I confess that as one who likes to retire, I was thrilled that my favorite streaming service – Spotify – has announced the launch of a new level of service for lossless audio streaming. Sure, it will cost more than I pay now, but throwing $ 20 a month for a perfect sound sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? My future road trips have just improved tenfold.
May be.
Here’s the thing. I wouldn’t pay any extra money for “enhanced audio” on any streaming service, simply because there is an opportunity. At least, not without seeing if I could tell the difference between the existing high quality streaming service offers and its lossless offers. I’ll argue that probably most people couldn’t tell the difference in most cases – and I’m not the only one saying that.
As Napier Lopes of The Next Web write:
“Spotify Premium (the existing $ 9.99 ad-free level) is already streaming at a maximum of 320 kbps (256 kbps on the web) if you have enabled this in the application settings. Although at low bit rates the differences between lossy and lossless sound can be quite obvious, I’m willing to bet that most people can’t distinguish a lossless file from a 256 kbps MP3 – not to mention a file tablet with the more modern Ogg codec that Spotify uses.
Our hearing is subject to a batch of placebo. Just believing that a certain update or key specification will make your speakers or headphones sound better is often more likely to cause an “improvement” than any actual change. However, many gold-eared audiophiles will swear they can hear a difference without evidence. “
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Because Spotify’s “HiFi” service won’t appear until the end of this year, you can’t test live streaming without loss. However, it’s pretty easy to see if you can tell the difference between audio files of different bit rates and compressions right now. Lopes recommends ABX Feed digital test, which gives you two audio files – a “A” and “B” sample – as well as a target sample. Your job is to tell if A or B matches the target and you can choose between a faster test “I can say without losses vs. without losses ”of five tracks, a ten-track test or a mega-20 track test.
In other words, the test checks if you can say a the difference between a lossless version and a lossy version of a song. And if you think it’s going to be easy, well … here’s what the test setup looks like when you use it:
Click A, X, or B to start playing a song, and you can switch between different versions by clicking A, X, or B on whatever you want. Even then, I found it quite difficult to tell the difference between files in most situations. Either my hearing sucks, or it’s very, very difficult to separate Spotify’s 320Kbps streaming – the highest quality – from a lossless file.
I won’t even show my results, because honestly I only guessed most of the time. It is plausible that my home audio setup – basically a pair of $ 150 headphones connected directly to the motherboard of the desktop computer – just isn’t good enough to allow me to hear the difference between a high-end file. quality and a lossless file. But even on a more optimized configuration, it is a difficult test, as a Reddit user describe:
I did this test with LS50W in a treated room. I’m about 65-70% correct. The thing is, I really had to concentrate hard, listening critically in a completely inorganic way. And yet I was wrong about even a high percentage of that. The difference was so negligible that I switched to Spotify from Tidal after doing that test. I haven’t looked back since.
If you want a test with bare bones, Pr also published a similar study in 2015, which you can use to test your ears. On this one, I did an excellent job of choosing the 320Kbps file. But the file without loss? Not so much.
And if you happen to have a lossless and lossy file of the same song, you can try this old trick to compare the differences between the two:
Regardless, I wouldn’t mind a more expensive “hifi” audio service if you can’t tell the difference between a “normal” streaming service and anything you have at home – headphones, speakers or ears. You will spend money for a “benefit” that you will never appreciate and that seems silly.