The O/S mixer usually includes volume controls and DSP features for both beeps and music, which further mangles the original samples, even if no beeps happen to play through during the song. Resampling is done in real time and is rarely of the highest possible quality, so sound quality takes a hit. It’s not possible to mix digital audio with different sampling frequencies without messing up pitch and timing, so O/S mixers resample the music, beeps, or both to a common sampling frequency. The main issue here is not the beeping interruptions to our music but what the O/S mixer must do to support them in the first place. This is great for background in an office setting, but for audiophiles, it will not do. The O/S mixer is a piece of software that enables you to hear beeps and boops from email and calendar notifications over whatever music you are playing, so that you don’t miss your next meeting or fail to respond to that proposal from your boss. The rub with Amazon Music HD is that, currently, there’s no way for it to bypass the O/S mixer on supported platforms, including Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Repeat this 10,000 times, and what you have at the end will be bit-for-bit identical to the samples in the original. Take a digital file and copy or transfer it, then take that copy and transfer it again. After all, this is a crucial feature that sets digital apart from analog…zero generation loss. The term bit-perfect is used a few different ways, but I’m using it here to describe the transfer of digital audio data from one point to another with absolutely no changes. That being said, for use on the go with my iPhone and wireless Grado GW-100 Bluetooth headphones, I couldn’t care any less as I’m not going to be listening under ideal environmental conditions. With Amazon’s HD Music, I can’t be bothered having to remember to go into my device’s mixer and reset the bit-rate and depth. Best thing about Amazon’s foray, its dipping its big toe into the streaming music service morass, is that it had Qobuz drop the price on their service, which for some was an obstacle. I expected more from Amazon in this regard. Granted, the audiophile community is niche compared to the mainstream, but then again is the mainstream crying out for super high resolution? Do they even know what that means? The audiophiles for the most part do, yet Amazon has seen fit to offer up a thin veneer, an overlay if you will, leveraging device’s system audio in lieu of providing an “audiophile” layer between their software and external DACs. This is bad because we don’t get bit-perfect playback.ĭavid Blumenstein: It has been some time now that Amazon has launched its HD Music venture and they truly have chosen the path of least resistance, a nice way of saying they’re being somewhat lazy with their software. To my astonishment and dismay, the application has no settings for exclusive mode or directly interfacing with an external DAC. I downloaded the desktop app for macOS, connected a USB DAC, and proceeded to experiment. Amazon may be betting that their new Echo Studio will bring to the uninitiated their first taste of high definition sound reproduction, but for long-time audiophiles like us, high-performance playback is nothing new we’ve been doing it for decades.Īfter persistent cajoling from fellow Dagogo Reviewer David Blumenstein, my digital audio “partner in crime,” I reluctantly registered for Amazon’s 90-day free trial. The initial subscription offering hits the wallet $5 to $10/month lighter than comparable services from TIDAL and Qobuz.īut is Amazon’s offering really comparable? A library that’s 50 million tracks strong is impressive, but what concerns me is the quality of delivery via available platforms. Bit-Perfect Playback…and why you should careĭavid Snyder: By the time you read this, the new Amazon Music HD streaming service, promising “High Definition” audio to the masses, will have been available in the US and several other markets for a month or two.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |