We left this month, wife is moving to YouTube premium as a way to ease her out of straming services and I’m building our collection of music every month through self-hosting so when she’s ready there’s a large library for her.
It’s been great buying music from artists and listening to whole albums which is not something I normally do.
Spotify doesn’t support their artists as far as I’m aware, what money they do spend on creators it’s people like Joe Rogan, and they continue to increase the price every month. I’m tired of paying for techno fascist’s next Yacht (or election) and this is just one way we’re slowly pulling away from subscriptions.
They still scam artists and support war drone manufacturers.
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.
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
99% of people are going to use Bluetooth headphones but insist they hear the difference.
LDAC?
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.
And they still exploit artists
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.
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.
You do you, friend. I’m just sharing my experience, not trying prove anything.
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.
I agree. I can definitely hear a difference, mostly in the rhythm section and low end.
You can hear a difference between 320 kbps mp3/aac/vorbis and lossless? Can you prove that with an ABX test?
I notice the difference with an ABX test. Spent about $700 or so on my audio equipment, so I guess it is “budget” in the audiophile world.
What equipment do you have? My main setup is a Motu M4 with two Adam Audio T5V and multi point room correction done in REW. For headphones I’m mostly using DT 770 Pro 80 Ohm (there’s different drivers depending on the impedance and these sound warmer). I also have a sizeable collection of IEMs with ratings up to a B on the crin list.
I can hear sounds up to about 16k. I’m allergic to bad audio. I cannot differentiate good lossy encodes from lossless audio.
Eh, I got 40% on 2 tries. It’s something I guess. Either way, why not take the higher quality version if it’s included?
So quite literally worse than a coin flip, then.
Streaming lossless audio will use up three to six times as much data, along with the higher processing demands to play them back, so there’s always a penalty involved. We didn’t invent codecs for no reason.
So in other words you may as well have guessed randomly and gotten the same result. I’m against lossless streaming because my bandwidth is a limited resource and it will take longer to load the same track with higher bitrate. As there is no audible difference, there is also no practical reason to choose it.
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.
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
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.
The small community of audiophile
Which is filled to the brim with snake oil advertisers who want to separate gullible people from their money.
People say that, but I definitely hear a difference. Mainly in the bass and lower end. You can’t get lossless with Bluetooth. Or airplay. I also use good headphones and a great sound system.
deleted by creator
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
You’re like 10 years late to the party pals: qobuz, deezer, tidal, …
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.
Fuck Spotify
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
It depends, some better Bluetooth headphones (like the Sony WH-1000XM family) support protocols other than SBC, which have a lot higher bandwidth.
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.
Not universally true, mine uses aptx. Depending on the device you can switch between codecs.
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…
There is no such thing as lossless audio. 44kHz is bad
44.1 is the LOWEST Hi-Res its just CD quality, literally.
After we got proof of Tidal lying about lossless I had to lock in Qobuz for the foreseeable future. 2nd year already and rarely ever I don’t find artists or albums. Deezer was alright for the 5 years I had my account but I could still notice harsh highs on some symphonies and dull-ish Jazz sessions, not my main genres but I’m still glad I made the switch
Why do people upvote you and downvote me though we say the same thing
Cool, I’ll still be using Tidal, as they pay their artists the most, I believe.
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.
Oh, damn. Thank you, my data was outdated then. I guess I’ll have to move things to Qobuz, which was a pain last time I transferred a library.
Can’t wait for my new hard-drive to arrive so I can further expand my lossless music collection even more.
