Well it did answer a question I had been contemplating about ADAT Lightpipe!
Amazon CD Quality and HD Quality Music streaming
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24/96/2I thought toslink was limited to 24/48? Hmmm- maybe multi-channel only is what I remember? Oops apparently I don’t remember
Lord British
Well-known Member
View attachment 43260
Ugh. The dreaded "stair-step" illustration rears it's ugly head yet again. Apparently CD quality is now considered "high definition???" I can't roll my eyes harder. Nothing but a cash-grab. It should be "Millions of songs in a 'high-res' bit-bucket container."
Ugh. The dreaded "stair-step" illustration rears it's ugly head yet again. Apparently CD quality is now considered "high definition???" I can't roll my eyes harder. Nothing but a cash-grab. It should be "Millions of songs in a 'high-res' bit-bucket container."
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The "HD" service is mislabeled by Amazon since the music industry defines "HD" High Definition Audio as audio quality that is better than 16/44 PCM.....
Lord British
Well-known Member
Thought you guys might be interested in this. It's from Dr. Mark Waldrep, over at AIX Records:
Amazon Music HD - Revisited
Dr. AIX
The new Amazon Music HD service was the subject of a post a few weeks ago (click here). While not exactly viral, my comments did bring a few thousand visitors to the Real HD-Audio site. Today, as I sit and listen to my trial subscription, I thought I would revisit this new entrant into the high-fidelity streaming marketplace. Why? For a couple of reasons.
First, I'm genuinely enjoying the service. I hooked up the line output my iMac to the analog inputs of an old Yamaha receiver I had laying around and then to a stereo pair of B&W FCM-8 THX speakers I removed from the studio. It sounds pretty good. I have no complaints about the fidelity or the operation of their user interface.
Over the past few days, I've been prepping files for the upcoming HD-Audio Challenge II. I've been selecting files, converting them to the appropriate sample rates and word lengths, reconverting back so that they're all 96 kHz/24-bit files, making sure the "created" and "modified dates" are all the same (using the "touch -t" command in the terminal), and uploading the randomly named files to my premium Dropbox. It's slow going but I'm making progress. I should have files available this week.
And I've been listening to a lot of music using the Amazon Music HD application. I listened to an early Spirit album from 1972, some Moody Blues, John Gorka, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and a few others. The confusion over which albums are 96|192 kHz/24-bits or "Ultra HD" vs. the Redbook albums at 44.1 kHz/16-bits, which Amazon has insisted on elevating to "HD" status continues. But here's what triggered this mini rant.
An AIX Records album recorded at 96/24 and offered on Amazon at 44.1/16
I search for and found an album I produced and engineered by a great guitar player and close friend named Dorian Michael. I told him I would record an album with him if he could hook me up with a couple of bigger names — and he did. Dorian was responsible for introducing me to Laurence Juber and Albert Lee, two absolutely amazing guitarists. The recording is called Acoustic Blues. It became one of Kalman Rubinson's favorites in an old review as I recall.
There was one of my AIX Records albums on the Amazon service. I was a little surprised to see it there but I guess my relationship with Warner Brothers digital distribution is the reason. And if you look at the screen grab below, you'll see the Dorian Michael album designated as "HD". But the playback isn't 96 kHz/24-bits — it's 44.1 kHz/16-bits ("HD" in the crazy world of Amazon). This album is one of the very few bona fide "hi-res" music albums that Amazon could stream as "Ultra HD" but they choose to use the standard-res copy. It's like they're living in a bizarro music world.
And it gets worse.
An analog recording from 1969 is an "Ultra HD" recording? Right.
After enjoying Jacob Dylan's "Echo in the Canyon" documentary and reminiscing about the 1960s Los Angeles music scene, I pulled up the Retrospective album by Buffalo Springfield, which was recorded on analog tape and is designated as "Ultra HD"! Subscribers to Amazon Music HD have absolutely no idea what the fidelity of the music being streamed is. It's very frustrating. I guess I'm going to have to start my own AIX Music HD subscription streaming service.
Amazon Music HD - Revisited
Dr. AIX
The new Amazon Music HD service was the subject of a post a few weeks ago (click here). While not exactly viral, my comments did bring a few thousand visitors to the Real HD-Audio site. Today, as I sit and listen to my trial subscription, I thought I would revisit this new entrant into the high-fidelity streaming marketplace. Why? For a couple of reasons.
First, I'm genuinely enjoying the service. I hooked up the line output my iMac to the analog inputs of an old Yamaha receiver I had laying around and then to a stereo pair of B&W FCM-8 THX speakers I removed from the studio. It sounds pretty good. I have no complaints about the fidelity or the operation of their user interface.
Over the past few days, I've been prepping files for the upcoming HD-Audio Challenge II. I've been selecting files, converting them to the appropriate sample rates and word lengths, reconverting back so that they're all 96 kHz/24-bit files, making sure the "created" and "modified dates" are all the same (using the "touch -t" command in the terminal), and uploading the randomly named files to my premium Dropbox. It's slow going but I'm making progress. I should have files available this week.
And I've been listening to a lot of music using the Amazon Music HD application. I listened to an early Spirit album from 1972, some Moody Blues, John Gorka, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and a few others. The confusion over which albums are 96|192 kHz/24-bits or "Ultra HD" vs. the Redbook albums at 44.1 kHz/16-bits, which Amazon has insisted on elevating to "HD" status continues. But here's what triggered this mini rant.
An AIX Records album recorded at 96/24 and offered on Amazon at 44.1/16
I search for and found an album I produced and engineered by a great guitar player and close friend named Dorian Michael. I told him I would record an album with him if he could hook me up with a couple of bigger names — and he did. Dorian was responsible for introducing me to Laurence Juber and Albert Lee, two absolutely amazing guitarists. The recording is called Acoustic Blues. It became one of Kalman Rubinson's favorites in an old review as I recall.
There was one of my AIX Records albums on the Amazon service. I was a little surprised to see it there but I guess my relationship with Warner Brothers digital distribution is the reason. And if you look at the screen grab below, you'll see the Dorian Michael album designated as "HD". But the playback isn't 96 kHz/24-bits — it's 44.1 kHz/16-bits ("HD" in the crazy world of Amazon). This album is one of the very few bona fide "hi-res" music albums that Amazon could stream as "Ultra HD" but they choose to use the standard-res copy. It's like they're living in a bizarro music world.
And it gets worse.
An analog recording from 1969 is an "Ultra HD" recording? Right.
After enjoying Jacob Dylan's "Echo in the Canyon" documentary and reminiscing about the 1960s Los Angeles music scene, I pulled up the Retrospective album by Buffalo Springfield, which was recorded on analog tape and is designated as "Ultra HD"! Subscribers to Amazon Music HD have absolutely no idea what the fidelity of the music being streamed is. It's very frustrating. I guess I'm going to have to start my own AIX Music HD subscription streaming service.
I just got the trial. My office IT is crazy - Spotify is blocked and most application installs are too, but I was able to install the app on my work machine. That's the main reason I was interested, excited to try it out.
Thanks for the article @Lord British -very interesting; and I'm in agreement, this is a total misrepresentation by Amazon Music and why I won't pay for that service unless they can get their system paired up with reality! Bizarro is being kind, it's more like a rip off; because it's hard for me to believe that the folks developing this program don't actually know the difference in the audio resolution.
I need to pick up that AIX Records "Acoustic Blues", it's long overdue. I'd be interested in an AIX streaming service; because I'm pretty sure they'd represent the audio resolutions correctly!
HugoPhyrst
Well-known Member
I understand your disgust. But I tend to believe they know exactly what they're doing, unfortunately. This attempt to redefine what the term HD means must be intentional.
1. They want to keep selling subscriptions to the compressed streams, so that stays "normal".
2. They don't have enough actual Hi-Res to launch sufficient titles for their "HD streaming", so they just rename CD-quality to "HD" and come up with this "Ultra HD" baloney.
Listened to the recent release of the Saint-Saens 2nd and 5th Piano Concertos in "Ultra HD" mode, whatever that means (it's a 24/96 recording I believe). It sounded good, too. However, the interface is utter garbage - everything revolves around playlists and "stations" - I didn't even see the option to do a genre browse.
Sound and Vision - streaming High-Res through A/V receiver
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/can-i-stream-high-res-through-my-av-receiver
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/can-i-stream-high-res-through-my-av-receiver
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