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Sonos now supports Amazon Music’s Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos tracks

Sonos now supports Amazon Music’s Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos tracks

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Listen at quality up to 24-bit, 48kHz

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As it previously promised, Sonos is today rolling out support for Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos tracks from Amazon Music Unlimited. After downloading the latest system update for their Sonos speakers, Amazon Music subscribers will see new badges on the Now Playing screen that clearly identify the quality of whatever music you’re playing. Sonos already supported CD-quality HD tracks on Amazon Music, as it does for other services as well.

These new badges will show either HD (lossless 16-bit stream), Ultra HD (lossless 24-bit stream), or Dolby Atmos. Sonos notes that for lossless music, the maximum sample rate supported is 48kHz.

You’ll see badges on the Now Playing screen to indicate music quality.
You’ll see badges on the Now Playing screen to indicate music quality.
Image: Sonos

The company has also put together its own pretty thorough guide on understanding high-resolution audio, saying that “while some aspects of what constitutes hi-res audio are clearly defined, some are not. And as the industry evolves, streaming services are applying their own terms to brand their higher-resolution tiers.” Give it a look if you’re new to lossless streaming, honestly — it’s quite good.

Dolby Atmos music is only supported on Sonos’ Atmos-enabled soundbars, the Arc and second-gen Beam. But Ultra HD tracks can be played across a much wider selection of Sonos devices:

  • Amp
  • Arc
  • Beam (both generations)
  • Connect (second generation)
  • Connect:Amp (second generation)
  • Five and Play:5 (second generation)
  • Move
  • One
  • One SL
  • Port
  • Roam
  • Sub (all generations)
  • Symfonisk Bookshelf
  • Symfonisk Table Lamp

In its blog post / explainer, Sonos hints that it plans to enable hi-res audio for other streaming services — Apple Music, hopefully — in the future. I’ll again take this opportunity to point out that Spotify has yet to launch its long-awaited HiFi tier after announcing it nearly 10 months ago. But there’s still time for the company to make good on its “later this year” promise, I suppose.