Sam L
Headphoneus Supremus
Thank you all for your input. I'm likely going to stay with Spotify Premium. I don't think I can consistently hear the difference between lossless and Spotify's "very high" quality setting. What I previously thought was a huge difference was attributed to Spotify's "normalize volume" setting.I sometimes do wonder why a great deal of music (especially popular stuff) sounds so poorly recorded / mixed these days. Especially if you conciser the capabilities of modern technology. Honestly, barely anything new that I know beats pink floyd from 45 years ago. A lot doesn't even sound remotely close to it. One of the main improvements I notice with modern stuff is very little or no background hiss. I don't know a great deal about the newer stuff out there, but in general, i find the popular music to sound like it has been recorded to sound sharp and clear right from phone speakers. Then when you listen to it with decent audio equipment, it sounds really badly tuned. The charts on spotify are an example of this. Admittedly, I very much dislike the style of most, but that isn't related to the way it is recorded. But I do wonder why so many artists that have so much money have them recorded in what sounds like they can't afford proper recording equipment - or the electronic sounds just sound like that in the first place.
One track that i actually happen to like the tune of is "Blinding Lights" by "The Weekend". But this is an example of what in my opinion is very badly recorded. The beatbox style drums i can accept as that may be deliberate (although not really my thing), but the synth, bass other sounds seem to have a really poor slightly muddy sound, almost like they are recorded from a tape. This may be 80s style music, but I know a large amount of bands from the 80s that had their recordings sound significantly better than this. I can accept strange recordings if music is pretty old, or clearly not that advanced yet, but so much modern stuff out there almost seems to be deliberately done like this and I just don't get why. If it was done better, it isn't like those who listen on their phones will care, and those who appreciate decent sound will actually be able to enjoy it more.
There are still a few more modern bands that i listen to, but are usually far less well known and have been heavily influenced by artists long ago. In my opinion, those are often the ones that tend to have better recordings.
Sorry for going on a rant about that! But it is an interesting topic.
Oh yea i could have worded that better. I agree it certainly will be a lot better, and that is possibly why a lot of people always use the better option, but the audible difference in a lot of situations is what is tiny.
I used to believe i could hear more differences than I actually can. It wasn't just the file size that made me put all my CDs on my FiiO x3 as 320kbps Mp3s, it was that i could hear no or little difference. With a really good CD player, listening to it direct could well have a noticeable difference with my headphones compared to an Mp3 on my X3 in that case, but I think that will be more related to the quality of the device than the format. I don't think I did thourough enough testing such as ripping a disk as a wav or flac and listening to that and the same disk as a 320kbps mp3 on my X3. I almost wonder if I would notice a difference there now.
From what I can see with primephonic and idagio trials I started, the search feature is more accurate, given the challenge of long similar titles in classical music (as compared to Spotify's search hits. But I can live with it.)
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