Recommended Network Streamer For Amazon Music?

[ML4Life]

Hi,

Has anyone had an experience with a good network audio player that is compatible with Amazon music? I have seen some good reviews of Marantz NA6006, however they seem hard to come by. Any suggestions? Thank you!

 

[STV]

Hi,

Has anyone had an experience with a good network audio player that is compatible with Amazon music? I have seen some good reviews of Marantz NA6006, however they seem hard to come by. Any suggestions? Thank you!

Marantz makes some quality products, and their streamers are quite well built. The NA6006 was attractively priced when it was still available. Some love the Heos app while others hate it. I personally don’t know as I’ve never used it.

Supposedly Heos is able to allow full resolution Amazon music. If it works as intended, this would allow you to stream Amazon music in high resolution to your connected equipment.

The only other one that I can currently think of that will stream high res Amazon Music is Bluesound. Their BluOS app through their Bluesound Node allows streaming in high res from Amazon Music, Qobuz, Tidal, and Deezer.

The only thing is that the Bluesound Node has no display so any info you’ll need to view on your smartphone.

So far Marantz has not introduced a replacement for the NA6006. The only other more reasonably priced Marantz streamer with Heos that’s still available is the ND8006. It’s a higher end unit that also has CD playback capability. It retails for $1,500.

Hope this helps.

 

[ML4Life]

Thanks STV I appreciate it. I used Heos and it sounds amazing, however the app is like a nicely painted trashcan. I will look into both of these and see what I find. Thank you. Appreciate all opinions!

 

[JonFo]

When I had my Amazon Music HD sub going (for about a year), I used the AppleTV 4K as the player, and the quality and usability were quite good.
I also have an Amazon FireTV 4K box, and it did fine. Pretty much no audible difference between most of these players, as all they do is relay a PCM stream to the processor, so the differences are mostly related to usability.

I've now settled on Apple Music as my only music service since they have a ton of Atmos content.

 

[Russr]

Thanks STV I appreciate it. I used Heos and it sounds amazing, however the app is like a nicely painted trashcan. I will look into both of these and see what I find. Thank you. Appreciate all opinions!

Ha! Well, that tells me that Heos is not a whole lot better than DTS Pay-fi. Such great potential, and SOOOO poorly executed on software, etc...

 

[Robert D]

When I had my Amazon Music HD sub going (for about a year), I used the AppleTV 4K as the player, and the quality and usability were quite good.
I also have an Amazon FireTV 4K box, and it did fine. Pretty much no audible difference between most of these players, as all they do is relay a PCM stream to the processor, so the differences are mostly related to usability.

I've now settled on Apple Music as my only music service since they have a ton of Atmos content.

Have you had the Atmos sound problem with music too, on the Apple? One of our members did but I can't remember if it was you. I don't use mine for music.

 

[JonFo]

Have you had the Atmos sound problem with music too, on the Apple? One of our members did but I can't remember if it was you. I don't use mine for music.

Yes, it was me (but there might be others), in this post: 2021 new gen Apple tv 4k Dolby Atmos Problems

A minor glitch and I think it has happened at other times when scrolling back within a song, it loses the MAT sync and we get a multi-second gap. But in general, I can stream Atmos music for an hour or so and have no problems.

 

[ML4Life]

I want something that can import my playlist from amazon and play Ultra HD res.

 

[ML4Life]

Any other recs?

 

[Stefan_DR3]

Nope. Bluesound or NAD. Why haven't you bought one yet?

 

[ML4Life]

Nope. Bluesound or NAD. Why haven't you bought one yet?

You got me. Ordered a node today. Gonna arrive in a few weeks.

 

[twodogs112]

I got the node a few weeks ago. Had some difficulty setting up( my fault). Now it works great. You’ll love it.

 

[ML4Life]

Got it today. The Amazon high resolution audio sound phenomenal. Still figuring out the audio controls on it and if I should mess with them.

Wow what an amazing quality from the node.

 

[ML4Life]

Ok world......using my node some songs on Amazon music hi-res do not play through my marantz 8012 through optical, although all will play utilizing RCA input. Thoughts??

 

[Robert D]

Ok world......using my node some songs on Amazon music hi-res do not play through my marantz 8012 through optical, although all will play utilizing RCA input. Thoughts??

Thats tough. I have the same receiver and used to play my Sonos through it using optical. Never had a problem.

When you stream through the optical you are letting the Marantz decode everything, and when you use the RCAs you let your Node do it. Are the Amazon music tracks youre trying to play a format that the Marantz is unable to decode? Maybe they are MQA or something?

 

[JonFo]

Ok world......using my node some songs on Amazon music hi-res do not play through my marantz 8012 through optical, although all will play utilizing RCA input. Thoughts??

Sounds like a possible bit-rate lock issue. When first playing a track, the receiver will lock onto the bit-depth/rate (e.g. 24/96), and if the next track is a different rate/depth (e.g. 44/16) the receiver just sees that as a corrupt (i.e. not fitting the depth/rate expected) content and does not output anything.
I bet that if you pause the stream, wait 60+ seconds, then resume playing, it will lock onto the new rate.

This happened to me back in the day (early 2000's) when using playlists that mixed bitstream (AC3) and PCM content feeding my Meridian 565 preamp.

If this is the root cause, then there might be a setting in the Node to normalize the bit-depth/rate of the optical/coax outs. If so, set it to force everything to 24/96.

 

[Stefan_DR3]

Are the Amazon music tracks youre trying to play a format that the Marantz is unable to decode? Maybe they are MQA or something?

unlikely to be MQA but possibly Atmos is tripping it up.

 

[ML4Life]

I have it set to stereo.

 

[ML4Life]

Switched from Optical2 to Optical1......it works lol. Weird.

 

[Robert D]

Switched from Optical2 to Optical1......it works lol. Weird.

So there might be something wrong with the optical 2 port. Maybe it wasnt plugged in quite right?