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Apple vs Amazon

I'm not fully committed to streaming yet. DAC is low end. Finishing a 3 month free Apple Music trial. In truth, it doesn't sound that bad to me but tonight I started a 3 month Amazon Music trial and just after spending about an hour with it, it seems to sound better than Apple Music running through the exact same system. Fuller. Richer. More precise bass. No A/B testing, just a general impression. It might even be the music selection. I don't know. Is there any actual reason for this to be true? Or is it just me?
n80
stevecham
3,340 posts
 
I’ve been subscribing to Apple Music for several years (started with Beats which Apple bought) now and really enjoy it. I noticed they have bumped the sample rate up to 96 for some recordings. Haven’t tried any of the other services so can’t comment.
n80 OP
2,116 posts
 
As mentioned, Apple Music sounds okay to me. Not as bad as I was expecting from the things I've read about iTunes and Apple Music. Amazon just seems to sound a little better.

Also, Apple Music is super buggy on my system. Frequent cut outs, frequent navigation issues, slow loading pages. Apple Remote is great but Amazon's app is better and Amazon's interface seems better to me too. 

Not sure if there is a cost difference. I'm sure Apple has a larger selection but I've found new and obscure stuff on Amazon.

Will be weighing all this with Tidal hi res.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 

Apple uses ALAC encoding I believe whereas Amazon Prime uses MP3 256K. I prefer the MP3 also.

There is a lot of "free" music on Amazon Prime, but no Led Zeppelin for instance.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

n80 OP
2,116 posts
 
Amazon has a streaming service now. It is a paid service above what you pay for prime. I'm doing the free trial now.
ericjcabrera
567 posts
 

My experience with those two streaming services is quite the opposite:

I feed my DAC via USB from my MacBook Pro &/or wireless via Apple TV & to save on HDD space, I don’t even download the music; just stream - whether from Amazon Music App or iTunes. Listening to Apple Music from iTunes is clearly superior to Amazon Music streaming from Amazon Music App. At least that's the case for me & my ears & system; I guess ‘YMMV’ applies.

I have also found Apple Music to sound quite good when streaming directly from my Apple TV feeding my DAC via HDMI; in fact almost on par, if not better than from my MacBook. My guess is there is less noise or less jitter.

I don’t really have a preference to either interface; both are adequately convenient and relatively user friendly. But I also do not have very high expectations on sound quality from streaming from either of those formats, especially after my recent discovery. (Digital audio can sound astounding from plain old Redbook CD’s when implemented correctly. Namely utilizing a separate dedicated CD transport & DAC) - But, I digress; that’s another story altogether, not really applicable here.

“. . . Is there any actual reason for this to be true?. . .”

My guess is there are other factors in play; maybe the source component & the DAC or everything in between. Without knowing a little more about your system components, it would be hard to say.

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