"If you listen to music the way a lot of people do these days - with a pair of wireless earbuds, from a Bluetooth speaker, or just blaring directly out of your phone - you will never notice a difference between Spotify's high-quality 320Kbps streams and its lossless audio. But, if you usually listen with wired headphones while working at your desk, or have a quality speaker from the likes of Bose that supports Spotify Connect, there actually is something to be gained here."
"Comparing Spotify's normal quality streams (96Kbps) with the new 24-bit / 44.1kHz lossless FLAC files feels unfair. Even a relatively untrained ear should be able to hear the difference. While compression technology has improved a lot since the days of crunchy Napster MP3s, there is still a noticeable loss in quality at 96Kbps. High frequencies especially can seem muddy and distorted."
"Even just jumping from normal quality to high quality (320Kbps) results in a very noticeable difference. But going beyond that to lossless, or even hi-res lossless on a competing service like Tidal, yields diminishing returns. I'd venture to guess that most people will be unable to tell the difference between Spotify's high-quality streams and lossless under a lot of circumstances."
Listening through wireless earbuds, Bluetooth speakers, or a phone often masks differences between 320Kbps streams and lossless audio. Standard Spotify quality at 96Kbps produces noticeable loss, particularly in high frequencies, despite improvements in compression. Upgrading from 96Kbps to 320Kbps yields a clear improvement, while moving from 320Kbps to lossless provides smaller, context-dependent gains. Lossless benefits are most apparent with gentle, acoustic-heavy music and prominent vocals. Heavily processed, distorted, or compressed tracks can obscure those gains, making lossless advantages difficult to perceive in many common listening scenarios.
Read at The Verge
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