GA Russell Posted November 3, 2022 Report Share Posted November 3, 2022 Amazon Music Unlimited has announced that they now offer 100 million songs. Also available in HD at no extra charge. What is streaming HD? Is it the same as .wav? Better? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hopkins Posted November 11, 2022 Report Share Posted November 11, 2022 (edited) On 11/3/2022 at 6:31 AM, GA Russell said: Amazon Music Unlimited has announced that they now offer 100 million songs. Also available in HD at no extra charge. What is streaming HD? Is it the same as .wav? Better? Thanks! WAV is just the "container" and the content could be low definition or high definition. What Amazon offers in their "HD" option is CD quality (44kHz sampling rate). They also have "Ultra HD", which is higher sampling rate (up to 192kHz). Non-HD streaming is offered in a more "compressed" format. Spotify, YouTube, for example, currently offer only compressed formats, expressed in kBs (not kHz). To give you an idea of the difference, one hour of a CD quality file (Amazon's "HD") takes up about 630 MB, while the size of the same track compressed at 128 Kbps would only be 11 MB. Spotify currently offers up to 320 Kbps streams, and the difference with "non-compressed" (Amazon's HD) is only audible, in my opinion, if you have a good system (and good hearing). Listening on my computer, with small desktop speakers, I cannot tell the difference between the two. On my main system, I think I can, but it is very subtle. If you listen to even more compressed files, the difference becomes more obvious. You can try yourself by comparing the same tracks played from Spotify, for example, and from a CD, if you are sure that Spotify is from the same "release". There are probably some online sites which offer comparisons as well. Here's a good summary with some comparisons made: http://keithstead.com/and_more/cd_vs_mp3.html Edited November 11, 2022 by hopkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted November 11, 2022 Report Share Posted November 11, 2022 I have no idea what "wav is just the container and the content could be low definition or high definition" possibly means. Wav is an uncompressed audio format. If a CD is extracted to wav, it will be indistinguishable. If you take a "lossy" audio file such as MP3 and convert it to wav, it doesn't gain what's lost in the MP3 compression. Nevertheless I do feel that current MP3s sound perfectly fine for me - I would guess that's at 256 mps or 320. So if you mean that .wav files could be authored from poor quality MP3s, I guess "container" makes some sort of sense. But then again why would anyone offer downloads that aren't compressed when the source file is in fact smaller? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hopkins Posted November 11, 2022 Report Share Posted November 11, 2022 1 hour ago, Dan Gould said: I have no idea what "wav is just the container and the content could be low definition or high definition" possibly means. Wav is an uncompressed audio format. If a CD is extracted to wav, it will be indistinguishable. If you take a "lossy" audio file such as MP3 and convert it to wav, it doesn't gain what's lost in the MP3 compression. Nevertheless I do feel that current MP3s sound perfectly fine for me - I would guess that's at 256 mps or 320. So if you mean that .wav files could be authored from poor quality MP3s, I guess "container" makes some sort of sense. But then again why would anyone offer downloads that aren't compressed when the source file is in fact smaller? WAV can be used to store both compressed and uncompressed audio - the file extension says nothing about the quality of the audio content - the compression "rate" does. But this is a technicality. I was just trying to be thorough in my answer. Sorry if I added more confusion! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted November 11, 2022 Report Share Posted November 11, 2022 1 hour ago, hopkins said: WAV can be used to store both compressed and uncompressed audio - the file extension says nothing about the quality of the audio content - the compression "rate" does. But this is a technicality. I was just trying to be thorough in my answer. Sorry if I added more confusion! I am going to go ahead and say you are wrong. https://isip.piconepress.com/projects/speech/software/tutorials/production/fundamentals/v1.0/section_02/s02_01_p05.htmThe WAV audio format was developed by Microsoft and has become one of the primary formats of uncompressed audio. It stores audio at about 10 MB per minute at a 44.1 kHz sample rate using stereo 16-bit samples. The WAV format is by definition, the highest quality 16-bit audio format. Because you can convert between formats, a wav file could theoretically be sourced from a lossy MP3. This could happen for older burner programs that didn't recognize MP3 source files. Converted to wav, they would burn the music CD. But as I said, who would offer downloads in wav format if it wasn't at the quality provided by wav files? BTW, this is for microsoft machines - Apple has it's own equivalent file type. I think it's AIFF but I may be wrong, if that is the Apple equivalent to FLAC files, which are simply a way to compress wav files without being lossy the way MP3 files are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hopkins Posted November 11, 2022 Report Share Posted November 11, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, Dan Gould said: I am going to go ahead and say you are wrong. https://isip.piconepress.com/projects/speech/software/tutorials/production/fundamentals/v1.0/section_02/s02_01_p05.htmThe WAV audio format was developed by Microsoft and has become one of the primary formats of uncompressed audio. It stores audio at about 10 MB per minute at a 44.1 kHz sample rate using stereo 16-bit samples. The WAV format is by definition, the highest quality 16-bit audio format. Because you can convert between formats, a wav file could theoretically be sourced from a lossy MP3. This could happen for older burner programs that didn't recognize MP3 source files. Converted to wav, they would burn the music CD. But as I said, who would offer downloads in wav format if it wasn't at the quality provided by wav files? BTW, this is for microsoft machines - Apple has it's own equivalent file type. I think it's AIFF but I may be wrong, if that is the Apple equivalent to FLAC files, which are simply a way to compress wav files without being lossy the way MP3 files are. For all practical purposes, you are right. However, WAV can store compressed audio - it is just rarely used, if at all. From the Wikipedia page: "The WAV format supports compressed audio using, on Microsoft Windows, the Audio Compression Manager (ACM). Any ACM codec can be used to compress a WAV file. The user interface (UI) for Audio Compression Manager may be accessed through various programs that use it, including Sound Recorder in some versions of Windows." Addendum: most streaming services offering "lossless" music will deliver it in FLAC format anyway, not WAV, and that is the case with Amazon HD. Though if you purchase files online you usually have the option of which format to download them in. As for the source of the music, I assume that some of the many dubious labels on streaming services issue compilations with whatever they can get their hands on, including MP3. But we are getting sidetracked, and I think we both gave consistent answers to the original question: MP3 at its lowest compression rates is virtually undistinguishable from CD quality. Edited November 11, 2022 by hopkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GA Russell Posted November 12, 2022 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2022 Thank you hopkins and Dan for that interesting discussion! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Shearn Posted November 17, 2022 Report Share Posted November 17, 2022 Beware, some albums that are marked HD I have found to be upsampled MP3's, of things I had in my pre fire collection like Earland Intensity I found sounded like badly encoded MP3. I have a contact there and complained, and things have been corrected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teasing the Korean Posted November 17, 2022 Report Share Posted November 17, 2022 3 minutes ago, CJ Shearn said: Beware, some albums that are marked HD I have found to be upsampled MP3's, of things I had in my pre fire collection like Earland Intensity I found sounded like badly encoded MP3. I have a contact there and complained, and things have been corrected. Thanks for this. I am curious if you have ever purchased lossless files from Qobuz, and if you have any insights into whether they upsample mp3s also. I have bought a few things from them that I could not find elsewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Shearn Posted November 18, 2022 Report Share Posted November 18, 2022 9 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said: Thanks for this. I am curious if you have ever purchased lossless files from Qobuz, and if you have any insights into whether they upsample mp3s also. I have bought a few things from them that I could not find elsewhere. No clue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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