Welcome to the era of only Spotify Plays matter - let’s take a look at the underbelly of streaming scams affecting independent artists.

  • glorkon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 hours ago

    Unfortunately, Spotify’s streaming quality is rather low, even if you pay for a monthly subscription.

    I switched to Tidal when I bought a dedicated DAC and a pair of very highend headphones and have not regretted it - you can hear the difference on good gear.

    • Dozzi92@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 hours ago

      I have great gear, I have FLACs, I have 180g records, and I have Spotify, and they all sound fine. Perhaps I come from a time when 192 mp3s were what you downloaded, but IMO if it’s a 320 mp3 or above it sounds the same. Only time I ever noticed and appreciated a difference was when sampling or mixing, and then higher quality can be appreciated, but if I’m just cranking tunes, Spotify, FLAC, or vinyl, really makes no difference, they all drown out the ringing in my ears just fine.

      • glorkon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        Looks like your ears’ hearing profile matches the psychoacoustic models underlying lossy compression algorithms very closely.

        That’s the thing many people don’t understand - lossy audio compression works better for you the more your ears match the average human ear.

        In my case, being an older fuck with slight hearing deficiencies, I don’t match this profile as closely. That’s why I require higher bitrates (or lossless compression such as FLAC) for music to sound high quality.

        So yeah - listening experience isn’t just a matter of taste, it’s highly subjective and will vary from person to person. For people like me, the difference between low-res streaming and FLAC is very noticeable, and ironically not because my ears are better than yours, but because they’re worse. :)