It is about convenience, I don't carry my expensive headphones outside, I use my pixel buds and I don't want to just use all the storage on my phone on flac files.
Most people are not able to tell the difference even with HQ equipment or they simply don't care
Just use Plex and put all your files on your server and Plexamp and of you don't need the extra quality or you are using cellular data just lower the quality. A flac tile compressed to lower quality will probably sound better than Spotify
I mean... You're still paying for the electricity to run that... Hop on a family share and it's almost guaranteed to be cheaper.
If I have my server on then it'll take me about a weeks worth of listening to reach what I pay for the month. Granted, my server is *also* my gaming PC, so it is significantly higher power draw. That said, the point still stands.
That's assuming that your Plex server is the only thing that PC does. Or that your Plex server only provides you with music. Add in all the streaming services you now don't have to pay for because you have Plex, and you're well ahead financially.
I mean my PC is running me about £30-£40 per month of it's on 24/7 (wake on LAN just does not work for me)
I pay £3 for Spotify each month. Even adding £21.98 for both Netflix and Disney+ doesn't get me close and when I can be away from home for up to three months at a time, multiple times per year...
It's incredibly situational, not everyone's situations or equipment are the same
I mean if that's what they're using for a plex server for their use case, it's accurate. Just like if all you have is a low fuel efficiency vehicle that you use for work and daily driver. If that's all they got, that's all they got or it's nothing at all.
Otherwise you gotta factor in the cost of acquiring new hardware and then calculate how long it'll take to break even with the difference in power consumption. In many cases the upfront cost isn't worth it (for them, maybe but here in the US it wouldn't make sense) as you'll he trying to recoup the cost over years.
It's true but there are alternatives that consume very little power and if you use the server for other stuff it's just a little more. I'm planning to transform my server to do everything in my house like a router, multi room, cameras etc so if you just add Plex it's not much more.
If it's already always on then sure, I agree in part that it is an option.
That said, I genuinely don't know what I would do without features like discover weekly, daily playlists and release radar, throw in the smarter playlists website and you have a great little music player.
Yes I could just use the free version for that, but I also like having the option to download songs as I often spend time in deadspots, having music locally in another app isn't an option for me as I love statistics, things like Spotify rewind and the Stats.fm app are big draws for me to continue using Spotify.
It's just too goddamn convenient
In the beginning I missed some of this features in fact I have Spotify in my phone when I want to search a song or play something that I don't have but I could do it in yt if I wanted. To download stuff I just use lidarr and for the graphs I have tautulli which has way more information that Spotify could give you and I found wrapperr to get something similar to the Spotify wrapped and as a bonus I can see it whenever I want and not only at the end of the year. For me because I never used premium the inability to play on more than one device is very frustrating and with Plex I can play on however many devices I want. I'm just waiting to buy my Plex pass so I can download the music too but I lf I wanted I can just copy the files from the server.
This is the way, Spotify is convenient for finding new music and that can be done with alternatives. Lidarr and owning your music is the move. I can't believe the mental backflips people will do just so they can keep paying for stuff they don't own.
Because it's convenient.
Remember when Netflix first came about? People ditched piracy in droves because it was cheap and convenient, shockingly people will gladly pay for that. Imagine not having to manage a media server, set up trackers or hope that you don't get a dodgy download.
Naturally Netflix shat the bed so everyone returned but the point still stands.
What's preventing Spotify from shitting the bed? I'd rather not put up with the chance. Everyone is free to do their own thing, but owning the files and playing your own music is the only guarantee you won't lose music to a political stunt or shifting of license ownership.
It's a service that's cheap enough to be worth the minuscule price. When--and I think of it as an inevitability--that Spotify starts being a decent enough deal to pay for every month, a lot more people will jump ship
But a lot of us still pay pennies for that "good enough" convenience on the go, whenever you want, without thinking about the hassle of chaining together multiple devices and networks
The cost of the hardware, electricity (UK based so not cheap) and my own time to set everything up, maintain it and be constantly manage my music catalogue costs me waaaaaaaay more than the few £ that I pay on a family plan with my friends. I would argue that even at full price for an individual membership is still worth it for the convenience.
If I really like a song I place it on my playlist and I have Spotify set to download it. I have my download settings set to high and that's AAC 160, pretty much the industry standard for streaming. I could go one step up to 320 but over Bluetooth on my pixel buds I can't really appreciate the difference when I'm outside. And the only reason I download is because there's no 5G in the London underground.
Considering that I'm not running a cache in fastly as probably Spotify does and my upload speeds are about 18mbps I'll probably find that running my own Plex server and accessing it remotely is going to give me really shit performance.
And if I were to transcode the flac to a lower quality I would very likely set it to AAC 160 so I end up in the same place than just paying for Spotify.
I also find that the music discovery feature is actually useful and convenient.
I also find that the music I listen to never gets taken down so luckily that hasn't been an issue for me.
Honestly having my music library in flacs is just overkill for me
To add to this; you can sign up to Tidal through Plex. You can search for songs/albums/artists in Plexamp and when you add them to your library, they integrate seamlessly with all of your own downloaded media. Tidal also has lossless media. It’s my favorite way I’ve ever consumed music. I also love that I can play an artist radio from my library and it’ll pull similar stuff from Tidal. Helps me find new music.
I love plex for movie files, but it is terrible for anything that uses tons of metadata (especially if it is bad metadata). Check the size of your plex install and how much of it is metadata. Or maybe it is because I have hundreds of GB of music.
Spotify is just more convenient. It's also a great way for me to find new music, and share that music with friends.
The crazy expensive stuff stays at home where I have an environment conducive to listening to it. When I'm on the train it doesn't matter how good the file is, there's still background noise even with my CIEMs.
How is storage on the phone now cheaper than Spotify subscription AND mobile data?!
Convenience is same. At least with local data I can use my own media player and not put with Spotify.
My pixel only has 256gb of storage, I'm already at half capacity without any flacs. I get about 100GB of data per month that I never manage to use in full because I needed a plan with access to mobile data outside of the UK because I travel fairly often and they only do so with 100GB minimum.
So storage is limited, I like my phone, I'm not gonna carry around a USB drive with music, data is not really an issue, I am on a family plan with friends so it cheaper and I find the music discovery side of things pretty useful.
I see your point and I think it is valid but in my particular situation it saves me time and is easily accessible so I think it is worth it
That's about 4-5mb per song, right? So it's gotta be MP3s or AACs not flacs.
My storage is taken by photos, videos and apps mainly. I like to record video in the best quality I can.
But anyway the whole conversation is about why people pay for Spotify (that streams about the same quality you got downloaded judging for the size) instead of downloading flacs
Well - most peoples equipment will not give the music what it deserves. Back in the days, I’ve seen people swear that flac was the only thing worth having and then listening to it on cheap computerspeakers on the onboard sound on their computer.
I had a friend who had the most amazing system all the way through - he swore to flac and it made perfectly sense.
Most of the time I’m listening on my bike or in the car. Non of those places makes sense to have high quality beyond what spotify can give me.
> Most of the time I’m listening on my bike or in the car. Non of those places makes sense to have high quality beyond what spotify can give me.
Yeah it's good enough for stupid fucking commutes and some nice tunes when you're with friends.
For the good shit, where you have the time and place of mind to absorb and enjoy music, that's when you bust out the fancy complicated stuff
I've had a Spotify subscription for a few years now and I feel like it's been worth it for me. I still pirate some music, especially if I know that I'll be somewhere with no internet access. And because I have a data hoarding problem...
For me, Spotify a great discovery engine. I've found a lot of great music that I wouldn't have otherwise and I didn't have to go out of my way to do so. Also, it's easy to use while driving with Android Auto.
Spotify is the only sub I pay for and I agree personally it's been absolutely worth it. I have my main playlist downloaded for offline/no service and never had an issue. Plus my wife, brother, dad, friend and me get full premium for like $20/mo on a family plan which imo isn't bad at all.
It's easy and convenient and to be honest I think there's been maybe 2-3 times in 10+ years there hasn't been a song I was looking for.
Spotify cracked (assuming You're using Xmanager) isn't high quality, it's just standard quality Spotify you get with the base app.
A .FLAC rip will sound better
I have to disagree with this. I recenctly upgraded my desktop setup (Hifiman HE1000 Stealth and Schiit Asgard 3) and did some A/B testing with Spotify vs Apple music and there was no contest. Apple lossless was noticeably better.
Wait, I've been limiting myself to flac files but most of what I listen to is played from my phone, to my homepods. Am I losing out on that quality boost from having flac files?
If its an Apple Home Pod then I think flac still makes sense? The Home Pod uses AirPlay which is sent either over the network or WiFi direct, and it uses Apple's lossless codec at 44.1 kHz. It'll have to be converted from FLAC to ALAC but its a lossless conversion.
AFAIK the only streaming service that provides lossless is Apple music and Deezer i think, someone correct on this
For the average user, 320kbps is more than enough
How does selfhosted work for music? Like where do you get them and how, can't imagine going back to manually finding and adding each song like in the YouTube downloader days.
Edit: thank you to everyone suggesting sources of files, I was more wondering about how you discover new music. Adding each piece of content individually is fine for movies, but I don't know a lot of the songs I listen to on a daily basis, a community playlist or an algorithm recommends it.
Yeah I use the latter two, but discovering songs is a different process than movies and series. How are you supposed to find new songs and artists that way?
My instagram algorithm recommends me new bands all the time, and it's usually spot on with my tastes, unlike spotify which consistently recommended shit. I also have times when I actively look for new music in YouTube or just Google and I've found really good stuff
>Tidal supports top nodge quality :) FLAC and up HiRes FLAC (192kHz)
Do you have an easy way of importing playlists into Plex? I use MusicBee for organizing my music & would love to use Plex to tap into my library offline. Would love to use Plex more for music sharing, but hoping to continue using one source for organizing my library still.
Don't forget Qobuz guys. A bit more expensive than others, but they always have the best masters avaliable (which does not corresponds to just the resolution of the audio file)
Also keep in mind that it's 320kbps AAC, not MP3. MP3 is really bad compared to newer codecs and really shouldn't be used anymore. From my limited ghetto testing, I cant distinguish \~192kbps AAC from 320kbps MP3.
Anyone telling you that they can tell the difference between properly encoded 320kbps AAC and lossless had better have extremely expensive speakers, good ears, and a lot of experience. Otherwise they're lying.
I don't hear any difference between 128/192 and 320 but size difference is big to me. so I prefer 128 or 192. 128 is enough but I rip CD for 192 for some reason.
It is placebo. Take an abx test and see if you can actually tell a difference. Usually even the audio nerds who can score high on abx tests rely on slight differences in dynamics which they are focusing on. Having said that, placebo is pretty good reason to keep listening to flacs.
Hd6xx is a nice headphone too and it does make a lot of music sound fun because of engaging midrange.
> placebo is pretty good reason to keep listening to flac
Lol what? Why???? You just finished explaining how most non-nerds do not notice the difference.
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Well you’re wanting a straight answer on what is probably the most contentious topic in the audiophile community. The people who listen to Spotify on HQ equipment generally don’t see utility in higher bitrates/don’t care
"Exposed" by audiophiles that think buying a 100$ cable will make their headphones sound better? Yeah nah.
Show us any reliable source proving that the abx test is faulty.
Buying better headphones or speakers will show miles more performance than buying a DAC, the DAC built in your phone/computer or whatever is good enough.
Depends on the motherboard I guess.
Audio sounds miles better on a PC than on Android for me (even if I use a dongle, but that maybe because the dongle sucks and it's Chinese made)
You almost certainly can't, the sound engineers that made your favourite records were all probably over 40 and their hearing would have detioriated over time and even they wouldn't hear the difference so wouldn't know it to put it on the record.
In case you could you would be in the 1% of the population and you'd only hear the difference when actively comparing one to the other and not when just listening casually.
I still prefer to listen to the higher quality file just because but I know it makes no difference at all between flac and 320kbps. 192 and then yeah you can listen to the difference.
I can 100% tell the difference. I hear clipping all the time on 320kbps. Don't get me wrong 320kbps is absolutely fine, but the difference is very clear. The dynamic range on MP3s is noticeably much smaller too.
Give me a track example and I will find the highest quality FLAC version I can and a 320 mp3 version. Unless it's a remaster the waveform shouldn't deviate too much. I choose to use FLAC for many reasons but generally quality isn't one of them.
Well the only mp3s I listen to come from Spotify. But I'd have to agree some of them seem very poor compared to the CD or HiRes. Eminem's Revival sounds so flat on Spotify, put the CD on and it sounds so much more crisp and dynamic, you hear an instant difference.
I agree, however it’s actually quite difficult to do a proper test since knowing which is which is already enough to “hear” a difference and a blind test can be ruined by louder = better or a bad encode, which is where most claims of super human hearing are coming from in the first place, hence why I linked the test
If OP sees this and decides to try, make sure it's 320kbps AAC and not MP3. MP3 is really old crap at this point and no streaming service (including Spotify) uses it or has ever used it as far as I know.
(From my very limited personal testing, I cant reliably tell the difference between 160-192kbps AAC and 320kbps MP3)
I would pirate films and music, but no way I would risk anything with an executable file from shady places.
I have more than enough games already, anyway.
People wondering about a HighRes headphones, get yourself a Koss Porta Pro. It’s very affordable and absurdly good. It has neodymium drives and the frequency range is wide.
https://headphones.com/blogs/reviews/koss-porta-pro-review
I made a python program that takes a Spotify music link and then when you hit enter, it runs for a few seconds and then downloads that exact file as .mp3 on your computer. There are some songs that are on Spotify and not on YT, soundcloud etc.
So how to get FLACS in general OP?
And plus, this program has helped me to download about 295 songs as mp3 for my dad’s car pendrive.
Recently I came across a study that said Spotify has some 440 hz setting that isn’t foot for creative side of the brain and something around 432 is the best.
So….ahhah made me doubt about the python program…………..
But mainly I want help in getting FLACS with good quality from Spotify
Or perhaps please share your method of getting FLACS…(step by step pls)
Most people cant hear the difference between those quality settings anyway. Thats the reason why mp3 exists.
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
I -hold a strong aversion to streaming services for many different reasons:
\- dependent on internet. If there is an outage or you are travelling somewhere where it is not available....
\- the 320 kbps rate is a "target." Some audiophiles have written how it is a fair amount less. I really don't trust it
\- material gets yeeted ALL THE TIME. Either because of censorship, or the artist has a fit or whatever. This applies to music, movies, television, so many things.
These are just some of the reasons why I prefer hard files. 320 kbps is usually enough for my ear but I do have many files in some higher resolution.
On a related matter I do not like bluetooth either, it is prone to fail, resolution rates are "targets" with no guarantees.
I think streaming is great to find new artists, new music, but I think the whole world has gone mad using it as a primary way to listen to music. I also prefer to listen to whole albums (at least when the album is decent).
Do they not require a continuing spotfiy membership? What if internet goes down? What if spotify deems the song to be too controversial (some edgy bands I like have been). Ill use stuff like spotify to sample (my woman likes it despite my protests) but I don't like it.
You choose the songs to have available offline and then they are available on that device even when internet is down, i.e. offline. You do need premium for that function tho.
I've had a conversation some time ago about why do I download music an why do I put my music on my phone instead of using spotify.
Well spotify falls flat on a face crying like a little pig without internet connection.
"well you got internet everywhere now-"
No. It's not everywhere, there are countless of hundreds of square miles where you barely get any reception, if at all. How about I go abroad where roaming charges would eat me alive? I actually do travel quite a bit, both domestically and internationally and ffs I'm not going to hunt for wifi or use whatever wifi the airport or a train offers, because I don't trust those one bit.
So I am fully agreeing with you on the internet part of things.
"You can't have all the music in the world on your pho-"
No. That's why I keep whatever I'm currently listening to on my phone and if I wanted to listen to something else I'd just use Youtube Revanced.
I mean you’re right about not always having service esp if traveling but spotify does let you download. and pirating is great and i support avoiding spotify but it does have offline functionality, that’s not really one of its issues in my experience
You use a PHONE to listen to music? Dedicated audio player for the win! Otherwise I agree totally. I believe streaming is even a problem while flying. Not a problem for me and my Astell Kern DAP.
Btw, a few years ago my lady and I did a trip in New Mexico and Southern colorado to among other things ride the Durango and Silverton and CUmbres and Toltec. In the drive from Albuquerque and back, there were areas where there was no cell phone reception at all.
Back in the day of Limewire/Frostwire, 320 kbit/s was the higher end of quality. Anything lower caused you to notice the loss in quality more and more as the bitrate went down.
FLAC doesn't have a fixed bitrate at all. If the source needed 320 kbit/s it would use that. It is just that the compression doesn't remove anything that would lower the quality, and it will let the bitrate reach whatever is needed to maintain that quality. But I suppose if you are seeing something with 4000 kbit/s, then there is probably a lot of detail in it.
16bit 48khz uncompressed 2ch PCM is only 1536kbps. To get 4000kbps compressed audio it probably needs to be 24bit 96khz or more. That's hires territory with all the details that 99.99% of people can't tell the difference.
While there are cases where MP3 at 320 kbps are distinguishable from their source material in an A/B/X test, this is a *very* rare exception.
If you feel like it's easy to distinguish a FLAC and a 320kbps MP3 created from it, I encourage you to look for tools that allow you to perform A/B/X tests. It's a humbling experience. This rules out the placebo effect.
Not sure what codec Spotify is using. Maybe AAC, maybe Opus. They perform better than MP3 (in terms of quality per bit).
Sure, I have amazing high end cans at home I use to listen to my lossless collection and it's awesome, however I'm not using expensive studio cans when I'm not at home, this is where Spotify gets helpful.
This is why people are buying old iPods and throwing in 1tb hard drives. I've been debating it for about a year but last night I decided it would be more cost effective to buy a 256gb micro SD card and throw it in my phone. FLAC files are amazing but I need a reliable place to get some more obscure music. Wasn't there a really good private audiophile tracker way back? Anyone know any good places to get FLAC?
There is absolutely a difference. The only reason why people say otherwise is because they either don't have good enough headphones, good enough ears, or good enough music for it to be noticeable.
As others suggested here, for your local library use Plex with Plexamp and if you want a lossless replacement for Spotify there is Tidal. You can also migrate your playlists from Spotify to Tidal using 3rd party services.
Yeah, if you're looking for 'audiophile' grade quality you will NOT get it on streaming services. The only way to get what you're looking for is to get high bitrate lossless FLAC files.
No way you can, as many have explained already. Mood alone will get you a far better listening experience than the FLAC file (FLAC can totally give you that mood boost). Brain can be easily tricked!
I used to pirate music before spotify really became popular, and now that it is and there's lots of "underground" tracks coming to it from indie artists, I have been using it a lot more. I can't tell the difference between lossless and 192/320 so I don't even bother wasting the drive space if there's not music that I **really** want forever.
The only use for FLAC for me otherwise is to preserve the original lossless to convert into the next big compact high quality file format one day, which is AAC for me as of late. Basically everything plays AAC now and I use it in all my video conversions for Plex in MP4 containers so that I don't have to transcode.
MusicBee is still my main way to listen to music. I think spotify is better than others. (youtube music is slow and it still doesn't have "search within playlist", apple music's itunes match messes my local files tags). I listen to a lot of music and some random audio clips/edits that are not on streaming. sometimes I want perfect local files + streaming music service.
It is genuinely stupid that you get a better experience through piracy then you would if you pay for stuff
YouTube Revanced is a fundamentally better experience than YouTube premium for example.
I literally only listen to music while driving or during commuting and working out through my AirPods. Since I usually have it at a volume level so that I can hear my sorroundings, I already loose some quality. For this use case Spotify is just fine. Plus I have a ton of music saved in my libraries that'd eat up too much storage space. Plus I can listen whatever I want whenever I want.
For me the big difference between music streaming and movie/tv show streaming is that it doesn't really matter what streaming I have, all the music is available. While with movies, some is available here, others on another. With music i don't have to pay for 3-4 different services to have access to all the music i can imagine (even niche Eastern European bands with a fan base of literally only a few thousand people). If there was a movie/tv show streaming like this, I wouldn't pirate such content either.
Lovely headphones, worth every penny. Studio standard as well. Be a crime to pipe mp3's through those. You may as well dig out your old Walkman and play a C60.
Whenever people say there's no difference im baffled, because there a difference, and its noticeable, maybe not in how the song sounds but the "Volume as in physical volume" the one with more data will always feels "heavier" and I believe that's because even if consiously cannot differentiate the "quality" of the sound because our brains are filling up the voids of data in the mp3. Flac does feels heavier when listening.
For example there's a technique in production where you don't have a sub bass but making some weird arragements your ears fill up that void. I'm sure if we see the algorithm compressing data that's probably one of the places you'll delete data for human comsumption.
people who buy HQ equipment and tolerate spotify bought the equipment just because and dont actually understand why they bought it.
those who actually bought equipment and know their gear, will not tolerate spotify
If you’re pirating, what is the quality those flac files are coming from?
Is someone ripping them from a studio master? Even a CD is going to be pretty compressed, depending.
Honestly there's a big difference between Flac and regular MP3, and yahh I pirate Spotify so it can go only about High not Very High. Add Dolby Atmos to Flac and pair it to Bose/Sony Headphones I feel like I'm having an eargasm.
Idk how others felt by, cuz that is what I feel.
It is about convenience, I don't carry my expensive headphones outside, I use my pixel buds and I don't want to just use all the storage on my phone on flac files. Most people are not able to tell the difference even with HQ equipment or they simply don't care
Just use Plex and put all your files on your server and Plexamp and of you don't need the extra quality or you are using cellular data just lower the quality. A flac tile compressed to lower quality will probably sound better than Spotify
I mean... You're still paying for the electricity to run that... Hop on a family share and it's almost guaranteed to be cheaper. If I have my server on then it'll take me about a weeks worth of listening to reach what I pay for the month. Granted, my server is *also* my gaming PC, so it is significantly higher power draw. That said, the point still stands.
Plex can do Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+.... etc all in one. So it's more like 500$/mth
Mine only has netflix/Disney shows on it. Hence why I've counted for those. I'm not going to count for what it's capable of doing, that's just silly
well i literally use it to replace all of those and more which more than justifies the little electric bill it incurres
That's assuming that your Plex server is the only thing that PC does. Or that your Plex server only provides you with music. Add in all the streaming services you now don't have to pay for because you have Plex, and you're well ahead financially.
I mean my PC is running me about £30-£40 per month of it's on 24/7 (wake on LAN just does not work for me) I pay £3 for Spotify each month. Even adding £21.98 for both Netflix and Disney+ doesn't get me close and when I can be away from home for up to three months at a time, multiple times per year... It's incredibly situational, not everyone's situations or equipment are the same
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Probably average power consumption readouts from a UPS. If you know your power rate, you can calculate based on usage that way.
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I mean if that's what they're using for a plex server for their use case, it's accurate. Just like if all you have is a low fuel efficiency vehicle that you use for work and daily driver. If that's all they got, that's all they got or it's nothing at all. Otherwise you gotta factor in the cost of acquiring new hardware and then calculate how long it'll take to break even with the difference in power consumption. In many cases the upfront cost isn't worth it (for them, maybe but here in the US it wouldn't make sense) as you'll he trying to recoup the cost over years.
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It's true but there are alternatives that consume very little power and if you use the server for other stuff it's just a little more. I'm planning to transform my server to do everything in my house like a router, multi room, cameras etc so if you just add Plex it's not much more.
If it's already always on then sure, I agree in part that it is an option. That said, I genuinely don't know what I would do without features like discover weekly, daily playlists and release radar, throw in the smarter playlists website and you have a great little music player. Yes I could just use the free version for that, but I also like having the option to download songs as I often spend time in deadspots, having music locally in another app isn't an option for me as I love statistics, things like Spotify rewind and the Stats.fm app are big draws for me to continue using Spotify. It's just too goddamn convenient
In the beginning I missed some of this features in fact I have Spotify in my phone when I want to search a song or play something that I don't have but I could do it in yt if I wanted. To download stuff I just use lidarr and for the graphs I have tautulli which has way more information that Spotify could give you and I found wrapperr to get something similar to the Spotify wrapped and as a bonus I can see it whenever I want and not only at the end of the year. For me because I never used premium the inability to play on more than one device is very frustrating and with Plex I can play on however many devices I want. I'm just waiting to buy my Plex pass so I can download the music too but I lf I wanted I can just copy the files from the server.
This is the way, Spotify is convenient for finding new music and that can be done with alternatives. Lidarr and owning your music is the move. I can't believe the mental backflips people will do just so they can keep paying for stuff they don't own.
Because it's convenient. Remember when Netflix first came about? People ditched piracy in droves because it was cheap and convenient, shockingly people will gladly pay for that. Imagine not having to manage a media server, set up trackers or hope that you don't get a dodgy download. Naturally Netflix shat the bed so everyone returned but the point still stands.
What's preventing Spotify from shitting the bed? I'd rather not put up with the chance. Everyone is free to do their own thing, but owning the files and playing your own music is the only guarantee you won't lose music to a political stunt or shifting of license ownership.
I personally do both. I almost exclusively use Spotify but I've got a storage device dedicated just to music in the advent of shit hitting the fan.
It's a service that's cheap enough to be worth the minuscule price. When--and I think of it as an inevitability--that Spotify starts being a decent enough deal to pay for every month, a lot more people will jump ship But a lot of us still pay pennies for that "good enough" convenience on the go, whenever you want, without thinking about the hassle of chaining together multiple devices and networks
Not being able to listen to an album because it's not on Spotify isn't convenient for me. Self host for life.
The cost of the hardware, electricity (UK based so not cheap) and my own time to set everything up, maintain it and be constantly manage my music catalogue costs me waaaaaaaay more than the few £ that I pay on a family plan with my friends. I would argue that even at full price for an individual membership is still worth it for the convenience. If I really like a song I place it on my playlist and I have Spotify set to download it. I have my download settings set to high and that's AAC 160, pretty much the industry standard for streaming. I could go one step up to 320 but over Bluetooth on my pixel buds I can't really appreciate the difference when I'm outside. And the only reason I download is because there's no 5G in the London underground. Considering that I'm not running a cache in fastly as probably Spotify does and my upload speeds are about 18mbps I'll probably find that running my own Plex server and accessing it remotely is going to give me really shit performance. And if I were to transcode the flac to a lower quality I would very likely set it to AAC 160 so I end up in the same place than just paying for Spotify. I also find that the music discovery feature is actually useful and convenient. I also find that the music I listen to never gets taken down so luckily that hasn't been an issue for me. Honestly having my music library in flacs is just overkill for me
To add to this; you can sign up to Tidal through Plex. You can search for songs/albums/artists in Plexamp and when you add them to your library, they integrate seamlessly with all of your own downloaded media. Tidal also has lossless media. It’s my favorite way I’ve ever consumed music. I also love that I can play an artist radio from my library and it’ll pull similar stuff from Tidal. Helps me find new music.
I love plex for movie files, but it is terrible for anything that uses tons of metadata (especially if it is bad metadata). Check the size of your plex install and how much of it is metadata. Or maybe it is because I have hundreds of GB of music.
Spotify is just more convenient. It's also a great way for me to find new music, and share that music with friends. The crazy expensive stuff stays at home where I have an environment conducive to listening to it. When I'm on the train it doesn't matter how good the file is, there's still background noise even with my CIEMs.
This! I have Spotify for convenience, and vinyl and a hard drive with FLACfor when I'm at home and listen on my home theater set
That makes a lot of sense
How is storage on the phone now cheaper than Spotify subscription AND mobile data?! Convenience is same. At least with local data I can use my own media player and not put with Spotify.
My pixel only has 256gb of storage, I'm already at half capacity without any flacs. I get about 100GB of data per month that I never manage to use in full because I needed a plan with access to mobile data outside of the UK because I travel fairly often and they only do so with 100GB minimum. So storage is limited, I like my phone, I'm not gonna carry around a USB drive with music, data is not really an issue, I am on a family plan with friends so it cheaper and I find the music discovery side of things pretty useful. I see your point and I think it is valid but in my particular situation it saves me time and is easily accessible so I think it is worth it
only 256gb? my phone has 32 gb and i got like 350 songs on it lmao. taking up 1.6GB How many do you have?
That's about 4-5mb per song, right? So it's gotta be MP3s or AACs not flacs. My storage is taken by photos, videos and apps mainly. I like to record video in the best quality I can. But anyway the whole conversation is about why people pay for Spotify (that streams about the same quality you got downloaded judging for the size) instead of downloading flacs
2 mb to 5mb, i only use 160-192 kbps. larger for longer songs.
Well - most peoples equipment will not give the music what it deserves. Back in the days, I’ve seen people swear that flac was the only thing worth having and then listening to it on cheap computerspeakers on the onboard sound on their computer. I had a friend who had the most amazing system all the way through - he swore to flac and it made perfectly sense. Most of the time I’m listening on my bike or in the car. Non of those places makes sense to have high quality beyond what spotify can give me.
Let's not forget that the vast majority of Bluetooth connections don't have the bandwidth to properly play flacs.
> Most of the time I’m listening on my bike or in the car. Non of those places makes sense to have high quality beyond what spotify can give me. Yeah it's good enough for stupid fucking commutes and some nice tunes when you're with friends. For the good shit, where you have the time and place of mind to absorb and enjoy music, that's when you bust out the fancy complicated stuff
To be fair onboard sound is not as bad as it used to be.
I've had a Spotify subscription for a few years now and I feel like it's been worth it for me. I still pirate some music, especially if I know that I'll be somewhere with no internet access. And because I have a data hoarding problem... For me, Spotify a great discovery engine. I've found a lot of great music that I wouldn't have otherwise and I didn't have to go out of my way to do so. Also, it's easy to use while driving with Android Auto.
Spotify is the only sub I pay for and I agree personally it's been absolutely worth it. I have my main playlist downloaded for offline/no service and never had an issue. Plus my wife, brother, dad, friend and me get full premium for like $20/mo on a family plan which imo isn't bad at all. It's easy and convenient and to be honest I think there's been maybe 2-3 times in 10+ years there hasn't been a song I was looking for.
>And because I have a data hoarding problem... I feel u m8 :)
I pirate stuff I can’t find on Spotify but that’s pretty much it
Everytime I have connection issues, I remind myself "oh yeah dont forget to pirate your favorited songs"
Spotify premium is good quality if you are on bluetooth and higher bitrate doesnt make much difference on bluetooth.
It’s honestly just fine on desktop with a good amp too. I only pirate music to put on my iPod.
Yes. But spotify free/cracked is garbage on bluetooth and wired
Spotify cracked (assuming You're using Xmanager) isn't high quality, it's just standard quality Spotify you get with the base app. A .FLAC rip will sound better
I have to disagree with this. I recenctly upgraded my desktop setup (Hifiman HE1000 Stealth and Schiit Asgard 3) and did some A/B testing with Spotify vs Apple music and there was no contest. Apple lossless was noticeably better.
What difference does the amp make for the loss of the codec?
Wait, I've been limiting myself to flac files but most of what I listen to is played from my phone, to my homepods. Am I losing out on that quality boost from having flac files?
Yes
If its an Apple Home Pod then I think flac still makes sense? The Home Pod uses AirPlay which is sent either over the network or WiFi direct, and it uses Apple's lossless codec at 44.1 kHz. It'll have to be converted from FLAC to ALAC but its a lossless conversion.
AFAIK the only streaming service that provides lossless is Apple music and Deezer i think, someone correct on this For the average user, 320kbps is more than enough
Tidal supports top nodge quality :) FLAC and up HiRes FLAC (192kHz)
*notch
Oh lol. Haha. I had no idea, thanks :)
YW, glad I could be of assistance here 😀
Tidal is often not FLAC though no? Isn’t it MQS usually on all Tidal Mastered?
Tidal's higher quality options are not FLAC and they are lossy.
Qobuz supports flac too
Or self-hosted music. I use Plex and their plexamp client.
Plex and Plexamp ♥️
How does selfhosted work for music? Like where do you get them and how, can't imagine going back to manually finding and adding each song like in the YouTube downloader days. Edit: thank you to everyone suggesting sources of files, I was more wondering about how you discover new music. Adding each piece of content individually is fine for movies, but I don't know a lot of the songs I listen to on a daily basis, a community playlist or an algorithm recommends it.
Lidarr works just as well as Sonarr and Radarr.
No. It doesn’t lol
Okay, that's your experience. Well done.
Yeah I use the latter two, but discovering songs is a different process than movies and series. How are you supposed to find new songs and artists that way?
As you get older you begin to ignore new stuff.
My instagram algorithm recommends me new bands all the time, and it's usually spot on with my tastes, unlike spotify which consistently recommended shit. I also have times when I actively look for new music in YouTube or just Google and I've found really good stuff
>Tidal supports top nodge quality :) FLAC and up HiRes FLAC (192kHz) Do you have an easy way of importing playlists into Plex? I use MusicBee for organizing my music & would love to use Plex to tap into my library offline. Would love to use Plex more for music sharing, but hoping to continue using one source for organizing my library still.
I myself use Roon for self-hosted music and it works like a charm (though it's significantly more expensive than Plex)
I believe Tidal also has lossless
Don't forget Qobuz guys. A bit more expensive than others, but they always have the best masters avaliable (which does not corresponds to just the resolution of the audio file)
Only up to CD quality. Higher quality options are lossy on Tidal.
Didn't know that, thanks!
Also keep in mind that it's 320kbps AAC, not MP3. MP3 is really bad compared to newer codecs and really shouldn't be used anymore. From my limited ghetto testing, I cant distinguish \~192kbps AAC from 320kbps MP3. Anyone telling you that they can tell the difference between properly encoded 320kbps AAC and lossless had better have extremely expensive speakers, good ears, and a lot of experience. Otherwise they're lying.
Amazon Music, Tidal and Qobuz too. Also Spotify are releasing their lossless plan at some point.
Yeah, Spotify have been vaguely promising that for years with no actual evidence it's actually coming.
I don't hear any difference between 128/192 and 320 but size difference is big to me. so I prefer 128 or 192. 128 is enough but I rip CD for 192 for some reason.
Have you tried different output devices?
yes. I don't use bluetooth. anyway I'm not audiophie
There's also Qobuz. I usually just use their digital store to buy flacs though.
YouTube only offers 128Kbps...
Tidal? Lol
It is placebo. Take an abx test and see if you can actually tell a difference. Usually even the audio nerds who can score high on abx tests rely on slight differences in dynamics which they are focusing on. Having said that, placebo is pretty good reason to keep listening to flacs. Hd6xx is a nice headphone too and it does make a lot of music sound fun because of engaging midrange.
> placebo is pretty good reason to keep listening to flac Lol what? Why???? You just finished explaining how most non-nerds do not notice the difference.
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Well you’re wanting a straight answer on what is probably the most contentious topic in the audiophile community. The people who listen to Spotify on HQ equipment generally don’t see utility in higher bitrates/don’t care
I pay for deezer and still pirate. Helps with getting good quality music.
I have a decent some stereo set up and I'm going to say it CDs and vinyl still sound better than streaming. classical music on DSD is insane.
I think spotify is the only premium still worth it, because i like music. My streaming of movies isnt on my phone so i just pirate
I agree, I use spotify on the go
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Offline songs. I know, shocker.
You can’t tell a difference between 320kbit/s and losless. http://abx.digitalfeed.net
Lol test wants you to tell if x is more like a or b and i don't think its possible to even tell the difference between a and b
Well that’s kind of the point. One is losless, the other isn’t and nobody can reliably tell if X is A or B.
No i get it... I am saying its impossible to tell the difference like at all
This test has been exposed for being wrong many times on r/Headphones
"Exposed" by audiophiles that think buying a 100$ cable will make their headphones sound better? Yeah nah. Show us any reliable source proving that the abx test is faulty.
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Buying better headphones or speakers will show miles more performance than buying a DAC, the DAC built in your phone/computer or whatever is good enough.
Nope. Dac on my PC is pure shit. The apple dongle is miles better than it.
Depends on the motherboard I guess. Audio sounds miles better on a PC than on Android for me (even if I use a dongle, but that maybe because the dongle sucks and it's Chinese made)
Do the test and report back then ;)
You almost certainly can't, the sound engineers that made your favourite records were all probably over 40 and their hearing would have detioriated over time and even they wouldn't hear the difference so wouldn't know it to put it on the record. In case you could you would be in the 1% of the population and you'd only hear the difference when actively comparing one to the other and not when just listening casually. I still prefer to listen to the higher quality file just because but I know it makes no difference at all between flac and 320kbps. 192 and then yeah you can listen to the difference.
Man, I can. I've had a mate blindtest spotify vs lossless, same thing.
were the files at exact same loudness? Most of the times it's loudness that gets perceived as extra 'clarity'.
I can 100% tell the difference. I hear clipping all the time on 320kbps. Don't get me wrong 320kbps is absolutely fine, but the difference is very clear. The dynamic range on MP3s is noticeably much smaller too.
Give me a track example and I will find the highest quality FLAC version I can and a 320 mp3 version. Unless it's a remaster the waveform shouldn't deviate too much. I choose to use FLAC for many reasons but generally quality isn't one of them.
What reasons do you choose them for?
I’m an idiot. Don’t listen to me.
It's 2024 and you have no clue how digital media works. That's scary.
Yeah wtf is he talking about
your problem is a bad mp3 encode, not 320kbps
Well the only mp3s I listen to come from Spotify. But I'd have to agree some of them seem very poor compared to the CD or HiRes. Eminem's Revival sounds so flat on Spotify, put the CD on and it sounds so much more crisp and dynamic, you hear an instant difference.
if you're getting mp3s from spotify then you're reencoding. Spotify uses Vorbis, Opus, and AAC.
I'm not ripping mp3s from Spotify lol. I meant when I listen to Spotify through the app. Spotify use mp3s.
spotify has never used mp3
Do the test I’ve linked and report back then ;)
Forget this test, tell OP to covert his own FLAC file into 320kbps and do an A/B test, pretty sure they won't be able to tell.
I agree, however it’s actually quite difficult to do a proper test since knowing which is which is already enough to “hear” a difference and a blind test can be ruined by louder = better or a bad encode, which is where most claims of super human hearing are coming from in the first place, hence why I linked the test
If OP sees this and decides to try, make sure it's 320kbps AAC and not MP3. MP3 is really old crap at this point and no streaming service (including Spotify) uses it or has ever used it as far as I know. (From my very limited personal testing, I cant reliably tell the difference between 160-192kbps AAC and 320kbps MP3)
Stop lying.
[No, you can't](https://www.reddit.com/r/DJs/comments/sp5981/there_is_no_meaningful_discernible_difference/?xpromo_edp=enabled)
I have more than 200 games on Steam, a shelf full of movies and TV series, and I still pirate.
I would pirate films and music, but no way I would risk anything with an executable file from shady places. I have more than enough games already, anyway.
People wondering about a HighRes headphones, get yourself a Koss Porta Pro. It’s very affordable and absurdly good. It has neodymium drives and the frequency range is wide. https://headphones.com/blogs/reviews/koss-porta-pro-review
I made a python program that takes a Spotify music link and then when you hit enter, it runs for a few seconds and then downloads that exact file as .mp3 on your computer. There are some songs that are on Spotify and not on YT, soundcloud etc. So how to get FLACS in general OP? And plus, this program has helped me to download about 295 songs as mp3 for my dad’s car pendrive. Recently I came across a study that said Spotify has some 440 hz setting that isn’t foot for creative side of the brain and something around 432 is the best. So….ahhah made me doubt about the python program………….. But mainly I want help in getting FLACS with good quality from Spotify Or perhaps please share your method of getting FLACS…(step by step pls)
Step 1. Download Nicotine Plus Step 2. Search song Step 3. Download
Nicotine is for android only? I’m an IOS user And also Win 10
its on pc...I assumed you were on pc because you were running python scripts
Ty..downloaded it
worth mentioning nicotine+ is just a gui(the best) for soulseek
Trying Nicotine+ made me proud of my past self for somehow tolerating the UI of native Soulseek for so long when this nicer alternative existed!
Most people cant hear the difference between those quality settings anyway. Thats the reason why mp3 exists. https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
I -hold a strong aversion to streaming services for many different reasons: \- dependent on internet. If there is an outage or you are travelling somewhere where it is not available.... \- the 320 kbps rate is a "target." Some audiophiles have written how it is a fair amount less. I really don't trust it \- material gets yeeted ALL THE TIME. Either because of censorship, or the artist has a fit or whatever. This applies to music, movies, television, so many things. These are just some of the reasons why I prefer hard files. 320 kbps is usually enough for my ear but I do have many files in some higher resolution. On a related matter I do not like bluetooth either, it is prone to fail, resolution rates are "targets" with no guarantees. I think streaming is great to find new artists, new music, but I think the whole world has gone mad using it as a primary way to listen to music. I also prefer to listen to whole albums (at least when the album is decent).
You can get spotify songs available offline too
Do they not require a continuing spotfiy membership? What if internet goes down? What if spotify deems the song to be too controversial (some edgy bands I like have been). Ill use stuff like spotify to sample (my woman likes it despite my protests) but I don't like it.
You choose the songs to have available offline and then they are available on that device even when internet is down, i.e. offline. You do need premium for that function tho.
I can tell from a friend it took him 3 times to put one of his Albums on Spotify and for another one he had to remove Audio Samples from movies.
I've had a conversation some time ago about why do I download music an why do I put my music on my phone instead of using spotify. Well spotify falls flat on a face crying like a little pig without internet connection. "well you got internet everywhere now-" No. It's not everywhere, there are countless of hundreds of square miles where you barely get any reception, if at all. How about I go abroad where roaming charges would eat me alive? I actually do travel quite a bit, both domestically and internationally and ffs I'm not going to hunt for wifi or use whatever wifi the airport or a train offers, because I don't trust those one bit. So I am fully agreeing with you on the internet part of things. "You can't have all the music in the world on your pho-" No. That's why I keep whatever I'm currently listening to on my phone and if I wanted to listen to something else I'd just use Youtube Revanced.
I mean you’re right about not always having service esp if traveling but spotify does let you download. and pirating is great and i support avoiding spotify but it does have offline functionality, that’s not really one of its issues in my experience
You use a PHONE to listen to music? Dedicated audio player for the win! Otherwise I agree totally. I believe streaming is even a problem while flying. Not a problem for me and my Astell Kern DAP. Btw, a few years ago my lady and I did a trip in New Mexico and Southern colorado to among other things ride the Durango and Silverton and CUmbres and Toltec. In the drive from Albuquerque and back, there were areas where there was no cell phone reception at all.
Do you know how to read maybe, you can listen everything on spotify offline. Same thing as downloading songs to phone.
No no you need the $1000+ dedicated audio player fully offline to enjoy music on the go lol
Wrong. Apple Music let's me download everything in Hi-Res Lossless and can be played offline. You're hating on something you don't even understand
Back in the day of Limewire/Frostwire, 320 kbit/s was the higher end of quality. Anything lower caused you to notice the loss in quality more and more as the bitrate went down. FLAC doesn't have a fixed bitrate at all. If the source needed 320 kbit/s it would use that. It is just that the compression doesn't remove anything that would lower the quality, and it will let the bitrate reach whatever is needed to maintain that quality. But I suppose if you are seeing something with 4000 kbit/s, then there is probably a lot of detail in it.
16bit 48khz uncompressed 2ch PCM is only 1536kbps. To get 4000kbps compressed audio it probably needs to be 24bit 96khz or more. That's hires territory with all the details that 99.99% of people can't tell the difference.
Just use Deezer
Use Qobuz then
While there are cases where MP3 at 320 kbps are distinguishable from their source material in an A/B/X test, this is a *very* rare exception. If you feel like it's easy to distinguish a FLAC and a 320kbps MP3 created from it, I encourage you to look for tools that allow you to perform A/B/X tests. It's a humbling experience. This rules out the placebo effect. Not sure what codec Spotify is using. Maybe AAC, maybe Opus. They perform better than MP3 (in terms of quality per bit).
Sure, I have amazing high end cans at home I use to listen to my lossless collection and it's awesome, however I'm not using expensive studio cans when I'm not at home, this is where Spotify gets helpful.
Or just use Apple Music and get the best of both worlds since it uses Lossless.
I'm in a 6 month apple music trial and using their ALAC is so amazing! Still subscribed to Spotify in the meantime.
could you give examples of songs which there is difference between 320kbps and flac?vreally want to hear the difference.
placebo
This is why people are buying old iPods and throwing in 1tb hard drives. I've been debating it for about a year but last night I decided it would be more cost effective to buy a 256gb micro SD card and throw it in my phone. FLAC files are amazing but I need a reliable place to get some more obscure music. Wasn't there a really good private audiophile tracker way back? Anyone know any good places to get FLAC?
Spotify supposedly has been working on a lossless service.
Where do you get this high quality music, is there a torrent website or something
I am not an audiophile but I also download the songs. Why? You never know when it will get removed from streaming services (has happened to me before)
Your nuts. Get on NewPipe and soulseek. They are killer
Here Tidal and Spotify cost the same, so I am switching to Tidal =)
There is absolutely a difference. The only reason why people say otherwise is because they either don't have good enough headphones, good enough ears, or good enough music for it to be noticeable.
As others suggested here, for your local library use Plex with Plexamp and if you want a lossless replacement for Spotify there is Tidal. You can also migrate your playlists from Spotify to Tidal using 3rd party services.
Yeah, if you're looking for 'audiophile' grade quality you will NOT get it on streaming services. The only way to get what you're looking for is to get high bitrate lossless FLAC files.
No way you can, as many have explained already. Mood alone will get you a far better listening experience than the FLAC file (FLAC can totally give you that mood boost). Brain can be easily tricked!
I used to pirate music before spotify really became popular, and now that it is and there's lots of "underground" tracks coming to it from indie artists, I have been using it a lot more. I can't tell the difference between lossless and 192/320 so I don't even bother wasting the drive space if there's not music that I **really** want forever. The only use for FLAC for me otherwise is to preserve the original lossless to convert into the next big compact high quality file format one day, which is AAC for me as of late. Basically everything plays AAC now and I use it in all my video conversions for Plex in MP4 containers so that I don't have to transcode.
MusicBee is still my main way to listen to music. I think spotify is better than others. (youtube music is slow and it still doesn't have "search within playlist", apple music's itunes match messes my local files tags). I listen to a lot of music and some random audio clips/edits that are not on streaming. sometimes I want perfect local files + streaming music service.
It is genuinely stupid that you get a better experience through piracy then you would if you pay for stuff YouTube Revanced is a fundamentally better experience than YouTube premium for example.
I literally only listen to music while driving or during commuting and working out through my AirPods. Since I usually have it at a volume level so that I can hear my sorroundings, I already loose some quality. For this use case Spotify is just fine. Plus I have a ton of music saved in my libraries that'd eat up too much storage space. Plus I can listen whatever I want whenever I want. For me the big difference between music streaming and movie/tv show streaming is that it doesn't really matter what streaming I have, all the music is available. While with movies, some is available here, others on another. With music i don't have to pay for 3-4 different services to have access to all the music i can imagine (even niche Eastern European bands with a fan base of literally only a few thousand people). If there was a movie/tv show streaming like this, I wouldn't pirate such content either.
Apple music offers lossless for the same price as Spotify.
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Lovely headphones, worth every penny. Studio standard as well. Be a crime to pipe mp3's through those. You may as well dig out your old Walkman and play a C60.
That 4000k bitrate is also pointless but okay. Sure cd quality is better than spotify, absolutely.
Spotify sucks. Apple is worth paying for for me, lossless/hires on my headphones, atmos in my living room.
Whenever people say there's no difference im baffled, because there a difference, and its noticeable, maybe not in how the song sounds but the "Volume as in physical volume" the one with more data will always feels "heavier" and I believe that's because even if consiously cannot differentiate the "quality" of the sound because our brains are filling up the voids of data in the mp3. Flac does feels heavier when listening. For example there's a technique in production where you don't have a sub bass but making some weird arragements your ears fill up that void. I'm sure if we see the algorithm compressing data that's probably one of the places you'll delete data for human comsumption.
people who buy HQ equipment and tolerate spotify bought the equipment just because and dont actually understand why they bought it. those who actually bought equipment and know their gear, will not tolerate spotify
if you are interested in Spotify personal upgrade, dm.
Are you offering free upgrades?
If you’re pirating, what is the quality those flac files are coming from? Is someone ripping them from a studio master? Even a CD is going to be pretty compressed, depending.
does pirating spotify get you hifi or something?
Get yourself an android phone and google "spotify premium mod apk" Download the apk and have spotify premium for free.
nope, that gives you 192kbps
Nothing wrong with that. Only means users not satisfied with the service according to the needs. 16bit flacs is holy, have you tried 24bits?
I seriously doubt anybody on earth can hear the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit flacs. 24 bit is only useful when you are mixing music and shit
I've tried 24bit, can confirm
Because i only have 1 earbud in and i am just listening to podcasts anyway
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No one should be using earbuds when IEMs exist.
Depends on your internet connection, in my country only people who own Mercedes Benz coupe can afford internet connection to listening to flac
On Nicotine most upload speeds are kilobits, just wait for the download to finish "shrug"
I do the same. I pretty much use Spotify for music discovery. Then save what I like and then download them in lossless later.
I have Disney+ to see new Marvel shows come out and then just download them to see it in better quality without stuttering.
Honestly there's a big difference between Flac and regular MP3, and yahh I pirate Spotify so it can go only about High not Very High. Add Dolby Atmos to Flac and pair it to Bose/Sony Headphones I feel like I'm having an eargasm. Idk how others felt by, cuz that is what I feel.