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I have a Chi-fi $160 setup and Spotify is noticeably worse. Almost no sound stage, noise floor on old recordings is absurd. "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac and "Li
by leonidasv 4y ago
I have a Chi-fi $160 setup and Spotify is noticeably worse. Almost no sound stage, noise floor on old recordings is absurd. "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac and "Listen to the Music" by The Doobie Brothers are two of the most noticeably songs for me.
Hi-Fi setups are getting cheaper and cheaper thanks to China, I think most of the "audiophile" thing will soon be mainstream (for example, I've always mocked audiophiles online and now here I am; I always discover some friend that has bought VX earphones; I made my girlfriend listen to some songs on my setup, and now she's considering buying some entry-level equipment too - and she was the kind of person that just used any $5~10 earphones -, etc). Spotify is probably missing a big opportunity here.
- archagon 4y agoI urge you to ABX it. Spotify's highest bitrate (320kbit/s) is perceptually lossless. Probably the high bitrate as well, since they seem to use Ogg Vorbis.
- elektronaut 4y agoIt’s the source material, not the codec. Some albums sound vastly better on say Apple Music, regardless of lossless or lossy encoding. It’s almost like Spotify have older, inferior masters that they’ve never updated. You’re right that it’s not the technology. I’ve released a few albums, and they sound virtually indistinguishable across various services since they’re from the same master files.
- leonidasv 4y agoI've done some, really there are subtle differences in a file from the same mix in a lossless vs lossy, but sure, you can't notice it if you're not really paying close attention. But Spotify problem is not the use of lossy 320kpbs compression, they're probably not using good source material or just upscaling 128/192 to 320. Their quality is worse than a pure lossless stream properly compressed to 320.