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Is Amazon Ultra HD up-sampled?

spark1 said:
I made no speculations, one way or the other.

The majority of Amazon's HD library displays as 16/44, in my experience.

PROVENANCE!!!???
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Your display then is your Provenance! It's telling you the sampling rate. 16/44 is common. Lots of old never remastered content which is 16/44. Not unusual for 1980's and early 1990's digital content which never got a new remastering.
 
KentTeffeteller said:
Your display then is your Provenance! It's telling you the sampling rate. 16/44 is common. Lots of old never remastered content which is 16/44. Not unusual for 1980's and early 1990's digital content which never got a new remastering.
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This has nothing to do with whether or not Amazon is upsampling lower bitrate content to fill their UHD library.

And if they are - as a widespread practice - then I wonder why they even have any 16/44 content at all, much less having it as the majority of their content.

EDIT: BTW, the terms "high resolution" and "HD" have been co-opted by the streaming music industry to mean any files of CD quality or better.
 
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WillVT said:
It sounds great. I'm just curious how Amazon is streaming 24/192 files, when what they received was 16/44.1.
It kind of makes me wonder about all of their Ultra HD content. How much of it is BS?
I'm fine with Redbook CD quality files, and I can't hear a difference. It just seems fishy that they are either lying about what they are actually streaming, or they up-sampled it. Which is also kind of lying.
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I would guess that the aggregator/distributor your brother uses could shed some light on this.

From what I can glean, of the large distributors/aggregators, only CDBaby limits submissions to 16/4 (or were as of late last year). The others seem to accept higher resolution files, which one would expect given the marketing of "high res" music. Of course, this doesn't tell us what Amazon (or any other streaming service) might be doing with the submitted files.

What is absolutely clear is that in the specific case of your brother's album, someone - either the aggregator/distributor or Amazon - upsampled the file your brother provided.

The only other thing I can say about Amazon Music (and Tidal and Qobuz, the other two I've used) is that some of their content sounds spectacular, some sounds good and some sounds bad. Just as is the case with CDs and vinyl.
 
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Hey folks, this is @WillVT 's brother that he mentioned. I run a recording studio in Austin. So yes, the main "aggregator's" as they are called only accept 16bit-44.1khz wav files. Some of the main players are Tunecore, CD Baby, and Distrokid. I have used all three. Last I checked (which was not long ago), they are only accepting the aforementioned bit depth and sample rate. I can confirm that from a release I personally uploaded on CD Baby just over a month ago. On the interface these services provide, you choose which streaming services are delivered to, which is a lot more than just the big players like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Youtube. We never have any direct contact with those services-- you just say when you want it to drop, and it appears on those services on that day. Good luck ever getting a human that would have a clue what you're talking about from tech giants like these.... Major label artists have a different path which does allow 24bit, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if many deliver 16-44. Many labels and artists do not understand or care.

Just to provide more info from this side of things, I am mainly a tracking and mixing engineer, but I also do mastering. I probably master 10 records a year. For stuff that I mix and personal projects (like this one that started this discussion with my brother), I usually push to send it to a dedicated mastering engineer. I recently been using JJ Golden of Golden Mastering in LA. Like most mastering houses, the standard product you receive is 16-44.1. You can pay extra for an MFIT (mastered for itunes) which is 24b-48k. As far as I know, Apple is the only one that has an actual standard for mastering engineers to adhere to, although even that is kinda BS. I also deliver 16-44.1 to clients when I master. It's pretty standard to deliver 24bit and whatever sample rate the project was recorded at for vinyl.

Now the controversial part. In the engineer world, it's pretty well understood that higher sample rates are only of benefit for processing in the digital realm, aka plugins. Plugins that don't oversample internally can kick back harmonics from the hard cut on the high frequency (at 22khz at 44.1 sample rate). So it's best practice to use higher sample rates for processing, but of questionable benefit for listening. I know of at least one mastering engineer that will upsample from 44 or 48 to 96khz for the mastering processing. When I say of questionable benefit for listening, it's because most humans can't hear past 16khz, and pretty much none past 20khz....not to mention that it degrades with age. So 44.1 hitting 22khz is already beyond what we can hear. Personally, I record at 48khz or 96khz-- but I get a lot of stuff in from other folks at 44. I don't know anybody that records at 192. All that said, my tape machines go above 22khz, and drop off gently. I do have a theory that those frequencies above the audible range do have an effect, but then you get into are your speakers even reproducing it-- if they have DSP, it's only to the sample rate they are using.

edit: Also, from a quick google it seems many of the players for Amazon HD do not report sample rate correctly
 
evoltap said:
Hey folks, this is @WillVT 's brother that he mentioned. I run a recording studio in Austin. So yes, the main "aggregator's" as they are called only accept 16bit-44.1khz wav files. Some of the main players are Tunecore, CD Baby, and Distrokid. I have used all three. Last I checked (which was not long ago), they are only accepting the aforementioned bit depth and sample rate. I can confirm that from a release I personally uploaded on CD Baby just over a month ago. On the interface these services provide, you choose which streaming services are delivered to, which is a lot more than just the big players like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Youtube. We never have any direct contact with those services-- you just say when you want it to drop, and it appears on those services on that day. Good luck ever getting a human that would have a clue what you're talking about from tech giants like these.... Major label artists have a different path which does allow 24bit, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if many deliver 16-44. Many labels and artists do not understand or care.

Just to provide more info from this side of things, I am mainly a tracking and mixing engineer, but I also do mastering. I probably master 10 records a year. For stuff that I mix and personal projects (like this one that started this discussion with my brother), I usually push to send it to a dedicated mastering engineer. I recently been using JJ Golden of Golden Mastering in LA. Like most mastering houses, the standard product you receive is 16-44.1. You can pay extra for an MFIT (mastered for itunes) which is 24b-48k. As far as I know, Apple is the only one that has an actual standard for mastering engineers to adhere to, although even that is kinda BS. I also deliver 16-44.1 to clients when I master. It's pretty standard to deliver 24bit and whatever sample rate the project was recorded at for vinyl.

Now the controversial part. In the engineer world, it's pretty well understood that higher sample rates are only of benefit for processing in the digital realm, aka plugins. Plugins that don't oversample internally can kick back harmonics from the hard cut on the high frequency (at 22khz at 44.1 sample rate). So it's best practice to use higher sample rates for processing, but of questionable benefit for listening. I know of at least one mastering engineer that will upsample from 44 or 48 to 96khz for the mastering processing. When I say of questionable benefit for listening, it's because most humans can't hear past 16khz, and pretty much none past 20khz....not to mention that it degrades with age. So 44.1 hitting 22khz is already beyond what we can hear. Personally, I record at 48khz or 96khz-- but I get a lot of stuff in from other folks at 44. I don't know anybody that records at 192. All that said, my tape machines go above 22khz, and drop off gently. I do have a theory that those frequencies above the audible range do have an effect, but then you get into are your speakers even reproducing it-- if they have DSP, it's only to the sample rate they are using.

edit: Also, from a quick google it seems many of the players for Amazon HD do not report sample rate correctly
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Distrokid accepts up to 24/96. Tunecore accepts up to 24/192.

As far as I can tell, CDBaby is still limiting submissions to 16/44..
 
Also, I see no reason for pop that's mastered super hot to be 24bit, as we are not even coming close to the 96db dynamic range 16 bit offers. For classical and jazz, yes perhaps some benefit.
 
evoltap said:
Also, I see no reason for pop that's mastered super hot to be 24bit, as we are not even coming close to the 96db dynamic range 16 bit offers. For classical and jazz, yes perhaps some benefit.
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Feels like there's a bit of marketing speak happening (not in your post, in the industry), it's all a numbers game in streaming now, everyone saying they have this number of Hi-Res titles in their catalog.
 
mprince said:
Feels like there's a bit of marketing speak happening (not in your post, in the industry), it's all a numbers game in streaming now, everyone saying they have this number of Hi-Res titles in their catalog.
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Yes. I think the average consumer equates it to resolution in digital images or video, which it is not. We can all tell when there's more pixels, and when we zoom in on an image, we can still have a good picture. Nobody is "re-sizing" audio, as the equivalent would be slowing it down or speeding it up. For that reason, a lot of folks doing SFX and foley will record at high sample rates, just so if they want to slow something down (lower the sample rate), they still have full frequency resolution
 
mprince said:
Feels like there's a bit of marketing speak happening (not in your post, in the industry), it's all a numbers game in streaming now, everyone saying they have this number of Hi-Res titles in their catalog.
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The term "high resolution" was originally used to refer to music with higher bitrate than CD.

Later the streaming services started using it to distinguish their content from that of the services using lossy content, like Spotify - their primary competitor. Compared to lossy content, CD does indeed provide higher resoluton and better sound quality.

And 24/96 or higher does indeed provide higher resolution than CD, regardless of whether or not it is discernible. Personally I think that if the original CD standard had been 16/88 or 16/96, the high-res movement would never have gained such traction and such hype.
 
spark1 said:
The term "high resolution" was originally used to refer to music with higher bitrate than CD.

Later the streaming services started using it to distinguish their content from that of the services using lossy content, like Spotify - their primary competitor. Compared to lossy content, CD does indeed provide higher resoluton and better sound quality.

And 24/96 or higher does indeed provide higher resolution than CD, regardless of whether or not it is discernible. Personally I think that if the original CD standard had been 16/88 or 16/96, the high-res movement would never have gained such traction and such hype.
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Yeah, understood, I knew all that (and agree with you). My point was that people have developed perceptions that a 24/192 recording is always the "best", and 24/48 and 24/96 are somehow inferior. Or, that a 16/44 recording is sub standard. It's all just a bit comical...
 
There's a mastering plugin by Izotope that I use that has a cool feature where you can check various lossy formats, and even solo just the artifacts that it introduces. Maybe I should make a post where I print files through the various formats, and then make versions with just the artifacts solo'd. Could also record something at 192 and then down sample it at all the rates-- 176.4, 96, 88.2, 48, 44.1. For that one I would make a player that plays lossless quality, and let yall do a blind shootout....see if anybody can hear it.
 
Lavane said:
How does up sampling work anyway?
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Using an upsampling filter. You repeat, or zero-stuff the existing samples, and then apply an interpolation filter to smooth between the new samples. For non-binary interpolation factors, you can upsample and then downsample, with integer rates to give the final upsample rate you need.

You can do this with fixed input and output sample rates. You can even do it when you are not sure of the exact ratio between sample rates (i.e. when source and destination clocks are different); you use an ASRC filter, as provided in a number of SPDIF interface devices.

This is not new; the first Philips CD players used the 14-bit TDA1540 DAC, which required a 4x upsampling filter (the SAA 7030) to achieve 16-bit equivalent performance.
 
evoltap said:
Also, I see no reason for pop that's mastered super hot to be 24bit, as we are not even coming close to the 96db dynamic range 16 bit offers. For classical and jazz, yes perhaps some benefit.
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As earlier stated, the high bit rates used in tracking and mixing, enable engineers in tracking, mixing, and mastering to use their plug-ins and DAW effects without audible artifacts. This is sensible and standard practice in the industry.
 
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