Amazon Launches Lossless "Hi-rez" HD Music Service

Already a Prime member.
Looking forward to trying it.

JD

Giving it a 90-day free trial. Angus and Julia Stone have an album in Amazon UltraHD quality - that type of music sounds so good on electrostats (guitars and vocals). I like that Amazon has clearly identified which music (albums/tracks) are in UltraHD (similar to Tidal MQA)! Will give it a listen on music system tomorrow evening. Interested to see how well it integrates with BluOS2i MDC module (built into NAD C-388 integrated), controlled by BluOS Win10 app. Tidal MQA worked very well on the system, now we’ll see if Amazon UltraHD will recognize the account upgrade, play through it - and how it sounds. The Amazon Prime Music app recognized the account upgrade immediately upon opening the app on my outdated Samsung tablet, so likely BluOS will too, especially since there is no ’unfolding’ to be done (like MQA). As I read in this thread, ’UltraHd’ are FLAC files - will be interesting to see how much WAN bandwidth is required. I did notice the afore mentioned UltraHD album downloaded nearly instantly to the tablet, but suspect it’s likely actually downloading in the background; although, I haven’t noticed any lag on the tablet, so that’s good.

I am using the m-control app (bubbleupnp) recommended by PS Audio with their direct stream DAC. I currently subscribe to tidal and qobuz but am interested in trying Amazon HD, just don't know how to get it on my dac. If anyone figures this out, please let me know

will be interesting to see how much WAN bandwidth is required

From GSMArena:

"If you want to stream music, you’ll need at least a 1.5-2Mbps LTE connection for HD quality and 5-10Mbps for Ultra HD. A large data allowance is a must too – a 3 and a half minute song eats up 51MB in HD quality and 153MB in Ultra HD. A lossy track is 9MB."

https://www.gsmarena.com/amazon_music_hd_launches_with_two_lossless_audio_options_in_four_countries-news-39226.php

Note: these figures are not verified.

Short write-up from Stereophile:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/amazon-music-goes-high-rez