Spotify to launch 'Hi-Fi' CD Quality Tier.

[Sal1950]

Man Roon got you guys hooked.
There's loads of excellent media players for free.
Break away from the Roon cult.

 

[Astrozombie]

I'd rather have a $5 tier.

 

[pjug]

After paying for a month of Spotify today to reactivate my my account and take a look at their apps, etc., and canceling it all after about a half an hour, my conclusions are:

Spotify sound quality is sketchy, and won’t improve with lossless because of technical reasons and weirdness. Apps are a hot mess, and sort of incomprehensible. Their “AI” is better than all the rest for recommendations, discovery, playlists, etc., including Roon, but at what cost?

They are similar to Amazon. Just checking off a box, with no concept, care, or plan for catering to serious music listeners. They are all about earbuds, social features, memes and the like.

Roon+Qobuz is the best sound quality, and has adequate discovery if using Roon, (as long as you don’t use Roon Radio, which is fubar).

Tidal apps are way better than Spotify, and have adequate discovery/playlist features (better than Roon, actually).

So anyway, despite my initial interest in Spotify’s big announcement, I now conclude it’s a meh, or worse, a grift.

I just hope Roon, Qobuz and Tidal can survive. They probably will, at least in the short term, because your typical Spotify user doesn’t care about any of the above

I am sorry to say I also just started a trial of Spotify Premium and I'm already at a dead end. Their Sonos app is pathetic. No browsing of genres, not album oriented at all, no good unless you already know what you want to listen to. Maybe spotify connect would be better but that's not what I want. I like using the Sonos and BluOS controllers. So I guess I'll keep hoping that Qobuz and/or Deezer improve what I am finding lacking with those services, because I can just tell Spotify is not going to be for me.

 

[Sukie]

Man Roon got you guys hooked.
There's loads of excellent media players for free.
Break away from the Roon cult.

No problem if you don't like Roon but there are literally no other media players that provide the combination of services that I need/want.

This isn't about being hooked. It's about weighing up the merits of a service and working out if it provides value for money. In my case, it does.

 

[ThatM1key]

Theres a spotify plugin for foobar2000. Can only play not download.

 

[DeLub]

Spotify sound quality is sketchy, and won’t improve with lossless because of technical reasons and weirdness.

How did you find that out in half an hour? What technical reasons and weirdness are you referring to?

 

[ThatM1key]

How did you find that out in half an hour? What technical reasons and weirdness are you referring to?

All music steaming platforms have bad copies of music because of the record labels. The quality is comparable to a cheap walmart cd box set or from the $5 walmart cd bin. Lossless or lossy, its gonna sound terrible either way.

 

[jannek]

Could you explain to me what is different at the audio quality of a walmart cd box set?

 

[ThatM1key]

Could you explain to me what is different at the audio quality of a walmart cd box set?

With walmart cd's, they are lazily put together. These cd's often have Terrible DR and/or Terrible sources. Most people including my father don't care about the terrible DR, they only if the original song and not some re-recording. I talk about DR because these companies claim that they care about audio and want you to hear the best but infact give you walmart cd quality instead.

 

[buz]

Even assuming that's true, how many albums outside of billboard even make it to Walmart? Almost everything has to come from other sources and by default I would assume that people don't bother to do much of anything to them

 

[Morla]

given that sptfy is generating losses year per year I bet going lossless (lol) is just another step to increase user volume. They might have looked at how much difference it would make financially to stream more data over the link and in the end.. probably turned out that traffic is cheap enough

The other way to minimize their costs is the increasing amount of self-produced content (podcasts, cover songs and so on).

Just my 2c

 

[ThatM1key]

Even assuming that's true, how many albums outside of billboard even make it to Walmart? Almost everything has to come from other sources and by default I would assume that people don't bother to do much of anything to them

Lots and lots of get released to walmart. Even if these cd's had good sources they'll still suffer from the loudness wars, just like my walmart johnny cash cd.

This is where your steaming services get there "high quality loseless" audio from. If record labels don't give a shit about making and sending terrible cheap cd's (even the higher priced ones), why would they care about sending these steaming services good copies of music?

 

[jannek]

So the labels spend some money for remastering the recording badly just to sell it cheaper on samplers than the original cd? Even if most people won't notice a difference or even if - don't care?

 

[ThatM1key]

So the labels spend some money for remastering the recording badly just to sell it cheaper on samplers than the original cd? Even if most people won't notice a difference or even if - don't care?

Remaster is a bit of a stretch but yes. They still make regular albums like Aerosmith's but it still would sound terrible. Most people only care if it sounds like what they heard before regardless if the DR is worse. The most common reason why these record labels do this, is because average people have average audio gear.

 

[jannek]

I'm not talking about reduced DR because of general loudness war but of better and worse sounding versions of the same recording. Did someone verify this (for example with that Delta Wave software)?

 

[ThatM1key]

I'm not talking about reduced DR because of general loudness war but of better and worse sounding versions of the same recording. Did someone verify this (for example with that Delta Wave software)?

Some must've done that. I only did testing of DR from multiple streaming platforms.

 

[jannek]

I have bought several 16-44.1 albums (from Sony Classical, DG, Decca, Warner Classics) on qobuz, and they match perfectly (bit perfect) with my CD rip from newly bought CD (test with Pkane's DeltaWave software). Two albums do not match, and it is because my rips of those albums are from second-hand CD. One Decca album (Freire - Chopin Concerto) have watermarked. That's all

This posting let's me assume that this is maybe no general problem but of individual tracks or albums. Maybe you have some examples so someone else could verify this?

 

[buz]

So the labels spend some money for remastering the recording badly just to sell it cheaper on samplers than the original cd? Even if most people won't notice a difference or even if - don't care?

It doesn't make a lot of economic sense to me either. Then again the labels have shown weird view of economics repeatedly...

 

[jannek]

Just had a chat with guys from major label in local hifi shop few days ago. They talked about all the process, what they deliver, what specs Tidal/Qobuz wants etc. I remember they underlined the fact that - at least for their music - the track they send to Tidal/Qobuz for 16/44 is not the exact copy of the track they send for CD... I can try to reach them and verify what exactly the differences but I think it’s not really important anyway.

That would be really interesting what the difference is.

 

[voodooless]

It doesn't make a lot of economic sense to me either. Then again the labels have shown weird view of economics repeatedly...

That is because these cheap CD mixes probably not only end up at Wallmart. It's probably the same stuff that goes to the streamers. So it's no extra work at all.

See here an example of not a cheap CD mix, but still telling. I've always found the original 1988 CD sound marvellous... Might just be me have some childhood nostalgia of course, but the latest "remaster" of 2020, sounds decidedly dull on Quboz (next to the fact that they butchered some of the sons). And this is probably not even a very bad example. Did not compare the old version on Qubuz yet. It's not really clear what the source of that one is though. And no (functioning) CD player anymore in the house to compare with the original

Edit: Just did a quick compare with "Learning to Fly" Oh man, that new master is fucked up. One thing they did well, is to remove some of the reverberance of the live recording, but otherwise it quite a shitshow

Edit2: Just checked the Spotify version of the 1988 album: it seems to be the same...