Amazon Music Adds Lossless Streaming Tier for $14.99/Month ($12.99 for Prime)

[gnipgnop]

This is like saying that some VHS recordings are in many ways better than 4K Blu-ray.

The difference between 256 kbps and 16-bit/44.1 kHz is more like the difference between a $500 4K TV screen and a $1500 4K TV screen. There's a difference, but the average person is not going to be able to consistently tell them apart without being told which is which.
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That's unquestionably wrong, but who am I to disavow you of that notion? You roll with that opinion and I'll roll with mine. We'll both be okay.

So you're saying there's a specific hardware ceiling where 256 kbps stops sounding better? What is it?

 

[DIRSGT]

While I think compression does impact audio quality/ enjoyment, I am more annoyed by audio defects in a track that I’ve encountered when streaming. Defects where a song becomes garbled/ distorted at a certain time stamp. Even when I switch devices it is still present at the same spot...every time. (Example: Into the Heart of Love - The Mighty Lemon Drops @ 1:30 - 1:42)

 

[extrachrispy]

I was jes' sorta joshin' about how those of us in rural areas who are still using DSL with "rated speeds" of 6-12Mbs just might have to settle for downloading the lossless music (tediously lol) rather than streaming it.... all things considered including distance from the CO and what actual dl speeds amount to.

Yup. I'm one of those folks, too. I pay for 15/1 DSL, but get 10-12 / 1 in practice. I'm maybe a mile from the end of the fiber run, quite literally the last house before the pavement ends. Maybe fiber will come up (there's a loop of houses a fraction of a mile away) and maybe it won't. Maybe 5G will save me and maybe it won't. If I want lossless, I'll browse the secondhand stores for physical CDs and rip 'em, 'cause:

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a pickup truck full of CDs.

(Originally, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of cartridge tapes," but times change.)

 

[HDFan]

If you have a hard time telling the difference on AirPods,

The AirPods have poor sound reproduction. It would be expected that you could not differentiate between lower quality and higher quality audio while using them.

There's a difference, but the average person is not going to be able to consistently tell them apart without being told which is which.

I find all of these references to "the average person" who can/can't (differentiate, not differentiate, doesn't care, ...) irrelevant. What interests me is what does an "exposed person" think? In the context of this thread it would be someone who has had the opportunity to hear really high quality music reproduction.

My guess is that "exposed" people would be able to tell the difference. Every test I have done with others they could easily pick the higher resolution recording. I would also expect that there would be many, knowing the difference, wouldn't care given the convenience of something like the AirPods.

We don't know what the "average person" once exposed would choose to do. With Amazon, and I expect others, making higher resolution recordings available then there will be more people who are exposed. It will be interesting to see if there is a shift in, what, 5 years time?

P.S. I vacillated between using the word "exposed" vs "educated". Since the later word has a lot of additional social and other implications I decided to go with "exposed".

 

[dannys1]

Unbelievable to see anyone defend Apple when higher quality exists. Apple doesn’t have to offer it but they shouldn’t be applauded for not offering either. If the HomePod (I kinda want one) is as good as people say, shouldn’t it benefit from higher resolution audio? If it can’t benefit from higher quality on a technical level than that is what Apple should be striving to accommodate.

But whether I can hear the difference or not, if I’m paying for the music, I want to know that I’m being sent whatever the artist wants to send me. No one can account for the wide array of playback options but I would love to start at a higher quality.

No one in the world, even when listening on $100,000 studio reference monitors (slightly higher spec than the HomePod) has ever been able to tell the difference between a 256kbps AAC file and it's lossless equivalent. So no, the HomePod and nothing else would benefit from it. I'm not defending Apple, I don't care if they do it or not, i'm just stating facts. Lossless files are only actually any good for archiving (from a studio perspective) as you can edit them without having to re-encode to a lossy format again (which is bad)

The new iPhone is in Dolby Atmos!

Why are we picking and choosing as to when audio quality matters?

Dolby Atmos has nothing to do with sound quality.

Personally, I hear no difference between 16 and 24 bits but I can hear the difference between streaming and a 16 bit uncompressed CD.

There is no difference. Bit rate is solely for dynamic range. It has no use to the end listener, it's only useful for the recording studio to give them closer to analog recording levels, it has nothing to do with sound quality.

 

[HDFan]

No one in the world, even when listening on $100,000 studio reference monitors (slightly higher spec than the HomePod) has ever been able to tell the difference between a 256kbps AAC file and it's lossless equivalent.

Not true. Just one citation from my earlier post:

Home Page

Stereophile covers everything high-end and audiophile audio. Turntables and music servers, to solid-state and tube amplifiers and preamps, to loudspeakers.

www.audiostream.com

 

[dannys1]

Not true. Just one citation from my earlier post:

Home Page

Stereophile covers everything high-end and audiophile audio. Turntables and music servers, to solid-state and tube amplifiers and preamps, to loudspeakers.

www.audiostream.com

So the guy took other tests and decided it was true - meanwhile there are many more which show no one can tell better than guessing. Many many more.

You can also do the test yourself, if you, or anyone else gets more than 50% (eg a 50/50 guess) on this i'd be very surprised -

Is your audio system really ready for lossless?

Do an ABX test in your browser, and see if you can tell the difference between lossless and lossy audio

abx.digitalfeed.net

How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?

A hi-def test for your ears (and your audio equipment): Listen to these songs and see if you can tell the difference between an MP3 and an uncompressed audio file.

www.npr.org

Spotify is testing lossless audio. Can you hear the difference?

The difference is very difficult to discern

www.theverge.com

 

[HDFan]

So the guy took other tests and decided it was true

Don't know if the author did any tests himself. It is a peer-reviewed paper summarizing the results of 80 published papers.

I am aware of the NPR test. I've done some informal tests with others in-house and have been told that it is very obvious. All of them admittedly had excellent high frequency hearing where all of those harmonics occur.

 

[stormyuklondon1]

Well thought Id splash out the £7.99 to try out music HD.
I started off running it through my main lounge system, Problem is ive mislayed my portable DAC so have to run it from my phone straight into my preamp. Even so, im impressed.
Bottom end feels more rounded, less flabby than the lossy stream of the same tracks, certainly feel more drive too. Definitely worth further investigation once ive worked out where my DAC is..

 

[dannys1]

Don't know if the author did any tests himself. It is a peer-reviewed paper summarizing the results of 80 published papers.

I am aware of the NPR test. I've done some informal tests with others in-house and have been told that it is very obvious. All of them admittedly had excellent high frequency hearing where all of those harmonics occur.

They must have god like ears then, better than the mix engineers who mixed all those records (and haven't bothered ot make a video of themselves doing these blind tests and showing us how amazing their ears are) do this and get them a job as the worlds best mix engineer they'll be about to EQ out mistakes the rest of us can't hear!
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Bottom end feels more rounded, less flabby than the lossy stream of the same tracks,

Funny that beacuse lossy encoding doesn't even touch the bottom frequencies - it's all in your head mate 😂

 

[FaustsHausUK]

Apple already has its exclusive Mastered for iTunes offering which in many ways is better than this.

The best-mastered music still sounds like trash if it's served at a lower bitrate. Not saying Apple serves music at those bitrates, but they're two separate issues.

What Mastered For Apple Music likely does mean is Apple has a growing bank of higher-quality sources they can transpile for high bitrate streaming at a later date. That's exciting. Especially if they bring iTunes Match/iTunes in the Cloud/iCloud Music Library to the party.

 

[KnightPawn]

Hopefully lossless comes to Apple Music. Recently replaced my AirPods with some Sony WF-1000XM3 and the lack of quality is apparent

 

[stormyuklondon1]

For me Gapless is still an issue with Amazon.. sigh.
Can i live with that for the improvements? I dunno.

 

[HDFan]

They must have god like ears then,

There are audiophiles who say that they can hear the difference between audio cables, power supplies and cables. I am sure that I could not, but I believe them. One of my favorite examples of extraordinary human capabilities, a non-audio hearing example, is a organist who is using his hands to play on 4 organ keyboards, while also manipulating the stops. If that weren't enough he's playing a pedal keyboard with his feet. At about 3:40 in the video he plays two pianos - at the same time. Even looking at my feet and not playing with my hands I would have a hard time playing the pedal stops. But he's playing the pedal stops with his feet without even looking.

They must have god like ears then, better than the mix engineers who mixed all those records (and haven't bothered ot make a video of themselves doing these blind tests and showing us how amazing their ears are) do this and get them a job as the worlds best mix engineer they'll be about to EQ out mistakes the rest of us can't hear!

Maybe. There's the quotes about Steve Jobs seeing around the corner, knowing what consumers would want before they do. How do we know what the "rest of us" can hear when the "rest of us" haven't had the opportunity to hear really good recordings on really good equipment? We won't know the answer for some time.

Definitely worth further investigation once ive worked out where my DAC is..

Rather than citing listening tests or studies, this is the kind of data that I find helpful. People who actually have tried it and report their results.

I don't know the point at which I would not perceive in increases in bitrate. I know that I can't tell the difference between a 256 DSD and, say, a 96-24 Wav. Watching the Marquee streaming arts service the audio was so bad it made me cringe so I had to stop. I complained. They were really great and almost trippled their bitrate. (They were probably already working on it.). Huge improvement.

 

[dannys1]

There are audiophiles who say that they can hear the difference between audio cables, power supplies and cables.

They can't, these people are idiots that the audio industry has been fleecing for years. You can take a recording with two different audio cables and null the response perfectly - eg the resulting signal is IDENTICAL. "Audiophiles" are the worst of pseudo-science and hearing things that impossible, as I said, it's hilarious they have better ears than the mix engineers who make the records themselves (and believe me, in the music industry we laugh at these people a lot)

 

[Uofmtiger]

Personally, I don't care about cables, but I do want a lossless tier from Apple. Does your typical user actually care about the difference in sound quality between an Echo and a HomePod? I don't know, but I know Apple went on and on about how great the HomePod sounds.

Apple has built a brand out of paying attention to "the other side of the fence", whether or not someone will see it. I think lossless is the same thing. Don't tell me compressed is as good as lossless. It isn't. End of story. Whether people can hear the difference depends on the person, their system, etc. so that shouldn't be and never has been their goal. Just give us the best quality.

 

[Gilligan's last elephant]

They can't, these people are idiots that the audio industry has been fleecing for years. You can take a recording with two different audio cables and null the response perfectly - eg the resulting signal is IDENTICAL. "Audiophiles" are the worst of pseudo-science and hearing things that impossible, as I said, it's hilarious they have better ears than the mix engineers who make the records themselves (and believe me, in the music industry we laugh at these people a lot)

Power Supply of an amplifier is very important. If the amplifier cannot supply the instantaneous current the speaker demands, then the output of the speaker will be distorted. High quality speakers typically have a complex load ( < 1R equivalent) over their frequency range and require an amplifier capable of supplying very high currents into a complex load. If speakers exhibited a constant load of 8R over the full frequency range it would be much less of an issue.

 

[Marco Klobas]

In fact, Apple should have been the real "leader" also in this regard, as it was the first company to go the digital route and offer ipods and iTunes, back in the day, to be the first to offer hd music and not Tidal, which came out of nowhere. There are a lot of such decisions within Apple, that I will never understand (another one being buying Fox when they could, so as to better compete with their streaming service, etc).

I agree, Apple was and, to some extent, still is in a position to leverage its heritage to support and lead in audio quality.

 

[Gilligan's last elephant]

In fact, Apple should have been the real "leader" also in this regard, as it was the first company to go the digital route and offer ipods and iTunes, back in the day,

Please tell me your not one of those people that think Apple "invented" DAPs

 

[HDFan]

in the music industry we laugh at these people a lot

Can you elaborate your music industry experience?

 

[dannys1]

Can you elaborate your music industry experience?

Over 15 years as producer, song writer and mix engineer. Worked with folk from Bowie, to Britney to Basement Jaxx - built studios like mine and work with grammy award winning mix engineers in LA in the studios where they recorded Thriller. Neal Pogue probably has the best set of ears I know of and his mixed project CV is like a who's who of music over the last 30 years and we'd open laugh at people who start talking about "depth and 3d spaceness" and in this very thread "improved bass" that's all coming from the placebo affect.

 

[HDFan]

Bottom end feels more rounded, less flabby than the lossy stream of the same tracks, certainly feel more drive too.

Funny that beacuse lossy encoding doesn't even touch the bottom frequencies - it's all in your head mate

So why do, say drums, on compressed recordings sound so different than when listening to a live performance or a lossless audio? The former sounds muffled, the other bright and a tad brassy. I'm not trained on any of this, but it isn't just the sticks hitting the batter head. In the case of a drum the whole mechanism vibrates. I assume that this movement causes some sounds from the casings, plates, rods, etc.

Using audio tools as they played the Drums in "The Great Wall" (DTS-MA) surely looks as if the harmonics go well to 8k and beyond ....

paused

drums playing

 

[dannys1]

So why do, say drums, on compressed recordings sound so different than when listening to a live performance or a lossless audio? The former sounds muffled, the other bright and a tad brassy. I'm not trained on any of this, but it isn't just the sticks hitting the batter head. In the case of a drum the whole mechanism vibrates. I assume that this movement causes some sounds from the casings, plates, rods, etc.

Using audio tools as they played the Drums in "The Great Wall" (DTS-MA) surely looks as if the harmonics go well to 8k and beyond ....

paused

View attachment 861517

drums playing

View attachment 861518

What's that got to do with bottom end? Drums encompass the entire frequency range. This has nothing to do with the original post. A 225kbps AAC file does not sound "more rounder with more bottom end" than a 16bit wav file...because the bottom end hasn't been touched in either of them.

 

[Gilligan's last elephant]

Over 15 years as producer, song writer and mix engineer. Worked with folk from Bowie, to Britney to Basement Jaxx - built studios like mine and work with grammy award winning mix engineers in LA in the studios where they recorded Thriller. Neal Pogue probably has the best set of ears I know of and his mixed project CV is like a who's who of music over the last 30 years and we'd open laugh at people who start talking about "depth and 3d spaceness" and in this very thread "improved bass" that's all coming from the placebo affect.

And what about your experiences with recordings a full symphony orchestra?

 

[dannys1]

And what about your experiences with recordings a full symphony orchestra?

Which has nothing to do with knowing that YOU can't hear the difference between 225kbps AAC and an uncompresed wav and how we mock audiophiles in studios but yes I worked with conductor and arranger Christian Badzura and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.