For reference, 192kbps mp3 is considered "transparent" for most people. 320kbps mp3 is considered by many experts to be essentially indistinguishable from lossl

For reference, 192kbps mp3 is considered "transparent" for most people. 320kbps mp3 is considered by many experts to be essentially indistinguishable from lossless in most cases. AAC is a more advanced codec than mp3. An AAC file with the same bitrate as an MP3 file will have higher quality audio (that is, closer to the original). Depending on the type of audio being encoded, you might be getting double digit percentage improvements [0] in quality over mp3. So the "very high" quality setting on Spotify is indeed very, very high quality. [0] Which is to say, AAC produces files 10%+ smaller than MP3 for equivalent fidelity