Help Me Understand Bit and KHz

Unless you’re a dog, it’s impossible to hear anything above 20Khz, so no, it won’t make an iota of difference. 

brttlt,

Digital audio is a collection of samples of what a sound wave looks like at a specific moment in time. Instead of a steady wave of sound, it's actually a series of snapshots.

With enough of these snapshots, or 'samples', a playback device (an iPhone, say) can convert them back into a smooth sound wave. Whilst CD is by no means the best audio storage medium, it is the most familiar. The audio on a CD has 44,100 samples every second, and each sample has a value of somewhere between 0 and 65,535 (also called "16-bit").

So in other words, there are 44,100 snapshots per second, and each snapshot has one of 65,536 potential values.

This is an oversimplification, but that should hopefully go some way in answering your question.

Just a little more (useless) info...

That 16-bit/44.1kHz rate of CD equates to about 10MB per minute for stereo. While that isn't a lot of data these days, it's still a lot more than you may want to stream over the Web, or store on a portable device. Hence the ubiquity of compressed audio, like MP3, which takes out what you theoretically can't hear using a method called "psychoacoustic modeling”. Compressed MP3's file sizes therefore are much smaller, about 1 MB per minute.

Compressed audio, though, often doesn't sound as good as uncompressed audio. Sometimes you 'may’ be able to hear the difference even through the cheapest headphones.

The new Amazon HD service usually mentions their “upto” bit/sample rate limits etc. and obviously source files and their ‘playback device’ capabilities may vary. All being well however, Amazon HD should be delivering the best available source file for the capabilities of your device, automatically.

Hope that assists. (You may find others here, more knowledgeable than myself, who may wish to elaborate a little more on the summary information provided above).

Here’s an article from the makers of the FLAC codec explaining why anything over 16 bit 48 KHz is a waste:

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

So I guess what I’m asking is how do I get the 16/96 out of my cell phone or am I stuck with the 16/44?

You aren’t “stuck” with anything.  16/44 will perfectly capture all frequencies a human being could possible hear.  96 KHz is useless, it only allows for sampling frequencies above the level of human hearing.  It’s a gimmick, nothing but snake oil.

I completely agree with what jgatie has said above.
 

Anyhow I found this link too, which may assist in finding out what audio formats your iOS device may support…

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.whathifi.com/amp/advice/how-to-play-hi-res-music-your-iphone-0

brttlt,

I ought to perhaps highlight (again) too, that I think the Amazon Music HD service will only send a track in the highest format that the ‘playback device’ supports, so even if you were to go onto use an external DAC with your mobile device, as the linked-article above suggests, I don’t think it will improve your streaming file quality.

The article is from last March, of course, so it’s quite possible that iOS updates, and/or more recent Apple hardware, might have changed the things mentioned.

That is correct, unless you or the player converts the track to 16/44.1, the track will not play on a SONOS system.

And even if you somehow managed to improve the file quality, the difference will not be heard, so there is nothing actually being lost where the listening experience is concerned, once you are past the worry that something is being lost.