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Lossless Listening Arrives on Spotify Premium
- Thread starter mermayer
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Spotify gets a lot of criticism for adding gimmicky features, yet here you are asking for Atmos :')
jeffaegrim
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He probably more broadly means "multichannel" - seeing how atmos is pretty much the only contemporary multichannel technology actually utilized in mixing - which is indeed sorely missed. Also, AFAIK an atmos mix is just a 5.1 mix, from which the processor extracts heights information. I listen to lots of atmos mixes on my (currently, only) 4.2 system. They sound great and I wish there were more
No, I meant ATMOS since that's what's actually being mixed and is widely distributed and increasing. The other multichannel standards are pretty much dead.
ATMOS music streaming encodes height speaker information in the stream.
ATMOS is hardly gimmicky unless you consider stereo to be just a gimmick.
jeffaegrim
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And I was getting at atmos having 5 or 7 bed layers. Everything else is encoded in metadata.
Note I never called Atmos "gimmicky". It does sound great, and clearly it's the winning bet for multi-channel (at least for now, until Dolby comes up with yet another "standard").
My very personal reasons for not adopting it are:
1. Title availability: I don't think any of my favorite artists have ever released any music in Atmos format. If you are a movie and FX buff, by all means it is more immersive... but I mostly listen to music and read for entertainment. Movies don't rank highly in my priority list.
2. It's hard enough to get optimal performance of a 2.1 setup. And way too many multi-channel setups I have heard are unbalanced and poor in SQ (note I am not accusing anyone that is an Atmos adopter in this forum of that, clearly if you're a member here you also put some thought and work into optimizing your setup). But clearly far more attention is required to set up a multichannel system for real-world accuracy.
3. AV amps. It seems s a rule they are inferior to stereo amps performance wise, but I am perfectly aware that can be easily remedied by using several stereo amps.
4. For music, I am perfectly happy with the resolution and staging of a stereo setup. I can hear everything I need to hear... yes, in front of me, but there'll always be some hall effect that gives additional space to a stereo track in a real world room. And if music is recorded in stereo, it may be indeed "gimmicky" to distort the intended perspective with multi-channel.
But this is all outside the Spotify and lossless topic. I am surprised the push back to my post -in another thread on this same topic- was about Atmos, and not about the fact I said I barely care about lossless on Spotify because it actually sounds fine to me in 320k Ogg Vorbis mode... :-D
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Sjkrabbe
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I get the same good thing now by Tidal
Pearljam5000
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Anyone noticed a difference in SQ when changing the settings to lossless?
bumblebee657
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You're telling us you already got the lossless option? Screenshot or it didn't happen!
And no, because you're the only one who can hear the difference. But I'm still excited to get lossless Spotify soon.
And no, because you're the only one who can hear the difference. But I'm still excited to get lossless Spotify soon.
Pearljam5000
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I haven't gotten the updateYou're telling us you already got the lossless option? Screenshot or it didn't happen!
And no, because you're the only one who can hear the difference. But I'm still excited to get lossless Spotify soon.
I just wanted to know if I have a reason to be excited about it when it arrives
ROOSKIE
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Hello and welcome to ASR.
....and i just CAN'T tell the damn difference when I'm trying my ass off to listen.
Sounds reasonable. But if Spotify doesn't increase the premium cost for the lossless feature, it certainly won't hurt anyway. And most people already have enough bandwidth and will have more than enough to use Spotify Lossless.
Blind test instead, for example by letting someone else move/angle your speakers in different ways. Sooner or later you'll get it 100% right. Maybe you'll even find a speaker placement that you like more than the one you have now.
Blind test: With and without mattresses on the side walls to reduce the reflections. With and without thick carpet in front of the speakers. ....and so on.
Only your imagination sets limits to what you can test in the listening room. Plus what your friend, someone else, is willing and interested in helping with of course.
Ha Ha,
As you know most likely nobody can unless they already know which is which.
The online blind testing options for quality testing similar to what Spority will be offering have been around awhile.
People agonize on the couch for hours with headphones trying to reliably discern what if any are the differences.
Oh well, just a reason to need more coal to burn I guess...
In the past many folks pick 128kbit/s over lossless just as often as the reverse.
Pretty much a product for the same golden eared folks who were mad when all those lux analog Vinyl recordings that sounded better because of that, turned out to be not that.
Well things could obviously be worse, what is the harm in everyone thinking the lossless sounds better on their BT headphones and Airpods.
Pearljam5000
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I can hear the difference between lossless and MP3
It's just obvious to me
Grimoire
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ROOSKIE
Major Contributor
1st as you know there are many types of MP3s using various levels of compression and algorithms.
There is no blanket 'mp3'
Do the blind listening tests and post your results.
I don't believe anyone has ever really passed them.
There are threads here and many sources for quality blind tests. I lost interest so I don't have anything book marked anymore but it was easy to find.
Make sure you try a variety of qualities including the very high quality nearly indistinguishable in a lab setting 320 variation Spotify uses and for fun some low quality 64 and 128kbps ones. Those might be obvious or you might prefer them. You won't be the 1st.
Do everything blind.
I think Spotify uses OGG it’s even better than mp3 ?
+1 on mp3 there’s a to wide variety to make blanket statements without qualifications ? In the past with bad players and low quality rips . It could very well happen . I think I heard artifacts back then .
Re “bad” players the mp3 lib in the old SqueezeBox 3 had some bugs , there was a bug report , you could get obvious artifacts with some music for example “infected mushrooms” the solution was to decode on your server and send lossless to the player
320kbps Ogg Vorbis and yes it's better than MP3. And no one can reliably hear the difference from CD quality beyond specific parts of specific tracks.
Still looking forward to lossless though.
Pearljam5000
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The bass always feels deeper and more impactful than MP3 even 320KBPS
Clarity is also higher
Yeah I haven't don't any blinde tests but I heard the difference for years so I trust my ears
Some people can't tell difference between Coke and Pepsi
Others are more sensitive
Clarity is also higher
Yeah I haven't don't any blinde tests but I heard the difference for years so I trust my ears
Some people can't tell difference between Coke and Pepsi
Others are more sensitive
I've probably said it before, but I'm fascinated that you've been on this site for years and still don't accept that you are victim of the same bias as everyone else.
There are no high pass or other level / energy / frequency adjustments in the bass with MP3.
It’s a bit of a quagmire, there are encoder settings such as limiting bass below some frequency because “inaudible” and it’s true for most people who don’t have systems that can produce impactful bass at sub frequencies anyway.
It’s a big “ it depends “
But during adequate conditions such as a good encoder and decoder it should be inaudible and are most likely proven to be so at a scientific level , so even if we think otherwise it’s not .
Hence why I would welcome lossless even if it should not be needed, I simply don’t trust Spotify or the Labels to always make their best effort all the time
It’s a big “ it depends “
But during adequate conditions such as a good encoder and decoder it should be inaudible and are most likely proven to be so at a scientific level , so even if we think otherwise it’s not .
Hence why I would welcome lossless even if it should not be needed, I simply don’t trust Spotify or the Labels to always make their best effort all the time
@Mnyb OK, my answer was a bit imprecise, I was still thinking of high bitrate Ogg Vorbis, not really MP3.
Almost no streaming services are using MP3 anymore I think, not sure why we're still discussing MP3 when we talk about lossy compression. We have Ogg Vorbis on Spotify, and most others use AAC.
As you say MP3 can be configured to do a cutoff, while I do not think Ogg Vorbis does that.
Almost no streaming services are using MP3 anymore I think, not sure why we're still discussing MP3 when we talk about lossy compression. We have Ogg Vorbis on Spotify, and most others use AAC.
As you say MP3 can be configured to do a cutoff, while I do not think Ogg Vorbis does that.
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