Amazon Music Launches "HD" Tier for Lossless Audio Streaming

[Tsing]

Tidal, Deezer, and Qobuz are no longer the only games in town for lossless streamed audio. Amazon Music HD has arrived for audiophiles seeking the "highest quality audio," and it's just $12.99 per month for Prime members (a comparative bargain compared to what the competitors charge).

More than 50 million lossless HD songs are currently available in 16-bit/44.1 kHz, as well as a selection of Ultra HD tracks in 24-bit/192 kHz. Users have the option of downloading these tracks for offline listening.

“From rock to hip-hop to classical and pop, we believe listening to music at this level of sound will make customers fall in love again with their favorite music and artists. As we usher in a new listening experience for our customers, we’re combining the convenience of streaming with all of the emotion, power, clarity and nuance of the original recordings.”

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Didn't know about this. I've got Prime. I clicked the link and it says that you can try it for 90 days. I might check it out since there's a offline option but even with $12.99 being cheaper than competitors it still a another streaming mouth to feed.

 

[Riccochet]

Didn't know about this. I've got Prime. I clicked the link and it says that you can try it for 90 days. I might check it out since there's a offline option but even with $12.99 being cheaper than competitors it still a another streaming mouth to feed.

$12.99 for a single user where other services are $14.99 for family.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

$12.99 for a single user where other services are $14.99 for family.

Yeah that's a bit pricey for me. We've already got Netflix premium, Prime, and DC premium(or some such) and plans for the Disney one soon. For someone with prime the add on should've been a lot cheaper. I love Hi-Res audio but this isn't the right approach for me.

 

[Zarathustra]

What is the size of the catalogue like?

In all honesty though. I have a Spotify family account. When I play music off of it at their high quality setting I can't tell the difference, even on my fairly high end equipment.

I'm also pretty certain no human can pass a blinded A/B study on this. It's all placebo and bias.

Don't get me wrong. There certainly have been ****ty encoders resulting in terrible quality files over the years, but that's no reason to swear off well encoded files.

Hydrogenaudio did a A/B study in their forums several years back using a custom downloadable client which would play a user a series of sets of two identical samples of varied styles of music. On the one hand was a sample encoded with Lame's then "--alt-preset standard", essentially 128kbit vbr mp3's with relatively slow/high quality encode time settings. On the other hand was a direct wav off of a CD.

Users could play the two samples as many times as they wanted before choosing which one they thought was the mp3.

They made it available on their forums and encouraged self proclaimed audiophiles to download it and test themselves and collected the data.

The results? Self proclaimed audiophiles got it right about 50% of the time. In other words, no better than chance.

And lossy encoding has gotten better since then.

The only real flaw in this study is that they didn't control the user group. So anyone could go on there and take the test. Still It's some good data on the subject.

It's amazing how resistant people are to the fact that the human brain is inherently biased and will make you experience what you expect to experience whether or not it is true. I always find it astonishing that so many people are more willing to believe that they posess super-human hearing than they are to accept well established science on the topic of human bias...

No human being is immune to this effect.

Lossless encoded and high bitrate and frequency PCM are very valuable during the mixing process, and to keep masters for future use, as you don't want compound quantization errors and compression artifacting in your work, but once the final sample has been dithered down for listening purposes there is no reason to ever go above 44.1khz 16bit PCM or to encode it lossless.

Unlike high bitrate PCM which has a valid usage scenario in the studio, DSD is completely without merit.

 

[Eduardo_Domingot]

Too late Amazon I am already building a lossless audio collection myself.
But better late than never.

 

[Riccochet]

I'm with Zarathustra.