Spotify Is Testing a Lossless Subscription Tier For $15 to $20 Per Month (techcrunch.com)

Spotify is seemingly preparing to launch a lossless audio version of its streaming service. The offering, which is currently called Spotify Hi-Fi, will offer lossless CD-quality audio to users -- similar to what Tidal offers in its Hi-Fi service. From a report: For an extra $5 to $10, you could get all the features in Spotify Premium as well as lossless high fidelity streaming. There could also be a couple of new features. What is lossless quality anyway? Currently, if you go into Spotify's settings and choose the highest quality, Spotify serves you 320kbps audio files. It's very high quality, but it's not perfect -- in other words, it's a compromise. This way, files are still quite small and load quickly. Lossless files are perfect copies of the songs on an audio CD. They are then compressed, but without any quality loss.

Comments

Re:$10 for placebo quality

[GWBasic]

Last summer I wrote a program to compare two audio files, mostly to get an objective understanding of how sound degrades in a lossless format: http://andrewrondeau.com/blog/2016/07/deconstructing-lossy-audio-the-case-for-lossless

My conclusion is that, even at 320 kbps, formats like MP3 and AAC still screw with the sound. The newer Opus codec at 320 kbps is better than an 8-bit flac, though.

What happens with lossy audio is that it's more about "will someone notice an objectionable artifact" then "can someone notice the difference in an A-B test." Even then, the difference is usually in details that people don't pay close attention to. So, what you pay for in lossless is that the subtle echo in the fadeout sounds perfect, and that the equalization is always perfect, and that the cymbals and clicks of the guitar sound exactly like they do in the studio. Most people will never hear the difference, even in A-B testing.

In my very subjective experience, I find that AC3 has a certain dullness that lossless doesn't have. MP3 has a particular thinness that's noticeable compared to AC3. I personally don't have any opus files in my collection, so I can't comment there.