with flacs on soulseek, who needs music subscriptions?
why all this fuss about lossless audio? Spotify premium is literally indistinguishable from lossless audio for 99.9% of the population and songs (because not all songs will be lossless or are even mastered in a way that makes a difference). granted if…
- you have the right hardware
- you have the ear trained to hear compression
- you picked a song that has audible compression artifacts however small they may be
- you are in a quiet room
- you are actively looking for compression artifacts
you may hear a difference. if you think otherwise, then do a lossy vs lossless blind test and be impressed that you actually cannot hear the difference most of the time (especially without actively looking for the artifacts)
everyone listening to audio on a modern phone will be using bluetooth anyway. lossless is jist a money grab.
even my local flac files are indistinguishable from standard quality streamed media over bluetooth
don’t say it too loud the nerds on here will be angry at you (you’re already getting down voted for no reason)
Are you a musician? You can hear whats missing if you know what to listen for.
The fuss is that every time you transcode to a new format you accumulatively lose quality.
So for example if you have an 320kbps mp3, but then that takes too much space so you transcode it to 192 mp3, but then you discover the opus codec is more efficient so you transcode it again, but then you want to make a fan video of the same song, so your video player transcoded it again into video friendly aac.
The quality on your final video is going contain the faults of all the files upstream.
Meanwhile if you edit the video from a lossless source, it will only get encoded once.
So it doesn’t matter for streaming, but it matters if you want to download and convert to other formats.
This is a great point, currently I have tens of thousands of mp3’s that I wish I could somehow, impossibly upscale to a better codec, but those rare tracks I have in the low VBR mp3 range will never be revived.
Lossy audio compression algorithms work based on psychoacoustic effects. The average human ear will not detect all the “parts” in a lossless signal - there are things you can drop from the signal because:
- Human ears are most sensitive around the frequency of human speech, but less at others
- If there is a loud signal, a much more silent one very close will be masked if it occurs within a couple of milliseconds around the loud one
- There are other more subtle aspects of the human ear you can use to detect signals we just won’t notice.
So in order to determine exactly which parts of an audio signal could be dropped because we don’t hear them anyway, they measured a couple of thousand people’s listening profiles.
And they used that “average human profile” to create their algorithm.
This, of course, has a consequence which most people, including you apparently, do not understand:
The better your personal “ear” matches the average psychoacoustic model used by lossy algorithms, the better the signal will sound to you.
In other words, older people, or people with certain deficiencies in their hearing capabilities, will need higher bitrates not to notice the difference. In the 90s, I used to be happy with 192 kbps CBR MP3. But now, being an old fuck, boy, can I hear the difference.
Ironically, I can detect the difference not because my ears are “trained” or “better”, I can detect it because my ears are worse than yours!
So the whole bottom line is this: While it may be true that you, personally, do not require lossless to enjoy music to the fullest, other people do. Claiming that lossless isn’t needed by 99.9% of the population is horseshit and only demonstrates that you have no clue about how lossy compression works in the first place.
You don’t need a trained ear for lossless audio to be different for lossy audio.
do a blind test between ogg 320kbps which Spotify premium uses and FLAC and tell me your score then
my point is, if you’re not working on that audio, there is no audible difference between two
I compress everything with Opus 192kbp/s (way over the human ear). I get the quality of FLAC with the size of an MP4. Also Spotify sucks with their AI slop.
I agree that the vast majority of people will not be able to distinguish one from another, but the company is the biggest streaming service and they’re behind their competitors in this aspect. They also have been promising this for years and not delivering.
I don’t get it either. I’m pretty sure it’s just marketing bullshit and many people are falling for it. Same with bluetooth headphones and codecs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the difference between LDAC and AAC on an average bluetooth headset wouldn’t even be scientifically measurable.
That’s nice. I have been streaming lossless for myself for what, two decades now? I see no reason to pay spotify for anything.
Too late. Spotify sucks
Oh cool, now they’ve finally caught up to my Navidrome server
I think Spotify is missing the point. People who care about Hi-Fi, care about the music, which means they care about the artists, which means they likely care about the treatment of those artists.
In my eyes the only real value Spotify adds is their discovery features.
Is that really a unique feature the discovery feature when you can access so many websites and services with similar features? What makes it stand out?
I’d even argue the contrary. Granted, I’m not subscribed to them so I only have the free tier available but I don’t think the discovery algorithm differs between the tiers. After a while the algorithm is basically stuck in a loop repeating the same tracks over and over. It’s what made me cancel right after the free trial ended. Way better to find new music on RED’s top 10 or last.fm
The only reason I’m still on Spotify is that I can pay like £2.20 to be in someone’s family.
But the incessant push towards podcasts bugs me. When I’m driving, I shouldn’t have to scroll through 5+ pages to finally get to the music section. That shit is dangerous.
As soon as Spotify inevitably enforces that families have to be the same household, as so many other streaming services have done before it, I’m gone.
When I’m driving, I shouldn’t have to scroll through 5+ pages to finally get to the music section
Į’ve recently discovered a feature I remember never really using, Car Mode, is no longer
Absolutely this, they are also really shit at giving you what you like and want to snd you to the same hack wankers talking bro politics.
Same for audiobooks, it literally never has the ones I am actively reading as jump back in options, just suggestions of pop psychology manosphere shite. I sear if I see another CEO or Jordan Peterson book… let me fijish the Mark Hoppus book goddamnit.
Their androidauto implenetation is poor
I was the biggest fan of Spotify as soon as they started up. I was one of the first people to get early access and was a huge supporter for years.
Buy your music, own your files, never subscribe for something you can buy instead. You’re not listening to 12 new albums a year, if you can subscribe, you can pay for the files that will be yours forever. The fact that Spotify has higher quality streaming doesn’t change anything.
Aye. Bandcamp. Buy, download FLAC, put in mediamonkey, listen in cars or anywhere else. If need be, the app is also there for streaming I guess.
I prefer Navidrome
Looks decent on a quick glance. But my library is vast and very much made around mediamonkey for 20 yrs. I need my precise auto-playlists 😉
You’re not listening to 12 new albums a year
Uhm…
Yeah, I’m adding about 500 songs to my spotify library every year. If I paid 1€ for every single one it would be more than 10x the cost of the 3€ per month for a Spotify Family slot
Even if. Still pretty cheap compared to streaming where you pay and never own and it’s always a second away from never accessible anymore for whatever reason.
Well, I suppose downloads musn’t be that expensive. Vinyls got me like “darn, that thing pricey, innit?”, and they skip a lot, very fragile, lots of work. I like the vibe, æsthetic, and just… overall exprience, minus all the cleaning work. I’m pondering switching to CDs, honestly. Don’t look as cool as vinyls, don’t come in fancy colourful shine in the dark fancy special versions (unless I’m wrong), no big square with cover image to better see and enjoy. But you can back it into a computer, innit? Less fragile as well. And if I get the right device, I could listen to FM Radio as well. Idk
This is going to affect my monthly fee, isn’t it?
Incoming Spotify premium plus subscription tier. With lossless audio. And then shortly after some previously premium tier features to go plus. Then ads appear on the premium, I mean basic tier (priced at the old premium price).
Incoming Spotify premium plus subscription tier
That was what they were planning to do, a new premium tier that would have lots of extras but then Apple released lossless audio as part of the standard base tier so Spotify gave up on it
To me I don’t really get it, I’ve had flac audio files in the past and I haven’t really found much difference in audio quality above 192k
Just to confirm there is no new tier for this
From today (September 10), Spotify Lossless will be rolling out to Premium users across over 50 regions including the US, UK and Australia. Spotify says the rollout is starting now and will continue though October. You’ll receive a notification alerting you when Lossless is available, but that’s not all.
Surprisingly, Spotify Lossless is free for Premium subscribers – a huge sigh of relief given that previous rumors suggested that lossless audio would come in the form of a paid add-on called ‘Music Pro’.
You have to listen to loud music on good headphones to hear any difference.
Also usually mid range is compressed OK, it’s the very highs that get distorted.
Black Mirror’s Common People episode would like a word
Well, they were quite literally compiling all the worst behaviours of modern subscription services and applying it to the medical field. I guess the sad thing is that it could really happen one day.
I would say each of the things that they applied has happened on a service somewhere before (just perhaps not all on a single one). It’s fiction uncomfortably close to reality.
I absolutely agree. it was a sort of slap in the face, personally. I’ve been aware of the increasingly awful subscription model take-over of course, but seeing it presented that way and realizing how not-so-far-off that reality may be, finally put some fire behind it for me.
Too little, too late.
Drink up me hearties yo ho!
Orinoco Flow by Enya starts playing
Exactly what I thought. I’ll keep my Tidal account, thank you very much.
Well that’s one thing Apple did right, aside from a terrible algorithm. Spotify will be jacking up the prices in 3,2,1…
Is this just music, or will conspiracy theorists podcasts and other right wingers be in high res too?
Listen to Bro Jogan’s heavy breathing in lossless audio.
BroSMR
Only the ads (now compulsory on the 19.99€/month subscription).
Previously Spotify couldn’t develop hifi because they gave hundreds of millions ofl their customers money to that anti vax joe Rogan dick instead. Get bent and die Spotify.
he’s more than anti vax. he’s an anti-science conspiracy monger, one step short of alex jones.
Canceled my sub when that happened and won’t be back.
Fist bump
But not like people are going to notice any difference over a stream if it buffers even slightly.
Most people can’t even tell the difference between 192 and 320 kbps, they don’t care about lossless over stream. Also screw spotify.
I do care. I only buy FLACs. Sure, the i-dont-care-streamers are the majority, but even IF I would consider streaming I’d choose tidal over Spotify for that reason.
Hearing the difference is also affected by, obviously, the hardware used for playback+listening, the genre and also the recording.
And even if you don’t hear it, it won’t degrade when transcoding and you just get the best possible source for your moneyzs. Why settle for less.
yeah golden ears are very rare. 320 kbps of any codec is fine for me.
For tracks I’m familiar with and play often, I can usually tell the difference between 128kbps and 192kbps on an MP3. In very rare cases, with the right song and the right earphones, I can discern 192kpbs MP3 from 256kbps. But I definitely can’t tell a 256kbps MP3 from FLAC. The Wikipedia arrival on audio transparency says that MP3 becomes transparent on average around 240kbps.
I’ve recently started using the Opus codec. It is higher quality at lower bitrates than MP3. Opus is considered transparent on average at around 160-192kbps.
Personally, I’ve been re-encoding all my FLACs to 192kbps OPUS for storing on my smartphone where space is limited.
On a phone with a cheap DAC and probably even worse headphones (maybe even wireless), it surely doesn’t matter. For the car I transcoded my stuff to mp3 too. It doesn’t really matter. Except <192kbit 😁
But for listening with audiophile equipment at home it just won’t do for me.
Prob should get on with sorting out the AI stealing people’s music and profiles
Pretty sure Spotify approves of it. They don’t care about artists they are there for profit.
