Gotta say I’m surprised to see Spotify adding something people actually want. It must be getting rough for them.
I might be out of the loop. Who wants this exactly? There is no audible benefit from lossless audio. I rip all my music to lossless files but that’s archival. There’s nothing to archive with streaming services.
I want this, and although there isn’t always a perceptible difference in audio quality, there sometimes can be. It depends on the content, and I’d rather sometimes stream audio at an excessively high bitrate than always lose the high–end definition that I could have enjoyed where it exists.
All my life I’ve been getting into disagreements with people who believe that because they can’t tell the difference between A and B, I must not be able to either. I find this immensely frustrating.
At that point where it matters, I feel like I should be buying the music from the artist, not streaming. My latest favorite band, Mad Routine, gives you the WAV masters when you buy their albums, and they are meticulous about sound; those lossless tracks actually sound better, even with Bluetooth.
However, I think few bands are actually putting in the effort to have beautifully crafted lossless tracks. Also, I have no way of knowing if Spotify is merely increasing the bitrate but using the same lossy source file, which is what I suspect is probably the case. After all, why share valuable goods when you could pretend and throw out a few buzzwords, instead?
Sounds like you just want it because it is possible. If that’s the case, I’m fine with that. There is however no perceptible difference in sound, ABX tests showed that many times.
Over bluetooth through a car stereo, no you won’t hear a difference. But over a cable through a decent pair of headphones, there is a difference. Even more with a good DAC, amp, and speakers.
The problem with audio quality is that one bad step in the chain from bits to eardrums will nerf the sound quality. So, if you upgrade one step you have to upgrade all of the other steps too before you will reap any benefits.
As a musician and audio engineer, I would love to say that you should experience a richer music listening experience. On the other hand… fucking rent.
You can read up on my setup on the other comments. As an Audio Engineer you should know better or come with proofs.
I would if they didn’t lose me a long time ago. On bluetooth headphones it doesnt make a huge difference. But I used to stream to my Home Theater setup and Spotify sounded horrible compared to the source material. I could also tell a difference with a quality headphone amp and my 250ohm DT770 pros.
100% agree, Spotify streaming to my soundsystem always sounded like ass. I thought it was something I set up wrong. I then tried Tidal and it was night and day difference.
Based on the vibes of every internet comment field, literally everyone and their mother wants to stream lossless.
You’re right about the audible benefits however
The small community of audiophile
Which is filled to the brim with snake oil advertisers who want to separate gullible people from their money.
Most people wouldn’t be able to notice the difference even with the best possible equipment, but there is a difference.
Of course there technically is a difference, you can easily see it with any tool that can render a spectrogram. Humans cannot hear this difference though, so there is no point in streaming the extra data.
I mean this is just wrong.
Prove it
Are they going to switch to a reward system that doesn’t allow botfarms to steal money from legitimate artists?
No?
That would reduces apparent user volume?
Oh noo…
Fuck Spotify
99% of people are going to use Bluetooth headphones but insist they hear the difference.
This will soon no longer be a gatekeeper, with 6.1 at most 6.2 we will have the high actual available bandwidth for Hi-Res, latency will still be around but quality will finally be on par with low-mid Hi-Res.
LDAC?
deleted by creator
According to https://www.soundguys.com/tidal-vs-qobuz-140740/ this is not the case.
Qobuz $0.022 Napster $0.02 Tidal $0.013 Apple Music $0.01 Deezer $0.0064 Spotify $0.003 - $0.005 Amazon Music $0.00402 SoundCloud $0.0025 - $0.004 Pandora $0.00133 YouTube Music $0.00069 - $0.0012 Same table aligned to cents for easier reading.
Qobuz 2.2¢ Napster 2.0¢ Tidal 1.3¢ Apple Music 1.0¢ Deezer 0.640¢ Spotify 0.300¢ - 0.500¢ Amazon Music 0.402¢ SoundCloud 0.250¢ - 0.400¢ Pandora 0.133¢ YouTube Music 0.069¢ - 0.120¢ Jesus H Christmas, that’s depressing
Oof. Top three, but at the same time, half as much as the top paying site does.
deleted by creator
I think they saw that their premium users are now cancelling their subscription and moving to other streaming services, also bands like KGATLW is removing their catalogue from there, so they pulled this move. Not until Spotify start paying artists fairly, moderate the AI music bullshit, stop jacking up the prices, stops supporting the genocide against Palestine, improve their discovery algorithm and the list goes on; Spotify can go fuck itself
You’re like 10 years late to the party pals: qobuz, deezer, tidal, …
deleted by creator
Im not against supporting war drone manufacturers so much as ones related to Israel.
I’d buy multiple subscriptions if the proceeds went to Ukrainian drones.
Can’t wait for my new hard-drive to arrive so I can further expand my lossless music collection even more.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) I can’t hear a difference between lossless and reasonable bitrate compressed files, so…
And they still exploit artists
I’ve been meaning to look back into spotizerr and now I’m curious if it’ll give me lossless.
So you can hear their ai slop music more clearly.
I failed the npr test so I dont think I need it. Either im to old or use shitty Bluetooth headphones… Or both!
Bluetooth protocol uses AAC to compress audio. If you use lossless audio with Bluetooth headphones it’ll sound the same because either way you’re always listening to compressed audio
Not universally true, mine uses aptx. Depending on the device you can switch between codecs.
To be fair I also tried the test with some 250 dollar monitor headphones and failed too. Probably because the shitty onboard sound card. But also im old.
It depends, some better Bluetooth headphones (like the Sony WH-1000XM family) support protocols other than SBC, which have a lot higher bandwidth.
And their CEO thinks music is a product that costs next to nothing to make so it’s okay to screw artists over for his billionaire pay check.
Fuck Spotify. Tell everybody you know to use alternatives. Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer…
