, they may see this as a necessary compromise to improve stability. Tidal also didn’t crash for me, but every track had their smooth and filtered high-end tone regardless of the reported bitrate.
Yes, the whole thing is a mess. The only platform that worked reliably for me was Tidal when I was trying out all the platforms.
I have since stopped streaming entirely and buy music from bandcamp. Discovery is harder but at least I feel like I’m supporting artists in this difficult time. There’s no perfect answer unfortunately.
Edit: My reference to Tidal was not related to MQA, only that Tidal correctly set my dac to the format of the track I played, MQA or not.
OK everyone. Simpleton that I am, I’m really confused by this.
Playing around with this issue, this is what I am experiencing.
I’m running Windows 10 Pro on a Dell Precision 3460 desktop. It has both onboard Realtek Audio and
an AMD Radeon Pro WX2100 video/sound card. For “serious” listening I run audio from USB to An Atom DAC and amp duo. Listen with either Hifiman Ananda or Sennheiser HD580 pro headphones.
Definitely not state of the art but way better than my ears.
So when I fire up Amazon and play music, I switch to exclusive mode which I find makes a big difference in sound quality. When I click on the orange HD logo at the bottom left of my screen, it pops up a window that displays Track Quality, device capability, current play rate and Codec.
So are you saying that Amazon is being less than truthful about what is playing because I have no way of verifying? Also, Does or should the source providing the music stream have the ability to manipulate the play settings on my computer?
To be clear, I am not shilling for Amazon. My interest here is that I have been a member since 1998 and with my Prime membership, Amazon HD is a hell of a bargain for me. With my non music related business they have always been very good to deal with (in a non human sort of way).
Lack of verification doesn’t mean they are lying, but leaves open the door to lying. Some critiques of Amazon HD and Tidal claim there is monkey business going on. I don’t have the motivation to pursue it further, and I could live with CD Redbook 16/44.1 for the rest of my life.
More than a few people in audio are full of it or have conflicts of interest too.
On my Mac, yes. There’s a control panel to set the maximum quality for the external DAC output signal. If the bitrate is set above the current source it’ll drop down to the bitrate required (Qobuz for sure).
Should the source set your hardware to play the track at your requested format? Yes, it should and this is where Amazon Music falters.
It boils down to this: If you make your Windows settings 16/44 then you can’t get the benefit of anything higher than that from Amazon Music. If you make your Windows settings 24/96 then if a track is only available in 16/44 then there will be software processing to turn the 16/44 into 24/96 before it is sent to the dac. Most people see this as a negative and unwanted behavior.
What should happen is the source should set your dac to match the track format and avoid any intermediate software processing. Tidal and Qobuz do this (at least sometimes when they are working properly).
If you don’t care about all this then continue on happily and forget about this whole thread.
+1
I tried everything, then landed on the Lotoo PAW S1. Had to buy the Lotto PAW S1 USB-C to Lightning cable to make it work. But it was well worth it. For portability and sound quality, it is the best I have found.
Any definitive answer yet whether Airplay 2 can or will transmit full 24/192? I’d assume the answer is no, but for Bluesound’s apparent suggestion that their Node will provide 24/192 via Airplay 2.
No spec I can find claims AAC bluetooth codec is available. Some pages explicitly state it doesn’t have it. (As well as no aptx or ldac, but that is irrelevant to iphone users)
Without that bluetooth sound quality is not worth it, and that will be handily beat by the qudelix over bluetooth.
Airplay is fine. But, as far as I know, only works when both devices are on the same network.
I am literally telling you it is playing bluetooth on my iPhone from Apple Music. What is there to confirm?
Air-Play only works on the same network, or wireless networks that have a common connection.
What is the misunderstanding around this? Perhaps I can help shed some light.
There are multiple codecs. It is likely using SBC which is lower quality. Apple only supports AAC bluetooth codec for higher quality streaming (which, ironically, despite sharing the same name as apple’s file format, is not from apple). The poly does not support it, so both devices fall back on SBC.
It’s not that it can’t play music, it’s that it can’t use the best codec the iphone offers.
Personally, when using a device with a good AAC bluetooth implementation, I have a hard time distinguishing from wired on most music. SBC is typically far more obvious. Though I haven’t done that test in years.
