Post by Davywhizz on Feb 22, 2020 8:47:15 GMT -5
My thread asking about Moe’s patrons’ experience of high resolution streaming hasn’t had many replies, but a significant number have read it, so I’ll add this little story about my recent comparison of music files.
I listen mostly through Spotify, using a hifi with Spotify Connect, so the streaming is direct, not via a phone or tablet. I use an iPad just as a controller. I love the functionality of Spotify and, to me, it can sound very good. This depends on setting it at the highest quality – 320kbps – and it helps if the source was well-recorded and produced in the first place. But it’s still MP3 and much lower quality, in theory at least, than a CD, much less a WAV studio file.
As a first step, I tried out on Spotify a list of tracks which one audio company uses to develop and test its speakers: www.cambridgeaudio.com/gbr/en/blog/test-your-speakers-cambridge-audio-engineer. I’d say my hifi, and Spotify, passed all the tests, but I don’t know how much better a more expensive system would be.
I then played some CDs and compared them to the same tracks on Spotify. I believe there is a difference in quality, CD is better, but it’s marginal and you need to be listening for it. After that I bought some familiar material as FLAC files and played them from a USB stick, along with some free, high resolution tracks available on-line. Again, close listening suggests there is a difference and another step up from CD but, once again, it’s at the margins. If you are looking for dramatic differences, you will be disappointed. The biggest improvement I’ve made in recent times, by several light years, was a speaker upgrade.
In terms of what I’ve heard, the progression from MP3 to CD to FLAC is a continuum, you just get a tiny bit more of the following at each level: It’s most noticeable, to me, when the vocal is prominent and not swamped by too dense an arrangement or vocal processing. For example, you’re more likely to notice aspects of the singer’s technique (breathing for example). Same goes for wind instruments. You might also hear more fine detail on acoustic guitar, double bass… or even electric guitar. Upper register harmonics maybe, the little nuances that make things sound like real instruments. Then there’s cymbals, something about how the overtones ring, sustain and decay. More important to me is dynamic range. Compressed music squeezes the louder and softer parts. Putting this back may be more or less important to you depending on whether the music you like uses dynamics. Finally, I think I hear slightly better separation between instruments at higher resolution. I don’t think I actually heard anything I didn’t know was there, but some elements were more distinct than I remember hearing before.
All this is subjective and unscientific. I didn’t particularly want to hear improvements - if anything it was the opposite as it’s cheaper. I’m interested in other thoughts. MP3 was developed for portability and to save space on music storage. We could all choose to move on from that, given the advances in technology and reduced real-terms costs. I read somewhere this week that “no-one” actually listens to music nowadays, it’s “always” a background to something else. I really hope that’s not true.
I listen mostly through Spotify, using a hifi with Spotify Connect, so the streaming is direct, not via a phone or tablet. I use an iPad just as a controller. I love the functionality of Spotify and, to me, it can sound very good. This depends on setting it at the highest quality – 320kbps – and it helps if the source was well-recorded and produced in the first place. But it’s still MP3 and much lower quality, in theory at least, than a CD, much less a WAV studio file.
As a first step, I tried out on Spotify a list of tracks which one audio company uses to develop and test its speakers: www.cambridgeaudio.com/gbr/en/blog/test-your-speakers-cambridge-audio-engineer. I’d say my hifi, and Spotify, passed all the tests, but I don’t know how much better a more expensive system would be.
I then played some CDs and compared them to the same tracks on Spotify. I believe there is a difference in quality, CD is better, but it’s marginal and you need to be listening for it. After that I bought some familiar material as FLAC files and played them from a USB stick, along with some free, high resolution tracks available on-line. Again, close listening suggests there is a difference and another step up from CD but, once again, it’s at the margins. If you are looking for dramatic differences, you will be disappointed. The biggest improvement I’ve made in recent times, by several light years, was a speaker upgrade.
In terms of what I’ve heard, the progression from MP3 to CD to FLAC is a continuum, you just get a tiny bit more of the following at each level: It’s most noticeable, to me, when the vocal is prominent and not swamped by too dense an arrangement or vocal processing. For example, you’re more likely to notice aspects of the singer’s technique (breathing for example). Same goes for wind instruments. You might also hear more fine detail on acoustic guitar, double bass… or even electric guitar. Upper register harmonics maybe, the little nuances that make things sound like real instruments. Then there’s cymbals, something about how the overtones ring, sustain and decay. More important to me is dynamic range. Compressed music squeezes the louder and softer parts. Putting this back may be more or less important to you depending on whether the music you like uses dynamics. Finally, I think I hear slightly better separation between instruments at higher resolution. I don’t think I actually heard anything I didn’t know was there, but some elements were more distinct than I remember hearing before.
All this is subjective and unscientific. I didn’t particularly want to hear improvements - if anything it was the opposite as it’s cheaper. I’m interested in other thoughts. MP3 was developed for portability and to save space on music storage. We could all choose to move on from that, given the advances in technology and reduced real-terms costs. I read somewhere this week that “no-one” actually listens to music nowadays, it’s “always” a background to something else. I really hope that’s not true.
