How do you know from app what songs are Amazon HD?

Thank you so much for the response.

This is the hesitation I have in subscribing to the HD option.  You just don’t know.  

You’ll tend to find this with most lossless services. The bulk of the tracks are in the advertised format, but there are some which for historical reasons have been left in the catalog at a lower quality.

I don't believe Amazon is any better or worse than the others. However right now you’d have to inspect the track in the native Amazon Music app to view its format.

Deezer HiFi does display the format within the Sonos controller.

Just to add, since Amazon is responsible for the UI in the Sonos app (Sonos just supplies the API), you may want to let Amazon know you would like the HD to be displayed for HD tracks.

...and of course TIDAL is lossless across the board as well.

Looks like if I truly want lossless music on Sonos it is either going to be Deezer or Tidal.  Need to see which is better.

Again, thanks for your assistance.

I am going to contact customer support.

Thanks

Read from bottom up…

Hello Ronald,

I'm Luis A. of Amazon's Tech Support Executive Customer Relations team. Jeff Bezos received your email and I'm responding on his behalf.

We appreciate the time you took to provide us with your feedback about Amazon Music. We welcome the opinions and suggestions of our customers. I've forwarded your feedback to the team involved in the future development of Amazon Music. Please feel free to continue to send us any suggestions for improvement as your opinion and participation is valuable to us.

Thanks for making sure we're aware of your experience, and we look forward to see you again.


Regards,

Luis A.
Tech Support Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com
==========================

---- Original message: ----

Dear Amazon,


I am hoping you can put me in touch with someone who heads your Amazon music subscription program.

You have recently begun offering an HD music service plan.

However, you have not updated the interface on Sonos so users know what songs are actually in HD and are not.

For this reason, there are many, many potential subscribers posting across the Internet balking at committing to this new service.

If you would update the interface so those who want to buy into the HD plan have an idea of exactly what they are getting, your subscription numbers would dramatically increase.

Please pass this on.  This is a very important issue to you guys.

Thanks


Ron 

And, when I last checked it -- which admittedly was 5 years ago -- it also delivered some tracks in lossy format.

As  does Qobuz, I think: at least it adds '(FLAC)' after song names in the Sonos queue and Now Playing displays.  I assume this display tells me I am getting my 16/44 I've paid for...  There does remain the issue on my version of the Sonos controller (7.3) that when a whole album (or the remainder of the album is dumped in the queue when a track is tapped  - thanks Sonos), the FLAC info is not displayed.  Started to take this up with Qobuz but decided my controller version was too dated to be representative.  CR100 shows FLAC too; ho-hum.

The entire Qobuz catalog is available in FLAC at 16/44 so it doesn’t terribly matter in this case, particularly since that’s the most Sonos can render. If you’re streaming from Qobuz on a Sonos system, that’s what you’ll be getting.

I used Deezer Elite for many years, before anyone else was streaming FLAC in the U.S. via Sonos. I’ve always quite liked Deezer. Their catalog is extensive and I like the UI of their apps. Tidal I’ve never cared for for reasons multiple reasons I won’t bother to go into.

I just began with Qobuz not quite 2 weeks ago and I’m quite in love with it. They’re annual pricing at the moment is a comparative bargain - it’s just gravy that I’ve wound up liking the service more than the other by a large margin. They’re not much for “radio” style play, but the curated playlists and “panoramas” (essentially excellent editorials ala Paste or Rolling Stone in a way, with album and playlist links within) are outstanding to me. The experience is (as with any other) much more bare-bones when via Sonos, but everything is delivered at CD-quality.

Just briefly looked at Qobuz.

Very happy to hear you have found a Hi-rez service that may be better than Tidal.

I looked at the compatibility list and did not see Sonos listed under supported manufacturers.

I did look quickly, so I may have missed it.

Is there integration into the Sonos app?

One thing that puts TIDAL in my favor is the Apple Carplay integration whereas I can easily play it in my automobile.  I have a very good system in there and spend most of my music listening time while driving.

Yes, Qobuz is one of the streaming services within the Sonos Controller. I’ve used it there a number of times, but I do most of my listening to it on a different streamer (fed sometimes to a Connect as well) and even more via desktop/DAC. Their desktop app is great.
It’s supported in Apple Carplay as well incidentally:
 http://blogsv2.qobuz.com/qobuz-blog-en/2019/02/14/qobuz-is-now-compatible-with-carplay/

I’ve been literally lost inside Qobuz in all my free time for the better part of two weeks now. Much moreso than any other service before. It’s much deeper than it appears at first glance.

 

Okay.  Wow!  You sold me!

I will get rid of Tidal after the 5-month trial ends and go with Qobuz.  Thank You!!!

Hahaha. I sound like I work for them. I don’t. I’ve just been loving it very recently. :)

I should add, their app and integrations are all “younger” than Tidal’s and it still has some kinks as far as I’ve heard. But they seem to be ironing it all out as time goes on, particularly since I’ve come across very little to complain about at all compared to notes I’d read about missing features from this past year. It definitely leans more eclectic in the catalog than Tidal… all the pop and mainstream titles are there, along with quite bit of more obscure jazz and classical cuts, similar to how Tidal leans in that way toward R&B and Hip Hop. But if numbers are to be  believed, Qobuz has roughly double the number of Hi-res titles available, and to my understanding ALL of their catalog is 16/44 FLAC at the very least because a couple months ago they entirely dropped their lower tier that was for 320mbps streaming. (EDIT: You can still stream in MP3 if needed for bandwidth reasons, they just don’t have a tier for MP3 only any longer.) Now they have just two tiers, both with hi-res (the more expensive one gives you ½ price discounts on purchasing albums for download/ownership). 

One thing to note though, is they have a promo right now that makes the main “Studio Premiere” tier $12.50/mo if you buy annually (or $15/mo month-to-month) which was supposed to be for the first 100,000 new customers and have a hard-stop date on January 31st. They must have extended it - seems like it’s still available as now.

Hahaha. No worries - I don’t even work for them. 
I typed another reply with a bunch more info - but it got snagged by the spam filter. Fitting. :D Maybe I was sounding too much like a sales pitch. (Hopefully Ryan and co. comes along releases it.)

I saw your entire message before it got pulled, though I have no idea why it was.

Going to look for the special offer for the annual plan.

Thanks again

Ron

An Update…

Installed Qobuz.

Signed up for their yearly ($149) plan with this first month being free.  

At first, I wasn’t too certain about this music service and it’s suggested music.

Where the real magic can be found is PLAYLISTS

I like 70s-90s music so all I had to do was put that in a search and then look under PLAYLISTS.  It was there I found customer lists curated by members that I was able to subscribe to.

I am really looking forward to seeing how much data this app will eat on the Verizon network at the highest setting.  I can play Apple or Amazon music all day and not eat a lot of data.  I am interested to see how much I start burning through at lossless settings.

3 to 4 times as much as with a lossy service.

Anyone have an optimal setting?

Don’t want MP3 quality.

There’s CD-16bits/441,kHz

24-Bit H-Res/up to 96 kHz

24-Bit Hi-Res/up to 192 kHz

This will be for the car.  I have a Lincoln with a top-end Revel audio system.  So, quality audio is a must

Thanks

For a car? CD 16/44.1, though arguably you could simply use 320 MP3 and not notice any difference.

24/192 is nonsensical, especially as it would require 6 times the bandwidth of 16/44. You’ll never have an ambient noise floor low enough to appreciate 24-bit or superhuman hearing able to make out 40kHz ultrasonics in the content.

Thanks, Ratty.   You saved me a lot of excess data usage.

I will set it to CD quality.

Good suggestion by Ratty. 192khz makes zero sense except on the best of systems and even then is debatable. And data usage/data storage needed on a mobile device is silly comparatively.

On the Qobuz phone app (as you’ve found) you can specify different settings “on wi-fi” and “on mobile network” (or some similar verbiage) for max res. On my phone in general I’m only using CD quality for wi-fi and 320kbps on mobile-network (as mentioned). You can also specify those same settings for downloaded off-line content (which is really easy to do in the Qobuz app, e.g. grabbing albums for off-line). 

The only time I’m allowing full res is on my main streamer at home - though I’ve noticed very little content is available at 192kHZ; the bulk is usually 24/96, or more commonly 24/44 or 24/48.

Getting into hearing difference in hi-res is the most tired of tired topics and I won’t do that here. I do believe some can and some cannot, but it’s a giant diminishing return regardless and CD quality 16/44 is usually more than good enough (personally or generally).

Hey @Ryan S or @Andy B or other…. I’ve had two posts spam-blocked. Could you please release them from the jail? Cheers.

Moderator Note: Posts flagged as Spam in error have been restored.

I have mine on (the phone app) set to 320kbps for streaming over mobile network, but I download in CD quality for offline (when I’m on wi-fi). Helps with bandwidth/data out and about when just streaming (avoids consumption as well as drop-outs) but can still listen to CD version in the car from off-line albums (without having to go into settings and switch to that “mode” as you do in some apps) just by selecting “Offline Library” from the main ribbon at the bottom of the app.