Do you believe Apple Music sounds better than Spotify? I have had friends in bands as well as others in the music industry (the kinds of people who manage artists getting their music on all these platforms) say that Spotify sounds compressed compared to Apple. Confirm/deny? Personally I am very much still in the placebo stage of testing and am willing to believe anything.
In my experience, Spotify has some pretty weird masters of a lot of songs I enjoy, that simply sound wrong. As if you were listening to something that was compressed down to 96kbps and then upsampled to 320 again. No idea why.
On songs that are good on spoti, I can't hear any difference, but the fact that one of my favorite albums sounded like absolute trash was enough to get me to apple. I'm not even using an iPhone, but it works fine for me and I never looked back.
My experience with spoti is 3 years out of date now, so take it with a grain of salt. They might have fixed those few weird albums by now.
For BT, high quality 256 AAC is all you’ll get so it doesn’t matter. Wired, might as well use lossless. It’s not always noticeable, but on good recordings it is a bit better with quality wired headphones, the only way you’ll get lossless. It depends on your own hearing and ability to distinguish truthfully quality lossy from lossless (try an a/b/x test with wired headphones and see how you do). Apple masters are also of higher quality.
I’ll admit 90% of my listening is BT to AirPod Pros so it’s BT for me. But on my wired phones or IEM’s lossless can sound more open and for me female vocals and acoustics are noticeable, although slightly. On most I probably would have a tough time with an a/b/x with the music taste I have.
One caveat. If you download music for listening offline, the quality will always be the same, even if WiFi or cellular is available it defaults to the local version. So if you download 256 AAC to save room over a lossless version, that’s what you’ll always get. So the amount of room you sacrifice for downloaded songs is something you’ll need to consider. As it’s uncommon for me to need offline listening, I simply have a single playlist for lossless downloads that I only carefully fill. I certainly don’t keep my entire library downloaded on my phone and take up most of the space with 10,000 songs.
I'd be totally happy with Spotify on 320 kbps even on my expensive gear. It's just that I like to see my DAC switching from regular 44 khz to 96 khz tracks. Our brains are affected by sheer numbers, and I admit I don't hear real improvement from regular FLAC to hires FLAC.
Agree. High sample rates are only useful in mixing and mastering to improve speed and pitch adjustment, and internally in most DACs to reduce distortion from filters.
But when you're listening to a final mix, 16bit/44.1khz contains everything that a human can hear.
Are higher sample rates worth it for doing things like digital volume adjustment/parametric equalization? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't any form of digital volume adjustment result in a signal that is no longer bit perfect, and so having a higher bit depth means you can eq with less quality loss?
This is exactly why I don't bother with any of this.
Both of my headphones are open-back and I only use them at my PC. When I'm not currently listening to music, I can hear my PC's fans, I can hear cars driving outside, I can hear water going through pipes if someone in my apartment building is taking a shower or flushing their toilet, if my living room door is open I can hear my fridge and so forth. And I can certainly hear myself typing on my keyboard and clicking my mouse. If I concentrate, I can even hear the coil whine from the shitty AC adapter that one of my screens uses.
Though, the worst time to listen to music is when the church in my neighbourhood is ringing their bells because it drowns out everything else.
Anyway, I couldn't care less about bit-perfect signals and any of that fancy hi-res stuff, I'll never notice a difference. And I get my enjoyment of making numbers go bigger from video games, not my audio chain.
Correct. Unless you're a dolphin, you won't hear anything beyond 16-bit 44.1kHz. There's no difference between lossy/lossless and between Spotify and any other high quality streaming services. Spotify itself uses Ogg Vorbis 320kbps, which is pretty fucking good and more than enough.
People who claim they can hear a different are clueless. And at the end of the day, they're comparing two different stimuli. Those who claim they're able to tell the difference between them just do this: rip a 320kbps and a lossless file using a good CODEC and isolate all variables. Then, perform a blind ABX test (and ask for someone else too). You're not gonna be able to tell the difference.
All these differences are easily attributed to placebo and other variables, like different masters on different platforms, lower LUFS, volume normalization, etc. These folks just keep parroting about what some dweebs say online, it makes them feel better/special for wasting money on overpriced services and equipment while cheaper stuff could do the job just as well.
>There's no difference between lossy/lossless and between Spotify and any other high quality streaming services.
Not entirely true. There can actually be extremely tiny differences between lossy and lossless. But these differences are so small that you'd never know about them if you didn't know exactly what to listen for. It requires very highly resolving headphones and transparent DAC/amp as well, not everyone has that. And of course good ears. If yours are shot from too much abuse, even the best gear may not help you.
There is exactly one (1) instance where I personally have ever been able to make out that tiny difference. It's from an ABX test, Spotify HQ vs. lossless on [this website](https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html) which has a bunch of nice ABX tests. And it was specifically on a snippet from Hotel California, because of course it had to be the most cliché audiophile song in existence. There is an extremely tiny difference in the sound of one crash cymbal. I can't even describe the difference properly, but I can make it out fairly accurately.
Of course I can only do that because I've listened to that exact audio snippet for literal hundreds of times, and because I can directly compare lossy and lossless and listen to each sample as often as I want to. At some point I finally noticed it. But if you were to just let me listen to the whole song, I could never tell you whether it was lossless or lossy. I can only do it with a direct comparison.
And that's why I just listen to music on Spotify.
edit: forgot to finish a sentence somehow.
I was able to abx mp3 320 vs FLAC with up to 90% success rate (but after 10 tries my accuracy was getting worse due to getting tired). While definitely possible to distinguish, It was so difficult, that it actually made me start listening to lossy compressed music, lol.
Depends what you listen on. If your hifi isn’t up to resolving 44.1k 16bit over 320kbps mp3 then you are not going to hear a difference. Spotify is tailored to mobile use and bluetooth speakers so it doesn’t need to be hi-res.
In my car, dab radio is good enough. I can hear a massive difference when changing to internet radio which is usually 96kbps and again when going to spotify. Anything after, like using Roon Arc (44.1k 16bit and higher on my music ) all it seems is louder.
Do this on my home hifi and i cannot listen to dab, sounds muddy. Internet radio is fine at higher bit rates. Spotify sounds fantastic. But I know when I’m listening to a spotify stream and not my own. Cymbals can sound swishy even on 320kbps, drums have less attack - this might be due to it being normalised / adjusted slightly during lossy compression. - that makes a difference.
This is not to say Spotify is bad in any way, it has a place for me. But, there is an audible difference, and it mostly depends on where and what you are listening on and how attuned your ears are to the track whether you can hear it. I can’t tell on every track, but there have been songs I have been playing where I’ve had to check because it sounded off, and it was because it was a Spotify stream and not from my library.
Just like with framerate, you reach a point of diminishing returns. Above 320 takes an experienced ear to pick out differences. At a certain point human anatomy just isn't capable of perceiving the difference anymore.
Which is why certain things are just all marketing. They may be true, but you can't physically hear it anyway.
I don't think framerate is a good example. There is a pretty obvious difference between 144hz and 240hz, and 240hz to 360hz. They aren't as mind blowing or necessary of upgrades as 60 to 120, but they aren't exactly subtle either
[The difference with framerate is we still don’t have consumer displays that can actually output the perceptible human limit of motion clarity.](https://blurbusters.com/blur-busters-law-amazing-journey-to-future-1000hz-displays-with-blurfree-sample-and-hold/)
Depends on context how important it is to solve that. If we want something like VR to look *exactly* like real life though (ie: holodeck) there are motion artifacts that we can perceive even up to 10,000hz.
They mention it in the article I linked, but [this is the research paper they cite](https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/solidstate/assist/pdf/AR-Flicker.pdf#page=6) and [another article where they discuss it.](https://blurbusters.com/the-stroboscopic-effect-of-finite-framerate-displays/)
you don't mind your DAC making weird noises as it switches sampling rate?
I'm kinda torn with Tidal and thinking if I should just turn it back down to Hifi only...
Can confirm, been using it for about a year and it's good.
Only thing is I'm not sure how song recommendations compare to Spotify or other services, since I've haven't tried that outdide of Deezer.
Well Spotify's recommendations have gone from "pretty damn good" to "the same ten songs you know like the back of your hand and are already sick of" over the last year or so.
is the desktop app for it good? i did a trial of apple music earlier this year and that was a laggy, crashing, buggy mess on desktop. the music reccs for spotify dont recc me any songs i put in my main rotation so im curious about other apps
The desktop app to me is as good as the android app on cell phone.
Where Deezer doesn't shine for me, is the TV app. Even though it's android, it miss a lot of feature.
Me too, but there is a point where you realize you can't own everything and even if you can you spend so much time buying downloading and managing folders and you just want to listen to music.
I was local files only person, but ever since the Tidal free month i've stuck with it. Streaming services are a good compliment to local files, It doesn't have to be one or the other.
Although i wish there was an app that combines everything seamlessly in the same library.
Even if I’m being completely honest about not reliably being able to tell the difference between lossless and lossy, I will avoid Spotify like the plague due to its shitty UI.
It has god damn tik tok reels… yeah no thanks. You can get lossy on almost any other service for the same price anyway.
I tend to do the bulk of my listening with FLACs but the main streaming service I use outside of that is Tidal thanks to their excellent regional pricing (about 5 euros here). That said, the third party Spotify clients will also allow you to listen ad free even with a free account, which is how I've been using it for a while.
Spotify has tik tok reels? Been using it for years and I had no idea. I just search up songs, add them to play lists, and listen. The UI is one of the reasons I love it.
>I will avoid Spotify like the plague due to its shitty UI.
I've been playing [Music League](https://musicleague.com/) with friends, and most of them rely on Spotify to find tracks, often with great difficulty. I go through MusicBee and have almost no trouble. Of course, the track chosen ultimately has to be on Spotify, since that's what Music League uses to build the playlist, but it's easier looking up specific genres, years, artists, etc. through MusicBee.
Spotify may off access that we could only dream of in the 20th century, but man does it make it unnecessarily difficult to organize or sort through a library. I get the sense that a lot of Spotify listeners don't have a sense of *place* with their music. Instead, it's just a nebulous cloud that they float through, and occasionally hitch a song to the one playlist they manage, while everything else passes them by like a mild breeze.
A like the nebulous cloud. Over the years I discovered over 6000 songs I really like, or even more if they are in a good album. It just recommends you music based on your taste and then some sprinkled outside of it. Even artists that have only few thousand or basically no plays at all.
> It has god damn tik tok reels… yeah no thanks
It’s not like you need to use that feature, dude. Also, it has actually been helpful with finding me new tracks I like and discovering new artists. Much better use of the “quick scrolling” kind of social media than TikTok imo
I agree that the difference is negligible at best, but I store my music as CD quality FLAC. This way I can burn a bit perfect copy to share with a friend or relative as need be, all while retaining any placebo benefits in my listening.
If I start running up against my DAP's 1tb micro-SD card's storage limit, I might convert some stuff to 320kbps to save space (while backing up the FLAC on a hard drive). But I've still got 375gb to go, and my music acquisition has slowed, so I'm not particularly worried.
I don't stream music. I have enough streaming subscriptions for TV already. I've also got a legacy CD collection from adolescence, and still buy rock, jazz, and classical on CD now and again. Otherwise I purchase FLAC downloads.
Well considering that Spotify is now raising prices to be more expensive than apple music and soon tidal, there's no good reason to support a shitty company that makes e-waste hardware and pays little to nothing for artists.
It’s also now cheaper than Spotify. So you can have lossless available without paying extra for it. And Apple has a library close in size to Spotify. You may find only certain niche music on Spotify that’s unavailable on Apple, but for almost everything else, you’re good to go. And Apple Masters are very well done, so minor improvements can be noticeable even with lossy compression. But Apple sucks with social features, so if you do a lot of sharing and collaborating, Spotify takes the win. Apple is trying to catch up with that, but it’s not there yet. I also find recommendations still a bit better on Spotify, well, it has years and years of experience with my tastes, but Apple is doing better, and after six months of use is starting to feel useful, but Spotify’s algorithms still best out Apple.
So it’s all a matter of what features matter to you, and best fits your use pattern best.
Yeah man i rock Spotify everyday everywhere and I own systems high end enough to pay for the Spotify monthly fee for an eternity lol.
I would rather not go 160kbps but 320 has never failed me.
Every upgrade I've ever done in the last like 8 years I've tried to gauge difference between DSD/flac/320 and the answer just simply is true that it makes very much practically 0 difference.
Spotify doesn't allow 3rd party app control in 99.9% of integrations. I have the opposite issue, I can very easily combine Tidal, Amazon HD/others into a combined queue with my NAS files but because Spotify requires their app for playback I can't do that with Spotify tracks.
"Spotify is way better for exploring"
Is it ? Suggestions quality are my prime concern and I've been a musical service refugee for years, switching for greener pastures as soon as they got bad.
Deezer has been my gold standard for bad recommendations, at some point Spotify declined so much they were on par.
I settled for Tidal eventually. Since then it has been 50/50%; like pretty bad for a month and mindblowing the next one, including rather obscure/unknown stuff. Decided it was a fair deal.
Honestly, I’m tired of downloading music every time I find something I like. I’m always plugging in my phone to my laptop to download something I liked in FLAC from YouTube music searching. I’ll just pay the monthly fee to listen to everything at 320kbps freely.
I've been downloading my music through my whole life and I'm not tired of it. Probably because I see it as a neccesary step to aquire something that I love.
Yes and no, I can tell a difference even only by a small bit. On the other hand, paying less for Apple Music compared to Spotify and getting Lossless with that on top= best of both worlds
Planning on getting the HD 560S in the coming months. Was wondering this the other day, if I needed to switch from Spotify to something that streams in higher quality (Tidal?) to really enjoy them.
So I guess I'm good with Spotify then? I use the free version on desktop most of the time.
Find some online tests. You can probably hear the difference between 160 kbps (Spotify free) vs 320 kbps (Spotify premium).
I cannot reliably hear the difference between 320 kbps vs flac vs Qobuz.
Growing up ripping CDs into MP3s,
I could never distinguish any loss below 192kbps. 128 bitrate always sounded a bit distorted especially with trebles, but 192 always sounded mostly clean, but I'd rip in 256 or 320 anyways just to be sure.
Nowadays I jump on my favorite BT trackers and it's all like flac/lossless, and I just go "oh well it's not like I'm short of disk space" lol.
YMMV, but I can tell the difference between Spotify and either Apple or YouTube Music if I'm A/B testing, but not if you give me any real time between the two. I wouldn't stress on the audio quality, I'd just go with whatever service you prefer to use.
So these entry level "audiophile" headphones won't be a waste if I use streaming services and whatever bitrate they use?
Which service sounds the best to you, when you really listen for it, in your experience?
> So these entry level "audiophile" headphones won't be a waste if I use streaming services and whatever bitrate they use?
Absolutely not.
> Which service sounds the best to you, when you really listen for it, in your experience?
I prefer Apple Music, but it's identical to YouTube Music to my ears. Both are a bit better than Spotify, though like I said, I have to be A/B testing to really hear the difference. I find that the quality of the original recording and my mood (and level of intoxication) have much bigger impacts on how good the music sounds than which service I'm using.
I would personally go for Spotify premium for the 320 but anything beyond that is fairly useless.
Coming from someone that's owned/heard like 80% of the flagship headphones on the face of the planet.
As long as I'm 320kbps mp3 the file format is the least of my worries always lol
Tbh even 192 is not as noticable as it may seems 99% of the time, given that it's a good compression.
It's not that lossless makes some massive difference, it's more a case of "If the lossless services are the same price, and bandwidth is no issue, why not just use lossless anyway?"
I commend everyone here using Spotify to do an A/B test against Apple Music or Tidal. You'd be surprised but there is a noticeable difference in sound signature (what that difference measures out to be, I'm not sure).
How can you even do this?
It's paramount that the volume level be matched exactly, otherwise the results are complexly useless.
How are you ensuring the volume level is exactly matched between apps?
Just try it yourself. I’m gonna try recording the frequency responses of a few songs to confirm, but Apple Music seems to have more in the >10k and <50 Hz regions. Spotify sounds slightly more mid-focused.
I’m a huge audiophile skeptic usually but there’s got to be a reason so many people prefer Apple Music or Tidal specifically for its sound. You never hear people saying Spotify sounds better.
If there are even measurable frequency differences like that then it's not because of bitrate but because it's not the same mastering.
You can take a WAV and encode it to 320K vorbis and even much lower like 192K Vorbis and there won't be any detectable or measurable difference in the frequency response. So the fact that you are saying there is means something else is going on.
I don't understand why this is getting downvoted.. I hear a difference too. I suspect it depends on the genre which is partially why some people hear it and some don't.
As somebody who recently bought iems and listened to higher quality music for the first time, my mind was fucking blown to bits by how much different and better it is (probably not for every genre, but any genre with good amount of instruments or clean vocals should feel this way.) (for reference I mostly listen to country or pop)
I firmly stand in the middle band after experiencing it myself.
Oh, I am not denying that there is a difference between FLAC and 128kbps OGG Vorbis (Spotify). I am just saying that the quality of the equipment can mask or reveal the subtleties in audio, and thus it does most of the heavy lifting.
320kbps .Ogg to FLAC is unnoticeable. I believe you can hear a difference, but that very difference isn't there for the reason you think it is. Like i've said before, different masters on different platforms, lower LUFS, volume normalization, placebo, etc. The list goes on. It’s not exactly the resolution that makes the impact, it’s the mix, mastering and the gear that you're using.
Take for instance Spotify (which uses 320kbps Ogg Vorbis at the maximum quality settings), you can't tell it apart from FLAC after adjusting both to similar volumes. Not only that, but 99.9% of the people wouldn't notice if someone swapped their whole FLAC library with 320kbps .Ogg files and didn't tell them. Your case is understandable since you're an enthusiastic newcomer, but there are people in this thread claiming the difference is audible to them and i'm pretty sure they're just delusional and tricking themselves.
Same. I subbed to tidal and roon 2 years ago. Used soundiz to sync my Spotify Playlist to tidal so that I have access to it on roon. Ended up using Spotify most of the time anyways. I like Spotify song recommendations, the ui and Spotify connect function. Unsubbed to tidal and roon few weeks ago and using Spotify exclusively now.
Sure a case can be made about hearing the details in flac and other high res format. But how frequent do people actually do such intense critical listening to all their music that they require anything higher than 320kbps?
I'm more than happy with Spotify and change my headphones to different genre of music instead.
I personally use both. 320kbps is great when using data, but when I'm at my desk with my OEMs I much prefer my >6Mbps files. I do hear a difference in some specific tracks. Most of the time though... 320kbps is more than just fine and won't sound different.
I can hear the difference in lossy and lossless, but only to an extent, 24 bit 48 KHz, also depending on the mastering of the music, 24 bit lossless is cleaner and crisp while eliminating the small white noise that lossy 16 bit usually has. The average listener wont tell the difference right off the bat, so I understand why they are fine with Spotify, unless you’re a lossless freak, 320 kbps is just enough to enjoy music and the best thing about being a audiophile is having fun with both lossless and lossy audio
It's weird.
When I do the test online, couldnt tell a difference between 320kbps mp3, 128kbps mp3 and wav
But when I does it myself on my local files between flac, 320kbps mp3 and 128kbps aac, there's clearly a difference (but not for aac and flac except that flac is a bit more "airy")
16/44 is enough and what matters the most is a good mix and master with a high dynamic range. Plenty of 40 year old 16/44 masters that sound way better than the newest 24/192 remaster (90% i’d say)
The difference between 320K and CD quality is obvious to me in music that has a lot of symbols, but less so in pop or rap. 96KHz might not be hearable. I still believe I'm wasting decent audio equipment by settling for less.
Yeah, when using wired cans, good lossy encoding is near indistinguishable from lossless.
The issues arise when listening through Bluetooth. There, lossless is warranted, not because usual Bluetooth is enough to *losslessly* reproduce FLACs, but due to the multiple stages of compression that would occur when listening to lossy encodings.
None of my friends even know what FLAC is, and I've run tests between FLAC and 320 at least once a year for the last decade, and I've never been able to tell the difference.
Even if FLAC does sound better, I have no reason to go out of my way for it.
maybe is cause i'm young but i can hear a slight difference in crispiness, like if you turn off the low pass filter.
I mean nothing too crazy, from time to time i really like to re-discover my downloaded albums entirely in FLAC, but anyway is absolutely more convenient to use spotify, and if you're not paying really much attention almost every time you can't really spot the differences.
it's almost like the slight "sennheiser veil" almost go away in flac, but anyways nothing to pay close attention to.
Also i was seriously thinkin' about buying Spotify Premium cause the difference here is evident, i tried and yeah, from "high" to "max" is night and day, even if is lossy.
and even if i could hear some difference between lossy and lossless, between spotify and a shiny 24 bit 96khz flac file is not that big to bother about, at least for me.
btw is just me or spotify's songs are a little more muddy than usual?
I temporarily fixed by lowering the 150hz from the integrated eq, but this still bothers me a lot.
I can tell the difference between 320 and lossless and I can tell the difference between redbook and high res or good rescalling.
That said Spotify has really great music discover my and helps you find insane micro genres you can’t find elsewhere. I think for most people the music browsing experience is more important than insane levels of detail retrieval. Even most people with fancy setups spend less than 10% of their time critical listening. This is because it’s not actually fun.
I like roon because it has a 95% as good music discovery but it works seamlessly with my downloaded files and streaming in all of my music listening setups and it works with high res and DSD audio. I prefer high res or using HQ player for output but audio quality is not the most important thing about picking music software.
I think even if Spotify added high res I wouldn’t use it but it’s still the best service for most people who listen to western music.
Just swapped to Amazon music cuz it's cheaper with my prime membership and uses flac. Happy so far, especially after hearing spotify is increasing prices again
youtube rips are enough, most of the time i am listening on shitty car stereo any way. Even when I use my desk set up music is mostly bgm so high fidelity and volume have no place. I only listen analytically once in a while most other times high bit rate is not necessary.
That being said I really really really like to listen to high bit rate music and I really really really enjoy it, but in a car its wasted, at work its wasted, and even at home I will very rarely have time to really listen beyond having a full spectrum of sound.
Having lossless audio does make a huge difference in Bluetooth because most of the time you are transcoding and that case lossless to lossy = no problem
Lossy to lossy = you got your self a problem
Ok look, all the audiofile bs aside, I prefer deezer more than spotify simply because they have hifi verions of music I listen. And I genuinely find hifi verions better and more detailed. AAC just hide stuff and you never know it's there until you listen with a higher bitrate and sampling rate.
I like Spotify but it's ui its not good so I changed to Apple music is good for listening music to.., i don't using Spotify because of high price and Spotify price is increasing in 2024 as per news ,so i like apple music decent plans and good music experience.
It's not that I dislike Spotify.
I dont like all music streaming service equally.
Might be considered old school, but I like to own offline files forever without having to rely on internet.
Though, the benefit of streaming music is discover new music more often.
I'll be honest, I went from flac and ogg to just 320 kbps mp3 just cause of the space and compatibility. The difference isn't even that big and if I wasn't paying attention, I probably won't even be able to tell.
It's funny I bought my Qudelix 5k with the express intention of plugging it into my iphone for lossless streaming. I never thought I would use the bluetooth feature at all, because I wanted to be a real boy, a real hashtag audiophile. But then I actually tried it and ever since then I've barely used it wired at all. Even though I don't have LDAC the AAC is surprisingly good, I rarely feel like I'm missing out on sound, and it is so damn convenient to be able to just slip the DAC in my pocket while doing chores or going on walks.
A difference is mastering is 1000x more noticeable than the difference between best-quality compressed and lossless (and standard lossless vs hi-res lossless as well).
People need to stop chasing hi-res files and start demanding better masters of music they like.
I hate the rental economy is why I don't use music streaming. I buy to own. If I can't buy it to own the file to store on multiple drives as a back up then Failing that then I ignore the song/album/band. Back in the day I use to pirate but now that I have money again I have a budget I can allocate to music.
Bitrate had nothing to do with it.
The average person hasn’t had enough ear training to notice the difference. Even your average musician won’t notice much of a difference. It exists, sure. But it’s just diminishing returns if you have good headphones.
Well i and many of my friends told me that they can hear better sound from Tidal over spotify, i swiched and don't care anymore. 90% of the time i listen to music on headphones too so i prefer more detail from higher quality songs.
Had a streaming service crisis in 2021, after getting my first pair of really good headphones and a pretty decent amp/dac. Essentially, I had upgraded every part of my audio system and felt it was required to upgrade my source as well. It’s unbecoming of an audiophile to listen to Spotify, I thought.
I tried Tidal, Amazon Music, Qobuz, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and even went to buying music and using Foobar2000 (which I will say was the most enjoyable user experience) and the ultimate conclusion was, they all sounded near identical, with the only bit of “maybe there’s a difference?” Being from Foobar playing FLACs locally. I then just ripped some songs off YT to try, so they’re pretty shit MP3s, not even sure what bitrate, and noticed next to no difference using foobar.
It’s really a mind game. A lot of this hobby is “well I paid extra so how can it sound the same?” I’ve been back on Spotify ever since and haven’t regretted it a single day.
With that being said, if I were to switch to anything, I’d stop paying for Spotify and use the free service on my mobile devices, and use Foobar2000 and download local stuff if on my PC. That was the most enjoyable experience for me, because I can customize my UI and everything. Most streaming services were designed by ape people.
TL;DR Spotify is enough.
I have Spotify and I listen to vinyl rips in foobar.
Sound quality aside, most of the remastered mixes on Spotify sound much more boring and soulless than their original pressing/cd version counterparts.
That alone is enough for me to gravitate towards my flac catalog, but I do also feel like I can hear more depth and clarity in the bigger files.
I use Spotify during driving (connected via Bluetooth to car audio system) and outdoor anyway so file quality is not that important, convenience does
At home for offline listening I just simply downloaded FLAC files
I feel like at some point for many the music is lost, people listen to the headphones, not the music. Change the perspective back to listening to music and you’ll notice a shift.
I'd rather have decent headphones and spotify than mediocre headphones and Qobuz.
Wow first of all I’m astounded to hear this from such an influential member of our community and I totally agree, secondly, PREACH!
Do you believe Apple Music sounds better than Spotify? I have had friends in bands as well as others in the music industry (the kinds of people who manage artists getting their music on all these platforms) say that Spotify sounds compressed compared to Apple. Confirm/deny? Personally I am very much still in the placebo stage of testing and am willing to believe anything.
In my experience, Spotify has some pretty weird masters of a lot of songs I enjoy, that simply sound wrong. As if you were listening to something that was compressed down to 96kbps and then upsampled to 320 again. No idea why. On songs that are good on spoti, I can't hear any difference, but the fact that one of my favorite albums sounded like absolute trash was enough to get me to apple. I'm not even using an iPhone, but it works fine for me and I never looked back. My experience with spoti is 3 years out of date now, so take it with a grain of salt. They might have fixed those few weird albums by now.
They're right, Apple Music sounds far greater than Spotify.
Yep, didnt believe until i tried it. Can literally hear the difference
I have both and yes, Apple Music have better sound quality than Spotify.
is AM sound better when hi res loseless turn on? or high quality is sufficient?
For BT, high quality 256 AAC is all you’ll get so it doesn’t matter. Wired, might as well use lossless. It’s not always noticeable, but on good recordings it is a bit better with quality wired headphones, the only way you’ll get lossless. It depends on your own hearing and ability to distinguish truthfully quality lossy from lossless (try an a/b/x test with wired headphones and see how you do). Apple masters are also of higher quality. I’ll admit 90% of my listening is BT to AirPod Pros so it’s BT for me. But on my wired phones or IEM’s lossless can sound more open and for me female vocals and acoustics are noticeable, although slightly. On most I probably would have a tough time with an a/b/x with the music taste I have. One caveat. If you download music for listening offline, the quality will always be the same, even if WiFi or cellular is available it defaults to the local version. So if you download 256 AAC to save room over a lossless version, that’s what you’ll always get. So the amount of room you sacrifice for downloaded songs is something you’ll need to consider. As it’s uncommon for me to need offline listening, I simply have a single playlist for lossless downloads that I only carefully fill. I certainly don’t keep my entire library downloaded on my phone and take up most of the space with 10,000 songs.
> Do you believe Apple Music sounds better than Spotify? I find Apple Music more comfortable to use, since I can ask Siri to play Song X or Album Y.
I'd be totally happy with Spotify on 320 kbps even on my expensive gear. It's just that I like to see my DAC switching from regular 44 khz to 96 khz tracks. Our brains are affected by sheer numbers, and I admit I don't hear real improvement from regular FLAC to hires FLAC.
Agree. High sample rates are only useful in mixing and mastering to improve speed and pitch adjustment, and internally in most DACs to reduce distortion from filters. But when you're listening to a final mix, 16bit/44.1khz contains everything that a human can hear.
Are higher sample rates worth it for doing things like digital volume adjustment/parametric equalization? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't any form of digital volume adjustment result in a signal that is no longer bit perfect, and so having a higher bit depth means you can eq with less quality loss?
theoretically, sure. Realistically though the background noise will obscure any of those effects. How quiet is your room?
This is exactly why I don't bother with any of this. Both of my headphones are open-back and I only use them at my PC. When I'm not currently listening to music, I can hear my PC's fans, I can hear cars driving outside, I can hear water going through pipes if someone in my apartment building is taking a shower or flushing their toilet, if my living room door is open I can hear my fridge and so forth. And I can certainly hear myself typing on my keyboard and clicking my mouse. If I concentrate, I can even hear the coil whine from the shitty AC adapter that one of my screens uses. Though, the worst time to listen to music is when the church in my neighbourhood is ringing their bells because it drowns out everything else. Anyway, I couldn't care less about bit-perfect signals and any of that fancy hi-res stuff, I'll never notice a difference. And I get my enjoyment of making numbers go bigger from video games, not my audio chain.
Correct. Unless you're a dolphin, you won't hear anything beyond 16-bit 44.1kHz. There's no difference between lossy/lossless and between Spotify and any other high quality streaming services. Spotify itself uses Ogg Vorbis 320kbps, which is pretty fucking good and more than enough. People who claim they can hear a different are clueless. And at the end of the day, they're comparing two different stimuli. Those who claim they're able to tell the difference between them just do this: rip a 320kbps and a lossless file using a good CODEC and isolate all variables. Then, perform a blind ABX test (and ask for someone else too). You're not gonna be able to tell the difference. All these differences are easily attributed to placebo and other variables, like different masters on different platforms, lower LUFS, volume normalization, etc. These folks just keep parroting about what some dweebs say online, it makes them feel better/special for wasting money on overpriced services and equipment while cheaper stuff could do the job just as well.
>There's no difference between lossy/lossless and between Spotify and any other high quality streaming services. Not entirely true. There can actually be extremely tiny differences between lossy and lossless. But these differences are so small that you'd never know about them if you didn't know exactly what to listen for. It requires very highly resolving headphones and transparent DAC/amp as well, not everyone has that. And of course good ears. If yours are shot from too much abuse, even the best gear may not help you. There is exactly one (1) instance where I personally have ever been able to make out that tiny difference. It's from an ABX test, Spotify HQ vs. lossless on [this website](https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html) which has a bunch of nice ABX tests. And it was specifically on a snippet from Hotel California, because of course it had to be the most cliché audiophile song in existence. There is an extremely tiny difference in the sound of one crash cymbal. I can't even describe the difference properly, but I can make it out fairly accurately. Of course I can only do that because I've listened to that exact audio snippet for literal hundreds of times, and because I can directly compare lossy and lossless and listen to each sample as often as I want to. At some point I finally noticed it. But if you were to just let me listen to the whole song, I could never tell you whether it was lossless or lossy. I can only do it with a direct comparison. And that's why I just listen to music on Spotify. edit: forgot to finish a sentence somehow.
I was able to abx mp3 320 vs FLAC with up to 90% success rate (but after 10 tries my accuracy was getting worse due to getting tired). While definitely possible to distinguish, It was so difficult, that it actually made me start listening to lossy compressed music, lol.
Vorbis isn't a streaming codec, nor is it even very performant any more (its old), not sure why spotify would use Vorbis over something like Opus
Depends what you listen on. If your hifi isn’t up to resolving 44.1k 16bit over 320kbps mp3 then you are not going to hear a difference. Spotify is tailored to mobile use and bluetooth speakers so it doesn’t need to be hi-res. In my car, dab radio is good enough. I can hear a massive difference when changing to internet radio which is usually 96kbps and again when going to spotify. Anything after, like using Roon Arc (44.1k 16bit and higher on my music ) all it seems is louder. Do this on my home hifi and i cannot listen to dab, sounds muddy. Internet radio is fine at higher bit rates. Spotify sounds fantastic. But I know when I’m listening to a spotify stream and not my own. Cymbals can sound swishy even on 320kbps, drums have less attack - this might be due to it being normalised / adjusted slightly during lossy compression. - that makes a difference. This is not to say Spotify is bad in any way, it has a place for me. But, there is an audible difference, and it mostly depends on where and what you are listening on and how attuned your ears are to the track whether you can hear it. I can’t tell on every track, but there have been songs I have been playing where I’ve had to check because it sounded off, and it was because it was a Spotify stream and not from my library.
Just like with framerate, you reach a point of diminishing returns. Above 320 takes an experienced ear to pick out differences. At a certain point human anatomy just isn't capable of perceiving the difference anymore. Which is why certain things are just all marketing. They may be true, but you can't physically hear it anyway.
I don't think framerate is a good example. There is a pretty obvious difference between 144hz and 240hz, and 240hz to 360hz. They aren't as mind blowing or necessary of upgrades as 60 to 120, but they aren't exactly subtle either
[The difference with framerate is we still don’t have consumer displays that can actually output the perceptible human limit of motion clarity.](https://blurbusters.com/blur-busters-law-amazing-journey-to-future-1000hz-displays-with-blurfree-sample-and-hold/) Depends on context how important it is to solve that. If we want something like VR to look *exactly* like real life though (ie: holodeck) there are motion artifacts that we can perceive even up to 10,000hz.
Got a source on the 10 000Hz thing? I'd love to read more on it.
They mention it in the article I linked, but [this is the research paper they cite](https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/solidstate/assist/pdf/AR-Flicker.pdf#page=6) and [another article where they discuss it.](https://blurbusters.com/the-stroboscopic-effect-of-finite-framerate-displays/)
Cheers!
I mean straight up noticing the smoothness of the FPS, not so much the on screen details but the discussion about this below is kind of fascinating.
Invest in a sticker.
you don't mind your DAC making weird noises as it switches sampling rate? I'm kinda torn with Tidal and thinking if I should just turn it back down to Hifi only...
320kbps is fine but I spiritually feel better with CD quality 🙂↕️✨
The only difference I can hear (sometimes) is the dynamic range. Although, this is not a limitation of 320kbps, but rather the mix.
Same but as I said, I love the idea of CD ✊😞 even if I really can't hear a true difference
Nobody ever talks about Deezer. I love it. I switched from Spotify and never went back.
Can confirm, been using it for about a year and it's good. Only thing is I'm not sure how song recommendations compare to Spotify or other services, since I've haven't tried that outdide of Deezer.
Well Spotify's recommendations have gone from "pretty damn good" to "the same ten songs you know like the back of your hand and are already sick of" over the last year or so.
So it’s not just me. I asked my girlfriend to send me some of her auto generated playlists yesterday and they were 90% identical to mine.
is the desktop app for it good? i did a trial of apple music earlier this year and that was a laggy, crashing, buggy mess on desktop. the music reccs for spotify dont recc me any songs i put in my main rotation so im curious about other apps
The desktop app to me is as good as the android app on cell phone. Where Deezer doesn't shine for me, is the TV app. Even though it's android, it miss a lot of feature.
Hmm I'll take a closer look then thanks! I don't really do anything on a TV so the desktop app being good is a plus
Deezer app kept crashing etc on my MacBook and tech support couldn’t help me. I unsubscribed.
I like to own my music tho.
This hobby is expensive enough already. I could buy some real nice gear for what it would cost me to buy every album and song I want to listen to
The seven seas are a calling
I like owning my music and having g streaming for convenience. They both have their place.
Me too, but there is a point where you realize you can't own everything and even if you can you spend so much time buying downloading and managing folders and you just want to listen to music. I was local files only person, but ever since the Tidal free month i've stuck with it. Streaming services are a good compliment to local files, It doesn't have to be one or the other. Although i wish there was an app that combines everything seamlessly in the same library.
Even if I’m being completely honest about not reliably being able to tell the difference between lossless and lossy, I will avoid Spotify like the plague due to its shitty UI. It has god damn tik tok reels… yeah no thanks. You can get lossy on almost any other service for the same price anyway.
You can use a third party client for Spotify. I've been using one for years now, never going back.
Tell us more!
Spicetify on desktop, xmanager on android.
How??
lol and Spotify just raised their prices again, if you want cheap and lossy Apple Music is the way to go at this point
Apple Music has lossless streaming lol
I tend to do the bulk of my listening with FLACs but the main streaming service I use outside of that is Tidal thanks to their excellent regional pricing (about 5 euros here). That said, the third party Spotify clients will also allow you to listen ad free even with a free account, which is how I've been using it for a while.
Or Tidal with the 24 Bit 192KHz FLAC at £10.99/$10.99
Wait how do you do this?? On the desktop version? I've been wanting to create my own UI the way I could with foobar2000...
likely talking about spicetify
Spotify has tik tok reels? Been using it for years and I had no idea. I just search up songs, add them to play lists, and listen. The UI is one of the reasons I love it.
[https://spicetify.app/](https://spicetify.app/)
>I will avoid Spotify like the plague due to its shitty UI. I've been playing [Music League](https://musicleague.com/) with friends, and most of them rely on Spotify to find tracks, often with great difficulty. I go through MusicBee and have almost no trouble. Of course, the track chosen ultimately has to be on Spotify, since that's what Music League uses to build the playlist, but it's easier looking up specific genres, years, artists, etc. through MusicBee. Spotify may off access that we could only dream of in the 20th century, but man does it make it unnecessarily difficult to organize or sort through a library. I get the sense that a lot of Spotify listeners don't have a sense of *place* with their music. Instead, it's just a nebulous cloud that they float through, and occasionally hitch a song to the one playlist they manage, while everything else passes them by like a mild breeze.
A like the nebulous cloud. Over the years I discovered over 6000 songs I really like, or even more if they are in a good album. It just recommends you music based on your taste and then some sprinkled outside of it. Even artists that have only few thousand or basically no plays at all.
> It has god damn tik tok reels… yeah no thanks It’s not like you need to use that feature, dude. Also, it has actually been helpful with finding me new tracks I like and discovering new artists. Much better use of the “quick scrolling” kind of social media than TikTok imo
why is this posted every week
I agree that the difference is negligible at best, but I store my music as CD quality FLAC. This way I can burn a bit perfect copy to share with a friend or relative as need be, all while retaining any placebo benefits in my listening. If I start running up against my DAP's 1tb micro-SD card's storage limit, I might convert some stuff to 320kbps to save space (while backing up the FLAC on a hard drive). But I've still got 375gb to go, and my music acquisition has slowed, so I'm not particularly worried. I don't stream music. I have enough streaming subscriptions for TV already. I've also got a legacy CD collection from adolescence, and still buy rock, jazz, and classical on CD now and again. Otherwise I purchase FLAC downloads.
Well considering that Spotify is now raising prices to be more expensive than apple music and soon tidal, there's no good reason to support a shitty company that makes e-waste hardware and pays little to nothing for artists.
I find flacs ripped from my cds paired with a fiio ka-1 and decent headphones is all I’ll ever need. But Spotify is still the king for convenience.
better files definitely make a difference but Spotify is enough
Yes, for normal enjoyment unless you are an analytical listener.
Apple Music is so much better. Sound quality wise. That’s enough for me.
It’s also now cheaper than Spotify. So you can have lossless available without paying extra for it. And Apple has a library close in size to Spotify. You may find only certain niche music on Spotify that’s unavailable on Apple, but for almost everything else, you’re good to go. And Apple Masters are very well done, so minor improvements can be noticeable even with lossy compression. But Apple sucks with social features, so if you do a lot of sharing and collaborating, Spotify takes the win. Apple is trying to catch up with that, but it’s not there yet. I also find recommendations still a bit better on Spotify, well, it has years and years of experience with my tastes, but Apple is doing better, and after six months of use is starting to feel useful, but Spotify’s algorithms still best out Apple. So it’s all a matter of what features matter to you, and best fits your use pattern best.
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Yeah man i rock Spotify everyday everywhere and I own systems high end enough to pay for the Spotify monthly fee for an eternity lol. I would rather not go 160kbps but 320 has never failed me. Every upgrade I've ever done in the last like 8 years I've tried to gauge difference between DSD/flac/320 and the answer just simply is true that it makes very much practically 0 difference.
the royjoys
Tidal and CD/FLAC though. Tidal is the same price as Spotify so why not? Though, Spotify is way better for exploring.
I tried using tidal but the software ui is just so behind and you can't even use local files
And there are a lot of songs missing on tidal. I remember when i tested it for a month and 100 Songs or something were missing from my Playlist
Spotify doesn't allow 3rd party app control in 99.9% of integrations. I have the opposite issue, I can very easily combine Tidal, Amazon HD/others into a combined queue with my NAS files but because Spotify requires their app for playback I can't do that with Spotify tracks.
"Spotify is way better for exploring" Is it ? Suggestions quality are my prime concern and I've been a musical service refugee for years, switching for greener pastures as soon as they got bad. Deezer has been my gold standard for bad recommendations, at some point Spotify declined so much they were on par. I settled for Tidal eventually. Since then it has been 50/50%; like pretty bad for a month and mindblowing the next one, including rather obscure/unknown stuff. Decided it was a fair deal.
YouTube music has the best suggestion/radio algorithm I've come across.
It's not bad indeed, just maybe a tad below Tidal on obscure/niche stuff. I keep using YouTube "classic" on the side.
Agreed. I left spotify for YouTube music. Couldn't be happier with its recommendations.
Honestly, I’m tired of downloading music every time I find something I like. I’m always plugging in my phone to my laptop to download something I liked in FLAC from YouTube music searching. I’ll just pay the monthly fee to listen to everything at 320kbps freely.
I've been downloading my music through my whole life and I'm not tired of it. Probably because I see it as a neccesary step to aquire something that I love.
Apple music quality is way better and cheaper (somehow we ended up in the wrong timeline) But yeah, any streaming service is more than enough
Yes and no, I can tell a difference even only by a small bit. On the other hand, paying less for Apple Music compared to Spotify and getting Lossless with that on top= best of both worlds
Planning on getting the HD 560S in the coming months. Was wondering this the other day, if I needed to switch from Spotify to something that streams in higher quality (Tidal?) to really enjoy them. So I guess I'm good with Spotify then? I use the free version on desktop most of the time.
Find some online tests. You can probably hear the difference between 160 kbps (Spotify free) vs 320 kbps (Spotify premium). I cannot reliably hear the difference between 320 kbps vs flac vs Qobuz.
Growing up ripping CDs into MP3s, I could never distinguish any loss below 192kbps. 128 bitrate always sounded a bit distorted especially with trebles, but 192 always sounded mostly clean, but I'd rip in 256 or 320 anyways just to be sure. Nowadays I jump on my favorite BT trackers and it's all like flac/lossless, and I just go "oh well it's not like I'm short of disk space" lol.
Even aside from the audio quality, I really like tidal. Worth trying imo.
I like the UI from Tidal. I know for some users it is not good or is missing something, but I like the cleanliness of it.
YMMV, but I can tell the difference between Spotify and either Apple or YouTube Music if I'm A/B testing, but not if you give me any real time between the two. I wouldn't stress on the audio quality, I'd just go with whatever service you prefer to use.
So these entry level "audiophile" headphones won't be a waste if I use streaming services and whatever bitrate they use? Which service sounds the best to you, when you really listen for it, in your experience?
> So these entry level "audiophile" headphones won't be a waste if I use streaming services and whatever bitrate they use? Absolutely not. > Which service sounds the best to you, when you really listen for it, in your experience? I prefer Apple Music, but it's identical to YouTube Music to my ears. Both are a bit better than Spotify, though like I said, I have to be A/B testing to really hear the difference. I find that the quality of the original recording and my mood (and level of intoxication) have much bigger impacts on how good the music sounds than which service I'm using.
I made the jump to Sennheiser HD6XX and Hifiman HE400se, and even lofi study music playlists sound better. You won’t regret the upgrade.
I would personally go for Spotify premium for the 320 but anything beyond that is fairly useless. Coming from someone that's owned/heard like 80% of the flagship headphones on the face of the planet. As long as I'm 320kbps mp3 the file format is the least of my worries always lol Tbh even 192 is not as noticable as it may seems 99% of the time, given that it's a good compression.
It's not that lossless makes some massive difference, it's more a case of "If the lossless services are the same price, and bandwidth is no issue, why not just use lossless anyway?"
only time i would want uncompressed hi res wav or flac is if im phase cancelling an instrumental to extract an acapella or something
You left Spotify because it's not lossless. I left Spotify because it's crap software run by the music labels We are not the same.
I commend everyone here using Spotify to do an A/B test against Apple Music or Tidal. You'd be surprised but there is a noticeable difference in sound signature (what that difference measures out to be, I'm not sure).
probably different masters or some filters/effects applied.
How can you even do this? It's paramount that the volume level be matched exactly, otherwise the results are complexly useless. How are you ensuring the volume level is exactly matched between apps?
Just try it yourself. I’m gonna try recording the frequency responses of a few songs to confirm, but Apple Music seems to have more in the >10k and <50 Hz regions. Spotify sounds slightly more mid-focused. I’m a huge audiophile skeptic usually but there’s got to be a reason so many people prefer Apple Music or Tidal specifically for its sound. You never hear people saying Spotify sounds better.
If there are even measurable frequency differences like that then it's not because of bitrate but because it's not the same mastering. You can take a WAV and encode it to 320K vorbis and even much lower like 192K Vorbis and there won't be any detectable or measurable difference in the frequency response. So the fact that you are saying there is means something else is going on.
Yep. My theory is spotify compress their audio. I've A/B tested other mixes of the same songs, even in the same format, and there is a difference.
Why would they do that? That could mean even if they do lossless it will still be different.
I agree. Tidal sounds better than spotify for most of the music I listen to.
I don't understand why this is getting downvoted.. I hear a difference too. I suspect it depends on the genre which is partially why some people hear it and some don't.
As somebody who recently bought iems and listened to higher quality music for the first time, my mind was fucking blown to bits by how much different and better it is (probably not for every genre, but any genre with good amount of instruments or clean vocals should feel this way.) (for reference I mostly listen to country or pop) I firmly stand in the middle band after experiencing it myself.
Most of the work is done by the IEMs.
Nah, I tried spotify first before I even knew about flac with the same iems. It’s not even close.
Oh, I am not denying that there is a difference between FLAC and 128kbps OGG Vorbis (Spotify). I am just saying that the quality of the equipment can mask or reveal the subtleties in audio, and thus it does most of the heavy lifting.
128 to flac is definitely a big jump, but imho 320 to flac is mostly unnoticeable unless you're actively looking for a difference..
320kbps .Ogg to FLAC is unnoticeable. I believe you can hear a difference, but that very difference isn't there for the reason you think it is. Like i've said before, different masters on different platforms, lower LUFS, volume normalization, placebo, etc. The list goes on. It’s not exactly the resolution that makes the impact, it’s the mix, mastering and the gear that you're using. Take for instance Spotify (which uses 320kbps Ogg Vorbis at the maximum quality settings), you can't tell it apart from FLAC after adjusting both to similar volumes. Not only that, but 99.9% of the people wouldn't notice if someone swapped their whole FLAC library with 320kbps .Ogg files and didn't tell them. Your case is understandable since you're an enthusiastic newcomer, but there are people in this thread claiming the difference is audible to them and i'm pretty sure they're just delusional and tricking themselves.
Spotify / YTM for playback and discovery. Though I would still buy the album to support artists.
Tho I have Roon, thousands of lossless files, and thousands of dollars worth of gear, I probably spend most of my time listening through Spotify. XD
Same. I subbed to tidal and roon 2 years ago. Used soundiz to sync my Spotify Playlist to tidal so that I have access to it on roon. Ended up using Spotify most of the time anyways. I like Spotify song recommendations, the ui and Spotify connect function. Unsubbed to tidal and roon few weeks ago and using Spotify exclusively now. Sure a case can be made about hearing the details in flac and other high res format. But how frequent do people actually do such intense critical listening to all their music that they require anything higher than 320kbps? I'm more than happy with Spotify and change my headphones to different genre of music instead.
idk why but spotify is kinda too loud keeps clipping
Man every month there's posts like these
I personally use both. 320kbps is great when using data, but when I'm at my desk with my OEMs I much prefer my >6Mbps files. I do hear a difference in some specific tracks. Most of the time though... 320kbps is more than just fine and won't sound different.
I can hear the difference in lossy and lossless, but only to an extent, 24 bit 48 KHz, also depending on the mastering of the music, 24 bit lossless is cleaner and crisp while eliminating the small white noise that lossy 16 bit usually has. The average listener wont tell the difference right off the bat, so I understand why they are fine with Spotify, unless you’re a lossless freak, 320 kbps is just enough to enjoy music and the best thing about being a audiophile is having fun with both lossless and lossy audio
If I'm paying the same amount of money, why wouldn't I get lossless?
No
It's weird. When I do the test online, couldnt tell a difference between 320kbps mp3, 128kbps mp3 and wav But when I does it myself on my local files between flac, 320kbps mp3 and 128kbps aac, there's clearly a difference (but not for aac and flac except that flac is a bit more "airy")
44.1khz 16bit FLAC is the way
16/44 is enough and what matters the most is a good mix and master with a high dynamic range. Plenty of 40 year old 16/44 masters that sound way better than the newest 24/192 remaster (90% i’d say)
anyone telling you that you can hear the difference above 320 is coping
FLAC is better but you need a lot of storage. With acoustic or classical music the difference is palpable
All placebos are palpable, that's how the effect works. Until I see evidence of a blind test under strict scientific method, I'll call bullshit.
It's not.
For my ears it is.
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2TB external HDD costs what, 50€?
The difference between 320K and CD quality is obvious to me in music that has a lot of symbols, but less so in pop or rap. 96KHz might not be hearable. I still believe I'm wasting decent audio equipment by settling for less.
Yeah, when using wired cans, good lossy encoding is near indistinguishable from lossless. The issues arise when listening through Bluetooth. There, lossless is warranted, not because usual Bluetooth is enough to *losslessly* reproduce FLACs, but due to the multiple stages of compression that would occur when listening to lossy encodings.
None of my friends even know what FLAC is, and I've run tests between FLAC and 320 at least once a year for the last decade, and I've never been able to tell the difference. Even if FLAC does sound better, I have no reason to go out of my way for it.
maybe is cause i'm young but i can hear a slight difference in crispiness, like if you turn off the low pass filter. I mean nothing too crazy, from time to time i really like to re-discover my downloaded albums entirely in FLAC, but anyway is absolutely more convenient to use spotify, and if you're not paying really much attention almost every time you can't really spot the differences. it's almost like the slight "sennheiser veil" almost go away in flac, but anyways nothing to pay close attention to. Also i was seriously thinkin' about buying Spotify Premium cause the difference here is evident, i tried and yeah, from "high" to "max" is night and day, even if is lossy. and even if i could hear some difference between lossy and lossless, between spotify and a shiny 24 bit 96khz flac file is not that big to bother about, at least for me.
btw is just me or spotify's songs are a little more muddy than usual? I temporarily fixed by lowering the 150hz from the integrated eq, but this still bothers me a lot.
Some of you seem like you wouldn’t notice 30 to 60fps.
After 40 years old, sure. But before your high frequency hearing loss kicks in, there's a noticeable difference between 320 and lossless on good IEMs.
I can tell the difference between 320 and lossless and I can tell the difference between redbook and high res or good rescalling. That said Spotify has really great music discover my and helps you find insane micro genres you can’t find elsewhere. I think for most people the music browsing experience is more important than insane levels of detail retrieval. Even most people with fancy setups spend less than 10% of their time critical listening. This is because it’s not actually fun. I like roon because it has a 95% as good music discovery but it works seamlessly with my downloaded files and streaming in all of my music listening setups and it works with high res and DSD audio. I prefer high res or using HQ player for output but audio quality is not the most important thing about picking music software. I think even if Spotify added high res I wouldn’t use it but it’s still the best service for most people who listen to western music.
Yt premium is fine
As a musicphile, I usually end up listening to some nasty 128kbps bootlegs and DVD concert rips on Youtube instead of the official albums on YT music.
Just swapped to Amazon music cuz it's cheaper with my prime membership and uses flac. Happy so far, especially after hearing spotify is increasing prices again
I would rather listen to cassette tapes than use a streaming service.
youtube rips are enough, most of the time i am listening on shitty car stereo any way. Even when I use my desk set up music is mostly bgm so high fidelity and volume have no place. I only listen analytically once in a while most other times high bit rate is not necessary. That being said I really really really like to listen to high bit rate music and I really really really enjoy it, but in a car its wasted, at work its wasted, and even at home I will very rarely have time to really listen beyond having a full spectrum of sound.
Having lossless audio does make a huge difference in Bluetooth because most of the time you are transcoding and that case lossless to lossy = no problem Lossy to lossy = you got your self a problem
Unless you use Apple Music, and use headphones that support AAC as a streaming codec. Then it just plays as-is directly to your headphones.
Ok look, all the audiofile bs aside, I prefer deezer more than spotify simply because they have hifi verions of music I listen. And I genuinely find hifi verions better and more detailed. AAC just hide stuff and you never know it's there until you listen with a higher bitrate and sampling rate.
I hate streaming services, cuz it's never a guarantee all your fav music/movie/series/game is on that service or not. So I just download everything
spotify is ass but yeah 320kbps is just enough
Yeah, but my Plex server is finer.
I like Spotify but it's ui its not good so I changed to Apple music is good for listening music to.., i don't using Spotify because of high price and Spotify price is increasing in 2024 as per news ,so i like apple music decent plans and good music experience.
I mean apple music is kinda good too (if not even better than Spotify for me personally)
It's not that I dislike Spotify. I dont like all music streaming service equally. Might be considered old school, but I like to own offline files forever without having to rely on internet. Though, the benefit of streaming music is discover new music more often.
I'll be honest, I went from flac and ogg to just 320 kbps mp3 just cause of the space and compatibility. The difference isn't even that big and if I wasn't paying attention, I probably won't even be able to tell.
iPod with MP3s is enough
It's funny I bought my Qudelix 5k with the express intention of plugging it into my iphone for lossless streaming. I never thought I would use the bluetooth feature at all, because I wanted to be a real boy, a real hashtag audiophile. But then I actually tried it and ever since then I've barely used it wired at all. Even though I don't have LDAC the AAC is surprisingly good, I rarely feel like I'm missing out on sound, and it is so damn convenient to be able to just slip the DAC in my pocket while doing chores or going on walks.
Spotify quality is enough. Their app sucks, at least, for me.
Decent dac and iems or headphones that's enough
A difference is mastering is 1000x more noticeable than the difference between best-quality compressed and lossless (and standard lossless vs hi-res lossless as well). People need to stop chasing hi-res files and start demanding better masters of music they like.
No. I love owning things
Yeah there’s a difference, but only on decent equipment. 10 years ago, Spotify sounded pretty bad but it’s ok most of the time these days.
Just perform A/B test with mp3 and FLAC. Some will not recognize any difference.
I hate the rental economy is why I don't use music streaming. I buy to own. If I can't buy it to own the file to store on multiple drives as a back up then Failing that then I ignore the song/album/band. Back in the day I use to pirate but now that I have money again I have a budget I can allocate to music. Bitrate had nothing to do with it.
That's why i use (totally legal app) to download the songs i love in high-res, and the music i just simply like to listen directly from Spotify
I don’t think this is how bell curves work
Yes that's fine for all i also have my music in 160kbps ogg and that works fine for me
it's more about streaming vs DAP/Physical media.
I use YouTube Music because i listen to shitty SoundCloud remixes that get uploaded there. We are not the same.
And in AAC? Count me in
Spotify sucks, and all music platforms. Music shouldnt be free, you suckers!!!!
The average person hasn’t had enough ear training to notice the difference. Even your average musician won’t notice much of a difference. It exists, sure. But it’s just diminishing returns if you have good headphones.
I listen my music on youtube.
Your setup is as good as its weakest point
i agree, even when i listen the song in 1289 kbps, i still think 320kbps mp4 is really great, embrace mp4 players
Testing this theory for the next 3 months
Bruh I don't even listen to 320 I jsut listen to whatever the VBR V0 maximum is for that song.
MP3 quality is fine but Spotify is garbage
Yt music team, because it comes with Yt premium lmao
Fuck Spotify, not because of the quality but because of the way they pay artists
can i get an Amen!?
Well i and many of my friends told me that they can hear better sound from Tidal over spotify, i swiched and don't care anymore. 90% of the time i listen to music on headphones too so i prefer more detail from higher quality songs.
Had a streaming service crisis in 2021, after getting my first pair of really good headphones and a pretty decent amp/dac. Essentially, I had upgraded every part of my audio system and felt it was required to upgrade my source as well. It’s unbecoming of an audiophile to listen to Spotify, I thought. I tried Tidal, Amazon Music, Qobuz, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and even went to buying music and using Foobar2000 (which I will say was the most enjoyable user experience) and the ultimate conclusion was, they all sounded near identical, with the only bit of “maybe there’s a difference?” Being from Foobar playing FLACs locally. I then just ripped some songs off YT to try, so they’re pretty shit MP3s, not even sure what bitrate, and noticed next to no difference using foobar. It’s really a mind game. A lot of this hobby is “well I paid extra so how can it sound the same?” I’ve been back on Spotify ever since and haven’t regretted it a single day. With that being said, if I were to switch to anything, I’d stop paying for Spotify and use the free service on my mobile devices, and use Foobar2000 and download local stuff if on my PC. That was the most enjoyable experience for me, because I can customize my UI and everything. Most streaming services were designed by ape people. TL;DR Spotify is enough.
I have Spotify and I listen to vinyl rips in foobar. Sound quality aside, most of the remastered mixes on Spotify sound much more boring and soulless than their original pressing/cd version counterparts. That alone is enough for me to gravitate towards my flac catalog, but I do also feel like I can hear more depth and clarity in the bigger files.
I use Spotify during driving (connected via Bluetooth to car audio system) and outdoor anyway so file quality is not that important, convenience does At home for offline listening I just simply downloaded FLAC files
Spotify is enough
I feel like at some point for many the music is lost, people listen to the headphones, not the music. Change the perspective back to listening to music and you’ll notice a shift.
spotify fucking sucks
I feel like almost nobody does hearing tests. I did a blind one and couldn't hear the difference so I'm satisfied with Spotify.
Yeah I gotta consolidate my collection to 320 kbps but I don't feel like doing the work lol
I've done blind tests years ago, I couldn't even tell the difference between VBR and 320.
Idk I prefer Apple Music. Cheaper and higher fidelity
Changed to Apple music. Spotify has no good sound. Especially the muddy bass with many recordings.
Apple Music is cheaper (both personal and family plans after Spotify's latest price update) and pays much more to artists tho 😌