Dark Side Of The Moon on Amazon Music (and HEOS)

NJG999

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Has anyone noticed what a mess Dark Side Of The Moon is on Amazon Music Unlimited (in their Ultra HD format)?

Four of the nine tracks (I'm saying nine, but they're listing ten, because they've split the opening medley track into two) are 192/24 whilst the remainder are in 96/24. I'll use the track numbers from the CD copy of the album I have (so track 4 for example is The Great Gig In The Sky) - tracks 4,5,8 and 9 are in the higher resolution. Why have they done that?! Not only does that seem completely unnecessary but it also results in issues with gapless playback, certainly via the Denon/Marantz HEOS implementaton, which struggles with the transition between the two resolutions, causing Amazon's claimed gapless playback to be anything but gapless between tracks 3/4, 5/6 and 7/8.

It's less noticeable playing through Amazon's own app (Android or PC) but it's still discernable as a faint click between some of the track changes. Worse still, the transition between tracks 5 and 6 is awful, with the final ten seconds or so of track 5 (Money) being repeated at the beginning of track 6 (Us And Them) - it sounds like a really bad edit!

It seems incredible to me that almost 50 years after the release of this classic album that its presentation still can't be got right consistently - i.e. as the artist intended. It's not even the digital age that can be blamed - the compact disc version was faultlessly gapless! Come on Amazon Music, sort it out - especially on a subscription supposedly premium platform!

Neil G
 
Careless design and/or implementation is the blame for lack of gapless playback support - so not really anything to do with the digital age!
 
Careless design and/or implementation is the blame for lack of gapless playback support - so not really anything to do with the digital age!
I agree with the first part of your statement, though gapless playback has only become an issue since the advent of the digitisation of music. That is, it wasn't an issue when we consumed music via vinyl or analogue tape (and in broadcast media it was rare to have sequential tracks being played -though I do remember The Wall being played beginning to end on Radio One!).

The main point though is the one that you make - it is careless. I would add lazy and frankly disrespectful of suppliers of music to think that consumers don't care about how music is delivered.
 
Are you sure that these higher resolutions are truly recorded at that resolution or are they just upscaled?
 
This album was originally recorded onto analogue tape so the resolution of the digital files would depend on the subsequent digitisation by the record company. But regardless, Amazon shouldn't be delivering the music in such a disorganised way.
 
For the Record , its the same on apple music.

Other titles Ive tried recently have issues as well , Orbitals brown album for example , lush 3-1 should run straight into lush 3-2 like its the same track , but on apple music it doesn't .... lush 3-1 fades out , then lush 3-2 starts ..... why ?
No version of that album Ive ever heard fades out like that on that track on physical media.

Leftfields leftism album , "Open up" featuring John Lydon is missing from the album .... you would logically think there are some rights issues there with John Lydon , but you can listen to it no problem on the same service on the greatest hits album and on the remixed leftism 22.
Whats that all about ?

Its like some albums are just stitched together tracks from various sources maybe , some kind of server space saving exercise.
 
It proves they do not care about the music in the same way that their customers do - all they want is your subscription. Oh is the service crap - tough
 

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