Spotify Premium worth it for the audio quality?

[dasdoing]

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

 

[Plcamp]

Premium is better SQ, and remote control way better.

Wish Spotify would allow one account to be used in two locations in your home at same time. Aside from that, it’s great.

 

[dasdoing]

Wish Spotify would allow one account to be used in two locations in your home at same time. Aside from that, it’s great.

I use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.georgie.SoundWireFree for that, since my other speakers are all feed by phones

 

[dasdoing]

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

 

[DarkLord]

Spotify Audio quality is better than iTunes. Spotify is much smoother and less congested sounding. For me $20 a month for HiFi Tidal doesn't make sense. There's more to it than sheer bitrate too. I think Spotify is using a high end encoder. 320kbps should be good enough for most of the audible sound spectrum.

 

[DapperDanMan]

I had Spotify Premium for several years and was very pleased with it from a usability standpoint, but I found that I didn't listen to that much music, or for that long. It was almost always casual, not critical listening. I did a trial of Amazon Music HD a couple of months ago and it felt like the proverbial pebble had been removed from my shoe. I have probably been averaging 30-60 minutes of listening a day since the switch, and in turn I've been inspired to upgrade some of my equipment.

I am willing to believe that it could all be in my head, but I don't think that's the case. The base HD tracks (16-bit, 44khz) on Amazon are something like 850 kbps and the Ultra HD tracks are more than triple that. I'm dubious about the value of the Ultra HD stuff, but for my money I'd rather go with a service that offers lossless music vs. what you get from Spotify, even if Spotify offers the best interface.

 

[Sophoheilip]

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

Please watch the full video. One candidate is always his studio master track. So masking aside, outcome should be, what service is rendering the most accurately.

 

[dasdoing]

There's more to it than sheer bitrate too.

there is. during loudness normalization some files are made louder; so now you need a limiter. the quality of the limiter implentation is crucial in this case

Please 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

 

[Sophoheilip]

sorry, didn't watch it at all, and wont. I prefer to rely on abx to test codecs

This is certainly the "real world" test for comparison. I do see that.
For my part I don't have ears trained enough, to distinguish codecs at higher bitrates. Some of you will roll eys on me for this, but I just use lossless (online streaming) sheerly for my peace of mind.
If someone with 100,000+ tracks rips and downloads is in need of a "most lossless" compression to store these loads of data, I can see that.

 

[dasdoing]

For my part I don't have ears trained enough, to distinguish codecs at higher bitrates.

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

 

[DarkLord]

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.

 

[Jimbob54]

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.

Welcome. Not sure I quite agree about the importance of power cables and conditioners but the HD600 series are great cans.

 

[dasdoing]

what kind of music you guys are listening that sounds better on Amazon? Can I get example titels so I can compare?

 

[DapperDanMan]

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

 

[A.West]

When I upgraded from normal Amazon music to Amazon HD, I heard a noticeable improvement. The difference between the HD and Ultra HD tracks are less noticeable. As i mostly listen to classical music or older Prog, the recording quality, age and mic strategy tends to be the limiting factor once bitrate reaches at least HD level.
Amazon normally has a large number of HD, (CD level) recordings of major composer works, with the most popular works often having 1 or 2 Ultra HD recordings available. One thing surprisingly lacking is Amazon music's search mechanism. No way to search for UHD only.

 

[dasdoing]

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

you sure you were not hearing the loudness diference? Amazon is about 2dB louder on Metallica Hit The Lights

 

[Blujackaal]

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

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.

 

[DapperDanMan]

you sure you were not hearing the loudness diference? Amazon is about 2dB louder on Metallica Hit The Lights

That could be part of it. And now most of my listening is done on a new DAC / amp that I didn't have when I was still using Spotify. I did just go back and listen to the non-premium (High Quality) Spotify version of Hit The Lights and a few other songs vs. The Amazon Ultra HD version. Amazon's versions sound noticeably better to me. I might see if I can get my wife to indulge me by running some AB tests for me

 

[CDMC]

I noticed a significant difference between Deezer and Qobuz with Roon. I attributed it to Roon using waspi and Deezer going through the windows sound mixer, since it doesn’t have a wasapi option.

 

[dasdoing]

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.

wow. checked it again and their chart here is actualy confusing; they mention AAC for the webplayer, but don't mention codec for the APPS https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/system_settings/high-quality-streaming/

EDIT: https://artists.spotify.com/faq/mastering-and-loudness#how-does-spotify-process-my-audio-files