Spotify Hi-Fi

PapaLazaru

PapaLazaru

PapaLazaru

Soldato
Joined
23 Dec 2009
Posts
18,219
Location
RG8 9
Rumours abound it is coming soon and as a Spotify Premium user, this is what I have been hoping for, for years. Love using it but have always seen it as the weak link in my audio chain. I tried Tidal for a month for free and there is no doubt that the audio quality is better, but Tidal's catalogue is nothing compared to Spotify's.

http://www.whathifi.com/news/spotify-hi-fi-tier-set-to-offer-lossless-streaming

Anyone as excited as me? :D
 
If there is a reasonable amount in actual higher quality I would - the quality on Spotify can be a bit varied with some stuff sounding like it is a 128kbit mp3 that has been "enhanced" a bit then re-encoded at a higher bitrate.
 
I couldn't tell the difference between spotify HQ and tidal lossless. Blind tested it repeatedly and was wrong 50% of the time. It saved me about £15pm but spotify is just getting worse and worse at the moment.
 
Disco_P said:
I couldn't tell the difference between spotify HQ and tidal lossless. Blind tested it repeatedly and was wrong 50% of the time. It saved me about £15pm but spotify is just getting worse and worse at the moment.
Click to expand...

What is getting worse about it?
 
They got rid of messaging, moveable cache, spotify links opening in the app, play.spotify.com, lyrics and something else I can't remember off the top of my head.
 
Disco_P said:
They got rid of messaging, moveable cache, spotify links opening in the app, play.spotify.com, lyrics and something else I can't remember off the top of my head.
Click to expand...

New release notifications disappeared too, replaced with a "Release Radar" playlist instead. Not nearly as helpful.
 
ive tried out spotify/tidal/quobuz over the last few weeks,spotify has smoother ui but sound quality is hit and miss,tried running tidal beside playing dark side of the moon,tidal is better but not a lot better but has a really nice ui but not smooth as spotify,went on to try quobuz and within about 10 sec i looked down at my amp to see if it had changed settings /it does sometimes,there was a very noticeable jump up in sound quality, and that was with a 320 stream,tried the same album in high res 16bit 44,1 and it sounded even better ,the 2 big downs are that there app is crap,the tablet version is good dosent seem to crash anywhere as bad as the windows app,to sum it up quobuz sounds miles better if u can handle the app,tidal does sound a bit better than spotify but i prefer the spotify ui,very smooth and no problems,to me tidal isnt worth the extra cash,£19.99 compared to £9.99 spotify,i wonder what price spotify will charge for the better hifi,hhope they charge about £15.99,that would kill the comp,everyone should at least try out quobuz with a 2week trial,youl notice the extra sound quality,and oh forgot to say i bought chord mojo a few weeks back and it sounds amazing with each one,but even with a £400 dac you can still well i can,tell diffrent sound quality......................................#
 
Not had any crashing with the Windows version of Spotify (unless there is a Windows 10 app or something).

Likewise found the sound quality very hit and miss though mostly its atleast acceptable but definitely some stuff is higher quality than others - some if it seems to be a 128kbit MP3 re-encoded with some minor sound enhancements slapped on :(

One thing I really like with Spotify though - I've a tablet hooked upto some sound hardware with Spotify running on it and can have Spotify running on my desktop or even just pickup my phone and control Spotify on the tablet to change tunes, etc.with no additional software or complexity.
 
Is there no easy way to confirm spotify incoming bitstream rate ? either by looking at size of an offline copy, or monitoring process IO during streaming ?

(In movie/audio forum, I am posting on tidal hd where, even without MQA decode hardware ie. Meridian Explorer, the MQA source material sounds better than non-mqa material,
but equally, in Tidal, absence of clear identification of master that is being used for material, makes it a crap shoot with respect to quality to expect)
 
Dunno if I'm imagining it but swear Spotify is streaming in higher quality today (I've always had the highest settings set) - several tunes I've been listening to over the last few days are tighter/sharper sounding especially stuff like cymbals which had a slight "smush" to them before.
 
Qobuz is miles ahead on sound quality but their app/site is crud, they would obliterate the competition with some decent devs that could have a seamless app like Spotify
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom