I have tidal sounds great 20 bucks a month. Sounds good on my shure 535s inears . Still on my 6s with headphone jack.
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Spotify Launching 'HiFi' Lossless Streaming Option Later This Year
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AirPlaying will stream from your phone. If you use handover (i.e. move your phone near the HP) it will play independently from the HomePod.
Unless you are using hardcore niche market hardware, you will not notice a difference here. Your good old iPhone + AirPods XXX or Sony WH-1000XXX will not stream anything above 256-320 kbps AAC.
You realize that not everyone uses Bluetooth all the time, right? Even AirPods Max have a corded option — and there are all kinds of speakers and headphone setups that don’t involve Bluetooth at all.
Seriously, I use this all the time. Sometimes I have my headphones connected to my phone and start streaming there, but then use my Mac to control playback on the phone. And sometimes I just send the stream to our iPad we have in the kitchen. Basically, it’s mix and match and it proves surprisingly handy in a lot of situations.
To me, low bit rate cymbals always sound like they’re kind of “underwater”. It’s very ugly!
I have, frequently.
AirPods are low/mid-range consumer earphones, so the sounds quality was never going to be that good anyway. Slight improvement with AirPods Pro but still not great.
Just like all the Sonos and Airplay people, nothing to do with Bluetooth.
I would imagine Apple doesn't do this because they so promote wireless headphones, and the maximum bandwidth of those are painfully slow. Sound quality is night and day once you add a wire. This isn't fundamental - I get 600 MEGABITS WiFi on my laptop - but for some reason I'll NEVER understand, Apple went with BlueTooth, one of the worst possible standards to use for audio.
This was the one time it would have changed everything if Apple had introduced their own standard for a wireless lossless audio format. It's 2021 - we can all afford 1.5 megabits transmission. We deserve at least 1980s level sound quality.
This was the one time it would have changed everything if Apple had introduced their own standard for a wireless lossless audio format. It's 2021 - we can all afford 1.5 megabits transmission. We deserve at least 1980s level sound quality.
Absolutely! I was simply making a point that simply comparing the bitrates between different formats is pointless.
More expensive add-on that varies per market. And by the way it's worded it will be targeted to people that are already Premium subscribers rather than a fresh sign-up option at launch.
Have you ever heard of the expression: "It's better to be silent and appear dumb, than opening your mouth and confirm it"?
One old, but still used compression is RLE, Run Length Encoding:
Original text:
abcddddddddabcdddddddd
RLE version:
abc8xdabc8xd
Dedoced text:
abcddddddddabcdddddddd
Look, the original and decoded texts are identical, yet the compressed version saved almost 50% space. Magic!
This is an example of lossless compression, the kind where no information is lost, it's only compressed to save on storage space. Very different from the likes of MP3 where stuff is filtered out to save a lot more space, at the cost of quality.
Actually, the current AAC streams from Apple Music (or Spotify Ogg Vorbis files, for that matter), are transcoded again to AAC over bluetooth , further degrading quality. So, having lossless files to stream will improve sound quality, even over bluetooth.
Lower quality than Tidal connect - Yes. Tidal connect can stream Hi-Res.
Lower quality than Spotify connect - No.
Airplay can stream lossless ‘CD’ quality and as Spotify doesn’t offer that quality (yet), Airplay is superior if you have Lossless files to stream.
Battery drain is relatively small on Airplay but the ‘connect’ features do offer a bit more convenience by streaming directly to the output.
320kbps is so Winamp PC days.
Lets make Hi-Fi standard with downsampling applied when wireless is used in the chain, and higher for everything else.
Lets make Hi-Fi standard with downsampling applied when wireless is used in the chain, and higher for everything else.
Well not entirely, Tidal streams their "Hires" in a lossy 17 bit format that contains 12 dB of added noise (due to embedded data etc.)
That's a totally different comparison.
- The existing Spotify vs the ‘improved Spotify’ is lossy compressed audio vs CD-quality lossless or uncompressed audio.
- That video compares CD-quality uncompressed audio with higher sampling rate / bit depth uncompressed audio.
As I understand it, the biggest value for HiFi audio typically comes from the better mastering techniques used for high end audio releases. If a mainstream service like Spotify were to add a bunch of audiophile masters to support HiFi streaming, I could maybe get behind that. But if they just use the same loudness wars CD/MP3 masters but deliver it in 24-bit audio, then, frankly, they’re scamming you worse than Monster Cable does with its gold plated HDMI cables.
That's what I remembered. Compatibility with Airplay shouldn't be too hard, but Airpods won't be able to use ALAC due to low-bitrate bluetooth standards.
Spotify today announced plans to introduce a new "HiFi" premium tier later this year, which will provide higher-quality lossless audio. According to Spotify, the feature will offer CD-quality music that will let fans experience more depth and clarity in their favorite tracks.
Streaming music services like Tidal, Deezer, and Amazon Music have offered lossless audio options but to date, Spotify and Apple Music have not provided higher quality streaming options.
Spotify is Apple Music's main competitor, so with Spotify planning a HiFi music option, Apple could be planning to also offer higher quality streaming in an effort to remain competitive. A lossless audio tier would also pair well with Apple's high-end AirPods Max headphones that were released in late 2020.
There's no pricing information available at this time, but Amazon Music's lossless tier is priced at $14.99 per month ($12.99 for Prime subscribers), while Tidal charges $19.99 per month and Deezer charges $14.99 for its high fidelity plan. Spotify plans to launch HiFi in select markets later in the year, and it will be a premium tier add-on.
HiFi was introduced at Spotify's Stream On event, which can be watched in full on YouTube.
At the event, Spotify also said that it plans to expand to more than 80 new markets in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, which allows the service to reach over 1 billion potential new customers. A full list of countries where Spotify will soon be available can be found on Spotify's website.
Other announcements included Spotify's new Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen "Renegade" podcast, new interactive podcast features for creators like polls and Q&A tools, and new music promotion resources for
I’m guessing you don’t know much about audio. They’re talking HIFI not lowfi. FLAC lossless audio. The only “better” quality is simply a selling point by TIDAL where they say they’re the original Masters from the studio but there’s no real difference. At that point your equipment like DAC and amp make minimal differences.