dasdoing
Major Contributor
If sound quality is the only deciding factor for you, you shouldn't consider Spotify. Try Tidal or Qubuz.
if AAC 320kbit/s is not good enough you must be superman lol
If sound quality is the only deciding factor for you, you shouldn't consider Spotify. Try Tidal or Qubuz.
Wish Spotify would allow one account to be used in two locations in your home at same time. Aside from that, it’s great.
There is also an interesting video, where the codecs are compared in using null test.
null test can't work for codecs. if it removes something you can't hear because it is masked, once you isolate it you obviously can hear it
There's more to it than sheer bitrate too.
sorry, didn't watch it at all, and wont. I prefer to rely on abx to test codecsPlease watch the full video. One candidate is always his studio master track. So masking aside, outcome should be is, what service is rendering the most accurately.
sorry, didn't watch it at all, and wont. I prefer to rely on abx to test codecs
For my part I don't have ears trained enough, to distinguish codecs at higher bitrates.
I just got Amazon Music and it's true, it sounds a lot better than Spotify. I'm kind of shocked honestly at how much better. I don't even have that high end of a system but the difference is obvious. I only have a lowly Musical Fidelity V90 feeding a Music Hall PH25.2 via Mogami 2497 cable with Eichman Bullet RCA plugs, and ending with a pair of HD6xx. I do also have customer power cables and an RSA Power Conditioner. I've learned that if you really want your system to be revealing you need to have good clean power. I have the upgraded and longer Sennheiser upgrade cable too. Even though a lot of people think they're not the greatest, I've always thought the HD600 series scale amazingly well and they sound good with a huge range of gear. They may not have the perfect sound signature but they're damn revealing.
what kind of music you guys are listening that sounds better on Amazon? Can I get example titels so I can compare?
One song that stood out to me on Amazon where I felt like "wow there's a lot of detail here I haven't heard before" was The Joker by The Steve Miller Band. There are a lot of cymbals that are allowed to ring out and the whole song (which I've heard hundreds of times before) felt very pleasing to my ear. https://music.amazon.com/albums/B00MANOJ7U?ref=dm_sh_e2d7-cd1b-4a14-aa09-7f9a1
A few other albums I've been enjoying:
Metallica - Kill 'Em All (Remastered)
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B00AH69GCU?ref=dm_sh_040a-4ee4-55e6-a2eb-b16fc
Not Our First Goat Rodeo - Yo-Yo Ma
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B085K7TV3B?ref=dm_sh_d6c2-e3ed-166c-e8d4-abe4b
Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B082W1TTS7?ref=dm_sh_28b5-8bd8-acf7-ebf4-99638
Graceland - Paul Simon
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0085LMFAE?ref=dm_sh_7b10-773f-33d9-7cb9-1756f
Kid A - Radiohead
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B01DPRPYH8?ref=dm_sh_4ef9-d6a8-5dc0-e3ee-7e016
It's been a couple of months and I can't remember what music I was A-B testing with, but now my Spotify Premium account has expired so I can't go back and compare anyway. I didn't try to do any blind testing so it's entirely possible (probable even?) that confirmation bias was involved. I know it sounds great and I enjoy listening to it, so even if it's all in my head I'm happy
who does? lol
in the latest study mentioned here noone could hear diference between 192 kbps AAC/mp3 and wav:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec_listening_test
and AAC is better then MP3. if you can't hear 192 kbps MP3, then you can't hear 160kbps AAC (Spotify high). I leave it on "very high" just because of "why not?"
persoanly I couldn't hear 192 kbps MP3 artifacts even more then 10 years ago, when the codec was worse. 128kbps was always "the bad bitrate" that was used in filesharing and had a clear HF rolloff
you sure you were not hearing the loudness diference? Amazon is about 2dB louder on Metallica Hit The Lights
Dosen't Spotify use vorbis?, Which to me does better than AAC on few samples. MP3 groans like anything on pre echo/hard transients even on V0/320, Yet 160k AAC/Vorbis are tranparent to me.