![]() 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. Lossless Switcher is available free of charge from Neo’s Github repository.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. Vincent Neo warns that “there may be short interruptions to your audio playback, during the time where the app attempts to switch the sample rates.” He also says that his app has yet to be tested on an M1 Mac. Lossless Switcher reads the sample rate of the incoming Apple Music stream and then automatically sets the corresponding sample rate in the Audio MIDI Setup app. Once installed and running, the app runs in the menu bar at the top of the screen, next to the clock. Vincent Neo’s LosslessSwitcher app “switches your current audio device’s sample rate to match the currently playing a lossless song on your Apple Music app, automatically.” And this is only achievable on MacOS by manually specifying the Audio MIDI Setup app’s sample rate on a track-by-track (or album-by-album) basis. ![]() ![]() Only when no resampling takes place do we have what is known as ‘bit-perfect playback’. Resampling can subtly alter the sound of a stream heard on a more resolving hi-fi or head-fi system. ![]() If we hit play on a 44.1kHz file but the Audio MIDI Setup app is set to 96kHz, we gain dummy data (and arguably lose again). If we hit play on, say, a 192kHz hi-res lossless stream but the Audio MIDI Setup app is set to 44.1kHz, we lose data. Upsampling and downsampling are collectively referred to as resampling.
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