Amazon Music Unlimited HD Totally Crushes Tidal
Finally, FLAC but without the price gouging
This morning, after threatening to do it for a long time, Amazon surprise-launched lossless streaming with Amazon Music Unlimited HD.
It costs just a $5 premium over their standard pricing model, meaning you can get it as low as $12.99 a month, if you’re a Prime Member. It can also be added to a family plan for that same $5 charge.
And for the first 90 days you use it, the $5 fee is waived.
That’s a dramatic discount over the $20 a month that Tidal charges for an individual membership to their premium service, and unlike Tidal, all of Amazon’s high quality tracks are delivered in the user-friendly FLAC format.
Tidal locks their highest quality files behind the MQA file format, which some have derided as nothing more than a complicated DRM scheme….because that’s kind of what it is.
In order to take full advantage of MQA, you’ll need an entire chain of sometimes-expensive equipment that can perform the proper handshakes and “unfolding” procedures.
Not so with the new Amazon Music Unlimited HD. Just download the standalone player software and go. Or use the Amazon music app or Echo device you probably already have.
In a bid to get away from the questionable “hi-res audio” terminology popularized by the music industry, Amazon is trying to introduce their own terms for music quality that are more easy to understand if you’re just a normal non-audiophile person.
I have to applaud them for this.
Music on the service is categorized into “HD” and “Ultra HD” tiers. HD music represents standard CD quality, at 16-bit/44.1Khz.
That’s so cool.
You might have been fooled by the questionable snake oily stuff surrounding hi-res audio. I know I’ve been enticed by it more than a few times. But the fact remains that, objectively, CD-quality standards were established for good reason. That level of audio comfortably reproduces all the frequencies human ears are capable of hearing, and it’s refreshing to see that treated with the “HD” moniker.
When you combine CD-quality audio with a lossless format like FLAC, you’re getting all of the audio data that the source originally contained. It’s great that Amazon embraced a known standard.
“Ultra HD” denotes any tracks Amazon has available in even higher quality, or from production sources. They’re all 24-bit, and range in sampling rates from 48Khz all the way up to hi-res’s ridiculous 96khz and 192khz standards.
You can click on the little yellow badge next to the track name at the bottom of the player to see what quality level the source file is at, and what your current playback settings are.
I’ve used the service all morning, and it’s a lovely experience. The player is quick and snappy, and can offload some processing onto your GPU if you’d like…though it’s not terribly heavy on performance either way.
Sound quality is exactly what you’d expect from a FLAC-powered streaming service. It’s completely accurate to the original source audio.
You’ll never need to worry about whether you’re getting the best streaming audio quality again. Thank goodness.
The sound card built into my laptop tops out at 48khz, and that’s what I’ve primarily tested this on so far, but even at that “pedestrian” sampling rate, audio quality is pristine and wonderful. I’ve listened to several tracks I’m familiar with, and they sound exactly as they should.
In the extremely unlikely event that I notice a problem in future testing on my hi-res-capable equipment, I’ll write an update.
So many things about this service are smart and well-designed. It’s clear Amazon is really going for it.
The little yellow badges are fun to click on, and it’s strangely satisfying to get that instant feedback of “Yes, I’m getting extra audio quality here.” The choice to launch it as a $5 premium add-on to the existing service is consumer-friendly. The simplification and intentional obfuscation of audiophile terms and sampling rates into two clearly-stated tiers makes it more accessible to users. And the library of songs is quite large, with several playlists of popular bands already available so you can easily find Ultra HD tracks to sample.
I can’t see any reason why someone would pay dramatically more now to subscribe to Tidal, outside of their few remaining artist exclusives.
I was lukewarm on Tidal as a service in the past, and now it feels silly. Unless you’re trying to avoid the juggernaut of Amazon, this should be your number one pick for a streaming service if audio quality is your top priority.
The pressure is now on Apple and Spotify to launch true lossless services, and that pressure is immense.
