Amazon Music’s sound quality

[griffin dai]

Just having a play around earlier between Qobuz, iTunes & Amazon music mainly to duplicate all the tracks I’ve got on iTunes onto Qobuz then delete the lot off iTunes to clear some space, I’ve got the Hi-Res version of Qobuz but most of the tracks on there are CD quality probably 30% of what I’ve got is in high res most of these are 44khz a few 88khz? and the rest 96khz. iTunes all seem to be CD quality or less, pretty sure I ripped most of these to 320kbs or FLAC years ago but can’t remeber!

So I plugged in my DAC tried iTunes and all show the lowest quality ‘colour’ on the dragonfly (there a dragonfly shaped light on there that changes colour depending how may kHz it is) switched to amazon and all (as in every single track) is showing 96khz on the dragonfly, tried a few tracks back to back between this and Qobuz and they’re definitely higher quality.

When did Amazon do this? I thought the normal Amazon music was either CD quality or lower? To me it looks like all tracks are 96khz, they definitely sound better than the CD quality stuff in Qobuz!

[belleair302]

Amazon has launched Amazon Music HD which offers FLAC at 24 bit/192 kHz. Qobuz is similar I believe. Amazon Music Unlimited I think is 320Kbps.

[griffin dai]

Yeah saw unlimited on the app but I haven’t got that, I’ve got amazon music prime here.

[conkerman]

Check the PC's USB output to the DAC.

In the control panel > Audio Devices>Your DAC> Properties > Advanced.

Ensure Exclusive mode is on.


To be honest, I couldn't get it to work either on QOBUZ/Tidal/Amaxzon Music HD. But I suspect this is something to do with My PC.

[anonymous-user]

griffin dai said:

Yeah saw unlimited on the app but I haven’t got that, I’ve got amazon music prime here.

Possibly on the free trial?

[griffin dai]

gottans said:

Possibly on the free trial?

Thought the same at first but it’s definitely the basic prime package, the ultimate is extra. Had another play around with it last night swapping back & forward and trying a few different headphones, they’re definitely higher quality than the Qobuz albums, happy with that

[griffin dai]

Anyone else having issues with amazon music shuffle? I’ve noticed with my playlists every day the same tracks are repeated, not in the same order but definitely the same tracks mixed in with the odd one, the playlist had around 40 tracks so last night I just doubled this to 80+ to see what happens and it’s the same.

[anonymous-user]

griffin dai said:

Anyone else having issues with amazon music shuffle? I’ve noticed with my playlists every day the same tracks are repeated, not in the same order but definitely the same tracks mixed in with the odd one, the playlist had around 40 tracks so last night I just doubled this to 80+ to see what happens and it’s the same.

I have always found Amazon to bit a bit crap with shuffle!

[griffin dai]

It’s bloody awful! I’m all for a bit of Madonna’s Like A Virgin but not twice a day. On the commute to work I thought I heard this yesterday, and the next track and the next. Been like this almost a fortnight.