Retired Sonos Staff

Amazon Music HD Available on Sonos

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Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 17, 2019
111 replies
51799 views

Amazon Music HD, Amazon’s new high-quality music tier for streaming in CD-quality is available today on Sonos in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. You can now stream over 50 million tracks in CD-quality (16-bit HD) audio through the Sonos app.

Amazon Music HD is available as an add-on to Amazon Music Unlimited subscriptions for an additional $4.99 per month (on top of the noraml Amazon Music Unlimited subscription) or $50 per year. Check out the Amazon Music HD page here on Amazon for more details.

After subscribing, to use Amazon Music HD on Sonos, just update your Sonos app then add Amazon Music as a music service. That’s all it takes to be streaming Amazon Music’s catalog of CD-quality audio on Sonos.

Find out more about Amazon Music HD on Sonos here.

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G

grit

Trending Lyricist I

I don’t think Sonos supports anything higher that 16 bit / 44.4 KHz. Years ago when I was trying to figure out how to rip my CD collection for playback, Sonos, posted that they (at the time) did not support higher bitrate playback. That was for my ZP90 (renamed to Sonos Connect, for you newer to Sonos folks).

Admittedly, that could have changed, but i can’t find anywhere in their website that it has.

F

flcyclist

Lyricist I

It would definitely be nice to have some real data rather than having to go with empirical evidence. I upgraded and I believe that HD running from the Sonos app sounds better to me than using airplay from the Amazon Music app. But that could all be just what my senses believe. It would be great to know that the data supports what I hear, it would make it a lot easier to pay the higher price for the service. LOL

R

Rob Williams_1

Contributor II

I am missing something. I thought the HD was supposed to be the new high quality standards Neil Young has been saying he’s been dying for for decades. Then I read the sonos document and it says we will get 44.1?? not even 48? (don’t care about 96, sorry Neil).

jgatie

I am missing something. I thought the HD was supposed to be the new high quality standards Neil Young has been saying he’s been dying for for decades. Then I read the sonos document and it says we will get 44.1?? not even 48? (don’t care about 96, sorry Neil).

Neil’s the one who is sorry. How much did he flush down the toilet backing the Pono player?

T

timjam

Contributor I

Does Sonos support playing Amazon UltraHD tracks at their bit rates above 16/44?

Ryan SAuthor

Retired Sonos Staff

Does Sonos support playing Amazon UltraHD tracks at their bit rates above 16/44?

They’ll stream at CD-quality (16-bit HD) audio through the Sonos app.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

Until I see a trusted source doing true blind testing of various formats and reporting that HD is better I’m going with the science on this and calling HD audio snake-oil.

No reason not to spend your money on it if it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling but that is a lot of money to part with for a feeling.

K

Kumar

Conversation on another thread surfaced this issue: going by what is commonly understood, CD lossless streaming is not HD; only those formats that exceed CD resolution are called HD or Hi Res. There is enough on Google to support this statement. How Amazon calls CD resolution as HD is a mystery, and appears to be something that they have done unilaterally in an attempt to redefine HD to being what they are doing. I have no idea if this will succeed.

Sonos is a beneficiary of this stunt, being also labeled HD capable overnight with nothing have changed from what they have been capable of since their inception.

Of course none of this has a bearing on whether HD music of any resolution, including what Amazon touts as Ultra HD, can be audibly picked out from the same mastering/recording downsampled to CD quality; no one anywhere has demonstrated that in a controlled blind test. Where Amazon makes use of the higher content capability to add more to the recording is a different matter; it will sound different, perhaps even better, using more speaker tech in the process, but that is a different discussion.