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Spotify is Testing Lossless Audio

Thanks!
Interesting, now Spotifiy is good enough (and very funny to use) with my IPhone and my Bose Soundlinkmini, but if I want to listen hifi, I turn on my amplifier and my floorstand speakers.
 
spedey_74 said:
Thanks!
Interesting, now Spotifiy is good enough (and very funny to use) with my IPhone and my Bose Soundlinkmini, but if I want to listen hifi, I turn on my amplifier and my floorstand speakers.
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Spotify Premium sounds pretty good through my main system, give it a go, you could be surprised!
 
dweezil said:
Spotify Premium sounds pretty good through my main system, give it a go, you could be surprised!
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Same here, and good to hear a bump up in quality is on the cards. Also a very nice £5 discount on the monthly premium subscription through NUS extra, as I work at a UK University ;)
 
Surely the best compromise is to limit streaming audio to lossy compression, be that standard or high quality. Then for downloading playlists, give the option of downloading a lossless version but keep the lossy options. Doesn't seem like rocket science...
 
Sonos/Deezer just announced a partnership to stream lossless FLAC to Sonos kit.
Looks like lossless streaming will be a new battleground for the streaming services to try to differentiate themselves in.
 
Felty99 said:
Same here, and good to hear a bump up in quality is on the cards. Also a very nice £5 discount on the monthly premium subscription through NUS extra, as I work at a UK University ;)
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My wife has blagged the same discount. However she's due to finish her PhD this autumn, so no more discount .... nooooooo! Unless she can blag a Lectureship somewhere. :)
 
0rangutan said:
Sonos/Deezer just announced a partnership to stream lossless FLAC to Sonos kit.
Looks like lossless streaming will be a new battleground for the streaming services to try to differentiate themselves in.
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I agree. I have just decided to give Spotify a try using the free premium monthly trial. I have been a Qobuz lossless streaming subscriber. I prefer the Spotify software and media selection approach, and there is more media on Spotify, but the sound quality on premium often disappoints across all my devices from iPad to main system, and is significantly inferior to Qobuz.

So quite intrigued to read Spotify trialling with lossless, as for me that could be a winning combination of usability, content and quality.

Simon
 
I love Spotify, but it's not as good through my main system as lossless files played via ITunes/Pure Music so I also welcome this development.

Good news for us hifi nerds!

Btw, wrap Spotify round a Vodafone 4G contract and you also potentially get a good deal too.
 
JezmondTutu said:
I love Spotify, but it's not as good through my main system as lossless files played via ITunes/Pure Music so I also welcome this development.
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Any chance a bit of eq would tweak it up?

Spotify often sounds better on mine than hi res tracks on my server, cured by selecting "party1" eq on the preamp.
 
dweezil said:
Any chance a bit of eq would tweak it up?

Spotify often sounds better on mine than hi res tracks on my server, cured by selecting "party1" eq on the preamp.
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It might but controversially I'd have said it was down to lower resolution.

Although I listened to Dylan's 'Man with the long black coat' last night and I have to say it sounded fantastic.
 
Phil479 said:
I've never used spotify but how does it work with remasters? For example, if an original pressing sounds better than a remaster do they give you a choice on which one to play or are you forced to listen to the remaster?
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There are different versions of some tracks, some worse, some better than tracks i've got.
The big thing for us is that you can listen to all sorts of new music at no marginal cost.
I still buy the cd if i really like it. We can suffer from a slow connection so it's good to have a basic selection on phone, cd, tape and vinyl.
 
They often have one version, sometimes original sometimes a remaster. It's pot luck.

As dweezil wrote, before making judgments about Spotify per se you should be absolutely sure you're comparing the same version of the music.
 
Sometimes the files are appalling. I've listened to a few files that were digitized vinyl using cruddy turntables. Thing is, as the marginal costs are free, you can't really complain: it's not as if you paid for the file.

Which leads on to the big questions: when is Spotify going to break even, and when is it going to develop a feasible business model?
 
I can't see it catching on. Not enough people who know or care about the difference in quality to make it commercially viable I would have thought!
 
Arkless Repairs said:
I can't see it catching on. Not enough people who know or care about the difference in quality to make it commercially viable I would have thought!
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I don't see it happening for many years.
Spotify premium is already 320kbs and you have to contrive a particularly unrepresentative test to get the effects of the mildest lossy compression to show at this bitrate.

Still far better than the best analogue recording gear, which puts things into context.
 
Robert said:
I don't see it happening for many years.
Spotify premium is already 320kbs and you have to contrive a particularly unrepresentative test to get the effects of the mildest lossy compression to show at this bitrate.

Still far better than the best analogue recording gear, which puts things into context.
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On that point I vociferously disagree! I'd put my PR99 MKIII half track at 15ips up against any digital recording system anyday. The digital easy wins in measured performance but the analogue easy wins in SQ IMHO.
 
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