My personal position is closer to a case where I’d say that on occasion, the masters used for MQA seem to be better than the existing PCM versions that are available.
Those cases really haven’t been for material that has been recorded since the advent of MQA, however. So, they’re either existing masters seeing the light of day with MQA for the first time, or they’re new masters from earlier recorded material.
And there’s absolutely NO indication that if those same “better masters” were released as regular PCM they wouldn’t still be better than their existing versions.
I’m not an MQA fan, mostly because there is far more content there that sounds worse than the existing PCM version than there is where the MQA version is indistinguishable or better - and I don’t like the idea that it becomes pervasive as a result.
Long winded way of saying “I don’t believe it isthe MQA technology that results in the occasional MQA-master sounding better, it’s just because it’s a different master.”
And there’s absolutely NO indication that if those same “better masters” were released as regular PCM they wouldn’t still be better than their existing versions.
I’m not an MQA fan, mostly because there is far more content there that sounds worse than the existing PCM version than there is where the MQA version is indistinguishable or better - and I don’t like the idea that it becomes pervasive as a result.
Pretty much this, I run Amazon HD on a satellite system and it’s worthwhile there for listening to stuff I don’t have downloaded onto said drive. I also use it outside of my home on said Laptop and overall it’s at least better than Spotify I’ve found. I may experiment with Qobuz on desktop, but I want to see the Amazon catalog get the software support it deserves so I’ll stick around
To be 100% honest outside of my office I’m spending more an more time with Qobuz as the catalog is improving daily! An It’s just soooo consistent! I almost never get drop outs with 16/24 | 44.1/48 content. I might even invest in a 5G device for my area just to have the bandwidth to run 24/96, as I live and work in a series of rather congested cell sites
I will also likely edit/reshoot the video portion of this content here in the next day simply because In like 3 weeks I’ve seen enough of a improvement to the catalog on Qobuz that I feel I’d both like to and need to give a better representation of it
I am a couple of weeks into my Tidal HiFi trial and I am well impressed. The Master quality tracks are truly and noticeably better than the HiFi quality ones. The Flaming Lips generally sound as good as my DVD-A versions of the albums.
By the way, as I understand it MQA is pointless for hi res music. It works by taking some of the information available in e.g., 24-bit 96kHz sources and encodes it into a 16-bit 44.1KHz track. So in other words there is nothing it can do to improve a 24-bit 96kHz track.
This is an interesting thread and one I searched for to see what everyone was using for streaming/online.
For me I am a Amazon Music HD user as I am already a prime member so from a price perspective it was a clear winner. I am actively downloading, searching UltraHD playlists and albums which are being added more and more frequently and listening to the higher quality albums at 24bit 96kHz and 192khz. I have been introduced to all kinds of new music just by searching for the highest quality UltraHD tracks/albums which has been really fun. A couple of my favorite albums such as Working Man’s Dead and American Beauty from the Grateful Dead are both 24bit 192khz on Amazon Music HD. I also own the master recorded vinyls of these albums and when I don’t want to play vinyl or on the go the UltraHD albums downloaded offline to my IPhone/IPad Pro are incredible sounding. I don’t have a point of reference for which of the services sounds better than another and have heard different opinions around it from different people online which I always take with a grain of salt. Unless they are being measured and tested in a way that can truly audibly find quality differences I’m not sure how one would really know which sounds better unless it’s a better to their ears kinda situation.
What I like about AmazonMusic HD service.
Currently it’s still free for me. When I go to renew they have a killer deal for prime members if you pay for a year in advance you get the lowest price in the industry currently to my knowledge which can’t be touched by the other providers.
No need to fuss with Audio formats Flac is standard and just works. This may not be the case with certain DACs and getting the full quality that Tidal can give you without their proprietary format.
This may be silly to some but it’s fun to be able to tell Alexa through my IMac, Iphone, IPad Pro etc, to play a certain song or track through the service and it works usually pretty well.
Fairly easy to use with most apple devices.
Huge selection of music, let’s face it Amazon was selling books, music, movies online at higher volumes than anyone long before other streaming services were even around. This means they have the relationships, clout, and money to make things happen in the music space if they want to.
Amazon Music HD exposes higher resolution audio to the masses if they are willing to invest some time and money which I think is better for the industry as a whole as long as the artists making the music are being compensated fairly.
Love the way it displays my albums on my IPad Pro and feel the app is pretty good.
Easy to use and play Amazon Firestick and surround sound system/tv.
What I don’t like:
The desktop App can be buggy and irritating at times.
You have to constantly tell the app to stream all albums in Ultra HD every time you login otherwise it will just play at best available.
Steaming Ultra HD tracks when not on WiFi gobbles up data from cellular plan.
I am interested in checking out some of the other services as I have heard great things. I am just engulfed with looking for new music on AmazonMusicHD for now.
I think we are entering a golden age of streaming right now, and the most encouraging thing about it to me is how seriously most of the parties involved are taking sound quality. I am encouraged by the fact that (a) CD and above quality is now available from Qobuz, Tidal, Amazon, Deezer, Primephonic, and others; (b) many of these providers have (or are working on) a way to provide the content bit-perfectly; (c ) hardware providers are taking USB audio seriously (see, for example, the Schitt Bifrost 2 with unison USB); and (d) labels are actively managing new music and back catalogs and providing them in quality streaming.
I am a classical aficionado and, for the past ten years or so, have been collecting classical ‘mega’ box sets. I recognized at the time that it may be a last gasp of sorts for physical media, and I have highly enjoyed procuring thousands of CDs at between $1-2 per disc. While doing so, I would often think back to the golden age of the CD - in the 80s and 90s I would go to the Tower Records classical section and spend $15-20 for a single disc without thinking twice. On top of that was the experience of browsing - being in the presence of - a huge collection of recordings spanning the entire history of recorded music. Collecting those box sets rekindled that same feeling to a degree, but I was completely surprised to find that streaming does as well for me. Tidal plus Qobuz (UK) with Roon enables me to browse my rips and just about any other available recording. Primephonic is another wonderfully curated service that serves up an impossibly large library of classical music.
I now can sit down with my iPad Pro, read the latest issues of BBC Music and Gramophone magazines, browse a virtually endless library of new releases and catalog reissues, control Roon to play my entire library of rips and streaming in CD or better quality, all through a system or pair of headphones that can make streaming sound more or less as good as vinyl. If I’d have described this to myself in Tower Records in 1990, I’d have been over the moon.
There’s a more comprehensive thread on the topic here.
Amazon Music HD has two big glaring omissions on the desktop.
No “Exclusive Mode”, which means it’s feeding audio through the OS Mixer, which is generally undesirable if you want bit-perfect output.
Partly because of point 1, it does not automatically reset the output bit-rate/depth on the host OS, so you either have to do that manually every time a track is at a different resolution to your defaults OR the music is being resampled by the OS before it reaches your DAC. OS built-in resampling is not as good as it could be (until Windows or Apple adopt SoX or iZotope for the job).
That last point, alone, makes it not worth it for me.
I’m not totally sure I understand as my audio is consistently being fed out of my DAC and I’m able to pull up the track to see what bit rate it’s playing at both on the DAC, through amazon, and in the Midi Control of my MAC. Are you on a PC?
Oh when it launched it was absolute hot garbage lol… I’m not as knowledgeable as you so I could be wrong but this issue may have been rectified. They seem to be constantly improving it too and they have the money to do so. I hope they keep pushing it to the next level.
Nope, just pulled the latest version of the app and tested it again … the application does not automatically switch the bit-depth or sample rate under macOS. It stays at whatever I had configured in the Audio Midi Utility.
Which means macOS will automatically up/down-sample whatever the Amazon app sends it to match the settings in Audio Midi Utility, instead of what it should do, which is automatically reset those settings to match the bit-rate of the file it is playing.
Interesting, I guess I need to compare Tidal to it to see if I can Audibly hear a difference. I have been wanting to give it a listen anyways.
What would someone recommend to Amazon Music HD service specifically to fix this issue? I am a firm believer in not giving up and trying to help get it changed. I think this issue and the app resetting each time to best available and having to switch it to Ultra HD at the begging of each listening session should be capable of being fixed by their software engineers.
It’s not going to be an apples-to-apples comparison, since TIDAL doesn’t have native hi-res content.
Comparing TIDAL’s MQA files to actual HiRes with Amazon Music HD means that the actual bit-stream will be different. Otherwise you’re limited to comparing 16/44.1 content from both platforms.
And that’s not the issue at hand, anyway.
A BETTER test, and a more relevant one, is to simply pick one of the two services and then first make sure the bit-depth/rate are set correctly for the file being played, and then swap them to a higher or lower setting (e.g. for a 16/44.1 file, try it with the settings at 16/44.1 and then at 24/192) and see if you hear a difference there. Since that’s actually the issue you’re facing with Amazon Music HD.
You’d request support for “Exclusive Mode support” and “Automatic bit-rate/depth switching of the connected audio device”.
Many have made this request … including myself. I also asked for support for Roon and Audirvana, without which I’d just never use the service for actual listening. The native apps and experiences for all these services are too limiting, and I don’t particularly want to be limited to one app at a time on the occasions that I’m listening to a playlist.
Thank you @Torq I love the amount of knowledge you and other members have it’s so cool! I am learning so much everyday and to be honest it’s a bit of an obsession for me right now! thank you again
I spent over an hour submitting your feedback to Amazon Music Unlimited HD service today, as well as persisted to actually talk to someone in customer relations on the Music team and after some time got a call back and he actually listened, took detailed notes on what we are looking for, read it all back to me to make sure he completely understood what I was asking for and about the other services it was being compared to and the services we would like to integrate with it. He also asked if they had further questions from any of the engineers on the team if they could reach back out to me. Of course I said yes. First time I have ever been able to go into such detail with a team specific person who is part of the customer relations/ software engineering team. They probably got sick of hearing from me on other issues I have been sending weekly around the desktop player issues I was having. We shall see if anything happens!
I’ll be doing the same request to Amazon now that I have the right terminology to point to the issue ( thanks @Torq ).
I just jump in to HD streaming a few months ago since at my desktop I mostly use my FLAC files and streaming was only on the go with IEM and Amazon Unlimited.
I was in the middle of the trial period of Qobuz & Tidal when Amazon HD start and I was in heaven because I’m very familiar with the app and had playlist , etc… and that was the beginning and end of Qobuz and Tidal, BUT, I do agree 200% with everything positive @mshenay said up here about Qobuz.
We’ve been talking about on-demand lossless streaming, but RP does free FLAC streaming. They have four curated channels, and they do a damn good job of it.
Many of us here listen and discover some new music that way.
I find that in the car, I can’t usually stream FLAC, but you can load some up on your phone, and listen to the buffer for hours. Ultra quality usually does work for me in the car, which is a noisy environment to begin with.
There are a few internet radio stations that also do FLAC, but I’ve not found any that I like to listen to as much as RP, which I do support with occasional donations.
