Nope, I would not call 160kbps Vorbis low bitrate, it’s roughly quality of 192kbps MP3. Only the ”popularity=0” stuff (so stuff with so few listens that Spotify does not keep record of) were re-encoded to 75kbps Opus, which as a modern codec is much better than it sounds like but of course re-encode is not great for already lossless stuff.
For purists there are those Tidal downloader sites available everywhere for free lossless music, even 24-bit hires FLAC.
Opus is what I’m encoding my working library to. I like ripping to flac (and archiving them as such), but the advantages to smaller file sizes for the working library are worth it for me. So far, I’m really liking the format.
I keep the archive on spinning hard drives, but the opus library on ssd (which makes browsing much quicker, and no unnecessary spinning up the hard drives.)
It’s not lossless but current ogg vorbis at 160kbps is absolutely transparent for the vast majority of people. That’s actually what I chose to keep my own collection, I mean, outside of the lossless albums that I absolutely want to flawlessly preserve.
As far as I’ve read, the database is largely low bitrate files, and some AI. The value here is metadata and preservation of “rare” music.
Nope, I would not call 160kbps Vorbis low bitrate, it’s roughly quality of 192kbps MP3. Only the ”popularity=0” stuff (so stuff with so few listens that Spotify does not keep record of) were re-encoded to 75kbps Opus, which as a modern codec is much better than it sounds like but of course re-encode is not great for already lossless stuff.
For purists there are those Tidal downloader sites available everywhere for free lossless music, even 24-bit hires FLAC.
Opus is what I’m encoding my working library to. I like ripping to flac (and archiving them as such), but the advantages to smaller file sizes for the working library are worth it for me. So far, I’m really liking the format.
I keep the archive on spinning hard drives, but the opus library on ssd (which makes browsing much quicker, and no unnecessary spinning up the hard drives.)
It’s not lossless but current ogg vorbis at 160kbps is absolutely transparent for the vast majority of people. That’s actually what I chose to keep my own collection, I mean, outside of the lossless albums that I absolutely want to flawlessly preserve.
All tracks within the top 99.6% of listens are supposed to be high quality