Youngsters- what are they like???
Discussion
Got a relative staying for a few days. He is 11 but heavily into music, so I am introducing him to my vast CD and vinyl collection.
In return he is showing me some of the stuff he listens to - on Spotify.
How crap is the sound?
I demonstrated to him the difference. I have Santana Abraxas on vinyl, cd and on my phone ripped from the CD. He found it on Spotify. All played through the same speaker system. Talk about Spotify having no soul. He agreed that the CD, and vinyl were way better, but no doubt he will be sticking with his Spotify account.
In return he is showing me some of the stuff he listens to - on Spotify.
How crap is the sound?
I demonstrated to him the difference. I have Santana Abraxas on vinyl, cd and on my phone ripped from the CD. He found it on Spotify. All played through the same speaker system. Talk about Spotify having no soul. He agreed that the CD, and vinyl were way better, but no doubt he will be sticking with his Spotify account.
Most people, young and old, don’t really care about fidelity.
Spotify may use lossy compression, but if you’re listening through cheap headphones, a Bluetooth speaker or in the car (like probably 95% of people) it just doesn’t matter. Plus, for the price of a single CD per month, you get a huge library of music on demand, wherever and whenever you want it.
If you want top quality, physical formats still rule (or Tidal, I suppose) but horses for courses.
Spotify may use lossy compression, but if you’re listening through cheap headphones, a Bluetooth speaker or in the car (like probably 95% of people) it just doesn’t matter. Plus, for the price of a single CD per month, you get a huge library of music on demand, wherever and whenever you want it.
If you want top quality, physical formats still rule (or Tidal, I suppose) but horses for courses.
Spotify premium, on the maximum bit rate, sounds fine.
If you're not doing very carefully controlled tests - double-blind and within 0.2dB - you can't draw valid conclusions. I can very easily rig a listening test to get people to choose whatever I want with a very small level shift, for example.
If you're not doing very carefully controlled tests - double-blind and within 0.2dB - you can't draw valid conclusions. I can very easily rig a listening test to get people to choose whatever I want with a very small level shift, for example.
Sporky said:
Spotify premium, on the maximum bit rate, sounds fine.
If you're not doing very carefully controlled tests - double-blind and within 0.2dB - you can't draw valid conclusions. I can very easily rig a listening test to get people to choose whatever I want with a very small level shift, for example.
This - i suspect he had it set to the default bitrate - I have it set to maximum bitrate and it sounds fine.If you're not doing very carefully controlled tests - double-blind and within 0.2dB - you can't draw valid conclusions. I can very easily rig a listening test to get people to choose whatever I want with a very small level shift, for example.
Spotify has been way behind almost all other streaming services for years, I don’t know why it’s so popular to be honest. I think they are releasing some sort of hi fi service but they’ve been saying that for a long time.
I guess it’s fine if you’re listening over headphones on the commute or something and presumably that’s what 90% of people are using it for. I gave up on it some time ago.
As said above though, not everyone appreciates hi fidelity.
I guess it’s fine if you’re listening over headphones on the commute or something and presumably that’s what 90% of people are using it for. I gave up on it some time ago.
As said above though, not everyone appreciates hi fidelity.
SteBrown91 said:
This - i suspect he had it set to the default bitrate - I have it set to maximum bitrate and it sounds fine.
I've made people choose MP3 over WAV just by tweaking levels without them knowing. One of them (a sound tech) was quite grumpy about it - he'd been waxing lyrical about how the MP3 had "air", "life", and "soul" - thinking it was the WAV.Gassing Station | Music | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff