![]() ![]() In other words, wireless bluetooth headsets are out. ![]() Standard bluetooth connections will not support even CD quality PCM streams (16bit/44khz). It's also difficult to tell whether the stream is going out lossy or lossless. There are some compression codecs like LDAC but even these max out 16bit/48khz (max bitrate of 990 kbs) but this requires a very good connection and you never truly know what you are getting as the quality can dynamically shift mid song based on signal strength and other factors. Amazon Music's website specifically states that "At this time, external DACs are not supported on Android." (3) Of note, I spoke with somebody that reported that they were able to bitstream out with their Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 via USB OTG cable to both a Cambridge Audio DacMagic 200M and Evo 150.Īnything with a Bluetooth connection - Bluetooth does not have the bandwidth to support HD/Ultra HD streams. I say 98% as there are some reports that a few devices can truly output higher via a USB to OTG cable and then fed into an external DAC but I have not seen a definite list and most likely your Android phone/tablet does not support it. Android devices by default are limited and resample everything to 24bit/48khz (some devices may a different default but still resampled). (4)Īndroid Devices - Or at least 98% of them. The Mac Desktop app - same issue as the Windows app. This is explained more in the following article: I won't dive into the technical details but you can read this article that goes into upsampling changes to audio including measurements: I will even go beyond Amazon Music and say that if you want good quality sound, you should stay out of the windows audio stack in general as the internal processing is rather terrible. The output of the upsampled audio is not only not bitperfect, but the actual sound does get changed due to factors such as interpolation. People argue, "just set windows to 24b/192khz and then it doesn't matter if the lower bitdeph/sampling rate tracks get upsampled." This is not true. Now I'm going to talk briefly here about "upsampling" not being the same as the original audio. Exclusive mode simply means that other system sounds won't be allowed to play over the music (like say a chime that you received a new email). Also, "Exclusive mode" has nothing to do with this resampling or quality of the sound file. So if you set your output device in windows to say 16 bit 48khz, ALL songs playing in the Amazon desktop app will be resampled to that quality despite the fact that you are actually downloading different quality tracks (which is what the Amazon app reports). The problem is that the app (or more accurately windows) sets the output to a specific bit depth and sampling rate. The Windows Desktop app - This is often confusing to people as they see the HD/Ultra HD icon next to the song, and the app will also tell you that it's playing these songs. So the real question is, "how do I play lossless HD/Ultra HD content?" To answer this, it is easier to go through what DOES NOT play HD/Ultra HD first. Ultra HD is anything above HD, and up to lossless 24bit/192khz. ![]() HD is basically CD equivalent (lossless, 16bit, 44khz). To clarify what Amazon describes as "HD and Ultra HD" is important. This includes the source, player, DAC, speaker/headphones as well as all the connections in between. Second, all the links in your audio chain need to support HD/HD Ultra. You will only get access to lossy lower quality music with "Amazon Music Prime" and "Amazon Music Free". You will need to subscribe to "Amazon Music Unlimited." This is their pay service. Hopefully this will clear things up a little.įirst, there are 3 tiers of Amazon Music. ![]() There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about the quality of the music that you get while streaming Amazon Music. Amazon Music and how to get true lossless bitperfect HD/Ultra HD to play ![]()
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