But.
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Spotify Lossless does not yet match the quality offered by streaming services such as Qobuz and Tidal. And those who use Audirvāna will notice even more difference. We mainly hear a difference in the soundstage, the spatial representation of the music. When we listen through headphones, all the music we listen to remains close to our ears. And that’s despite the fact that one album was recorded in a concert hall, another in a studio, and different types of reverb and other effects were used during recording and mastering. It seems as if a certain “Spotify sauce” has been added to the music, making it sound a bit the same in terms of spatiality.
Example. We play Babylon Sisters by Steely Dan, CD box set Citizen. A very nice remaster that we have written about before. Unlike the masters by regular engineer Roger Nichols, this one excels in coherence. We hear a band playing and are less distracted by all kinds of details in the recording. We first listen to this track via Spotify Lossless and it sounds OK. When we switch to Audirvāna and play the Qobuz version, we hear a world of difference. It’s as if the music comes to life. We hear the band members standing in the room, the drums at the beginning sound beautifully defined, and we can follow the reverb well. All instruments are better defined; if we were to compare it to a photo, it’s as if we were looking at a 10x15cm photo instead of a passport photo, with more natural colours and a sharper image. It immediately strikes a chord.
We do not think this is due to limitations in bit depth or sampling frequency, as is written on some audio forums. We play similar tracks with the same specifications as Spotify Lossless music, and they sound really different. Most of the music we play during testing does not exceed the values used by Spotify (24-bit, 44.1 kpbs). Hi-res audio and multiple oversampling lead to subtle improvements, but only if the greater computing power required for this is properly implemented.
Artists (or usually publishers) who supply music to Spotify must do so in FLAC or WAV format. Until September, Spotify converted these source files to Ogg Vorbis, AAC or HE-AACv2. Spotify is in posession of the originals in Lossless format, in FLAC or WAV. We wonder why a conversion still seems to have taken place. It could be the normalisation, the algorithm used to achieve a consistent volume within a track.
Even Qobuz connect sounds different than using Qbuz on the streamer itself (Eversolo DMP-A6 and Wiim Ultra). For me Spotify ‘losless’ is a great improvement, it sounds way better then before. Spotify is easier to find new music, with tv and music videos it is a decent option, the search function is better. But Qobuz still delivers on sound quality. since upgrading to Denafrips Enyo 15 and Iris 15 it is very audible what i give to the usb input on the Iris
Spotify lossless klingt voor geen meter.
Niet te vergelijken met qobus.
Wel wat beter dan dat het was.
Maar veel lijkt op mp3 maar net wat beter.
Grolloo radio klinkt veel beter🤣😅
If there are two companies storing all the streaming music then how do they get 44.1/24 for all the tracks when the files stored have various sample rates? Also early on we found that flow control really had a big impact on the SQ. The Amazon service had really poor flow control early on which meant the APP had to resample the music from a low quality stream to what the song’s sample and bit rate was suppose to be. Always more questions!
No idea about Spotify lossless — I use Qobuz as my main service and keep Tidal as a backup.
Here’s my question:
As you guys point out there seems to be a sound quality difference between different “lossless” streaming services.
… in this article you mention Spotify vs. Qobuz.
Any ideas why this would be the case? Normalization? Watermarking?
Me (and my brick’n mortar dealer as well) hear differences on some albums between FLAC versions of the same album, comparing Qobuz vs Tidal. Really strange.
I don’t believe that streaming services have the time to “optimize” different albums and would probably send out what they got from the artist or the artist’s distribution service of choice.
Any ideas what’s going on?
Normalisation of the sound (EQ) done by the streaming service and/or different profiles needed when mastering sound for a specific streaming service. See: https://www.sageaudio.com/articles/mastering-for-streaming-platform-loudness-and-normalization-explained
Thanks Martijn, that was an interesting read!
Ik heb van een YouTuber begrepen dat het niet volledig lossless is omdat Spotify geen direct stream heeft.
Tidal en anderen laten wel toe dat de thuis streamer de muziek stream 1op1 kunnen doorlaten. Maar bij Spotify is die mogelijkheid er niet en dus heb je toch nog een hardware handeling nodig in huis. Dat maakt het niet bit correct.
I think the YouTuber has gotten it a bit wrong, if her or she actually has said this.
The streamer runs Spotify connect software. It depends on the streamer manufacturer if they have embedded the latest code from Spotify in their own firmware or not. Naim has, for instance, Aurender has not (yet).
Yung did not test with Spotify Connect, as you can read, but the Spotify app playing on a Mac or Android phone to a connected DAC and headphones.