Spotify Launching 'HiFi' Lossless Streaming Option Later This Year

[Schnegg]

I'm all for higher quality files. I like FLAC when ripping old CDs.

But when streaming and sending over bluetooth, does it make a difference?
Anyone with audio proof and charts etc?

Notionally from listening to FLACs over BT, I think it does sound much better most times.
But depends upon device and with BT codecs used. LDAC sound better on Sony speakers.
Sometimes Apple devices (and others) sound awfully thin on same speakers.

I wouldn't worry too much about compression when using bluetooth audio. There are differences you can hear between different bluetooth standards as you mentioned, but without higher end, cabled gear it's quite hard to hear any improvements with lossless files.

But still, it should of course be an option to stream at the best quality possible.

 

[FactVsOpinion]

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.

The video is not the substance of my post, just an added bonus. 🙂

 

[TheSkywalker77]

So we’re just scrapping lyrics in the U.S. for this??

 

[cgs1xx]

I’d prefer Apple Music to have equalizer and volume gain control.

 

[kc9hzn]

The iPod craze decades ago pulled a fast one on a whole generation of young listeners -128kbs MP3s. It's safe to say that a significant portion of the human population now has no idea what Hi Fidelity is / cuz they've never heard it

Not sure how true this is. 120kbs MP3 is listenable, but I can tell it’s relatively low bitrate. It’s less that people can’t tell and more that they don’t care. Also, before the iPod, many young people were recording songs off of FM radio onto type 1 cassette tapes on low quality plastic boom boxes without any Dolby noise reduction, played back on lower quality late-model Walkman players. In general, young people ALWAYS have low quality audio* because it’s cheaper, while higher quality audio generally costs enough to keep all but the most well-heeled young audiophiles out of the market.

But I’m still not convinced that there’s consumer value beyond CD audio. For studios, 24-bit audio makes sense. You always want to have more headroom than the consumer format. But listening tests suggest that HiFi is snake oil more than anything. I think, even in context of current AAC/Bluetooth, you could get better sounding audio (at least more dynamics) with better mastering.

* Technically, 45 RPM records might have had better audio quality than 33 1/3 RPM records (since they’re running faster), though it’s hard to tell given the differences between vinyl formulations and whether studios applied better mastering for 45 RPM than they did for LPs.

 

[0924487]

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.

The problem is not the wireless technology used. It's the batteries in your headphones, AirPods, your phones. Higher bitrate wireless transmission can't be made into low power. Apple has AirPlay 2, for example, is partially WiFi based and can play Lossless. Technology is not there yet to make this low power.

The second issue is the bandwidth and spectrum licensing. Are you gonna just use 2.4 Ghz or 5Ghz? Those are unlicensed and free to use, but you will have interference problems, especially when you have multiple high bandwidth tunnels in one physical space. Imagine an office, where everyone is listening.

 

[FlyingTexan]

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.

It’s lossless FLAC audio. Whatever they receive from the studio is what you get.

 

[FlyingTexan]

For everyone thinking they've got what it takes. Here's a test passed around the audiophile group.

Is your audio system really ready for lossless?

Do an ABX test in your browser, and see if you can tell the difference between lossless and lossy audio

abx.digitalfeed.net

 

[FlyingTexan]

I’d prefer Apple Music to have equalizer and volume gain control.

Deezer poops on them all as far as I'm concerned. Years of spotify and now happily switched.

 

[4jasontv]

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.

But why are they so expensive? As I said, you can get free music streaming as part of packages from numerous other companies that offer nearly the same selection. I would have assumed Spotify was already offering better than CD quality, but apparently, they were just charging more.

 

[B/D]

When using AM to stream over Apple products their no further loss. However if You are using Spotify there's a loss when converting from lossy Ogg (that throws away bits) to lossy ACC (that throws away more bits)

Sadly, this is not true. AM AAC files are reencoded again to AAC for Bluetooth playback, which further degrades quality.

There is no pass through.

"Does AAC Bluetooth pass AAC files untouched?

It’s not unreasonable to assume that AAC Bluetooth passes AAC audio files over the air untouched, especially given the shared names. However, there’s never been any conclusive testing done to prove this, so we converted our lossless test files to AAC and re-ran the tests.

The frequency responses are identical for each phone whether playing lossless or AAC file types. We can also clearly see that none of the phones reach the same 20kHz limit as our AAC input file type. Even Apple’s iPhone doesn’t pass through AAC files untouched. The out-of-band noise floors are also clearly differently shaped in each instance, and none reach as low as our test file.

It’s a similar situation with the noise floor: Apple’s AAC implementation remains closest to the source material, but even here we can see some an extra -15dB or more of noise added to the signal. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and Huawei P20 Pro perform much the same as before—and are clearly worse than the iPhone 7 again. Even so, all of these phones re-pass an AAC source file back through the encoder, degrading quality. Just like with lossless files, the difference lies in how much additional compression is applied to the files on this second pass".

 

[Kenmat]

Sadly, this is not true. AM AAC files are reencoded again to AAC for Bluetooth playback, which further degrades quality.

There is no pass through.

Very badly documented article. It doesn't say how they measured or what they measured.
Hard to read anything from that article, however things may have changed since 2018.
Would be nice to see what happens in the same scenario with an Ogg file.
My experience with cross codec sound quality are not good.

 

[1258186]

Excellent news. I switched to Amazon when they launched a lossless HiFi option last year. It was ok but I will switch to Spotify when they launch this option, providing the price is competitive.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

A lossless audio tier would also pair well with Apple's high-end AirPods Max headphones that were released in late 2020…

…and stream audio over 256 kbps AAC-encoded Bluetooth.

 

[QT317]

Spotify is worlds better at recommendations than apple music. I liked a few songs off the John Wick soundtrack on AM, my 'new music weekly' on AM was then filled with OST tracks from....Disney movies?

like it didnt even understand that I was looking for a song featured in the movie. it just saw 'oh you like movie music? heres the score from the lion king!'

it also almost never suggested anything from genres i actually like. whereas spotify i immediately had 10+ new songs in my first week of new suggestions that instantly became favorites.

lots of stuff I liked was missing from AM too so when my xbox live sub gave me 3 months spotify free it was an easy switch.

there is websites that let you upload your playlists/liked songs list and migrate services too. its really easy, and the one i used even pointed out when there was errors/mismatches or songs missing.

 

[kalafalas]

Thanks for posting this, I've always been confused about the details of the Airplay 2 protocol. Still a bit confused after researching it. According to the Wirecutter, "With most speakers, AirPlay 2, like the original, uses your phone or tablet as the source, so if you turn your phone off or its battery dies, so does your music. The situation is different when you're playing from a HomePod, however, which streams Apple Music directly from the Internet—in that case your phone acts as a remote control, as with Chromecast. But the HomePod is the only device in the AirPlay 2 lineup that works this way."

Say I start playing a song from Apple Music directly on my iPhone and then Airplay it to an AirPlay 2 device. Will the Airplay 2 device then do all the streaming itself, or does it still rely on the iPhone since I didn't start the song from the HomePod? Based on the Wirecutter article, I would think it would rely on the iPhone.

It’s actually up to you!

You’ll notice two HomePod output options in the airplay menu.

One is under the listing iPhone, as an output device near Bluetooth and stuff. This will do airplay in the traditional sense, beaming all content over and shows “iPhone > HomePod” as the routing.

The other is under “control other speakers and devices”, if you select the HomePod here - now your Apple Music app is “controlling” the HomePods apple music app (with routing showing just “HomePod”, no iPhone >”, but the HomePod is doing all the heavy lifting, and any sound from other apps on your phone come out your phone speaker not airplay (like setting your devices output to airplay to the HomePod would do)

Unlike usual Apple stuff, this setup is complex and not immediately intuitive but offers a lot of control which is why I really like it

 

[Ralfi]

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.

I was of the impression that lossy/lossless are both streamed using AAC?

But now that you've mentioned that, i'm reminded of the new way Apple Music streams content to the AiPods Max - in that it sends data zipped & lets the AirPods Max decode it themselves, so it's not the same as a lossy song wirelessly streamed via AAC.

Does this give hope that if Spotify uses a similar content delivery system, that the difference in their lo-fi & hi-fi content will be noticeable??

 

[ericwn]

As far as I know Spotify currently streams 320kbps mp3. Ain't that CD-quality ?

If there only was a place on the internet where I could look this up. Like an engine that would help me search for that information.

 

[ericwn]

This is a great addition!!! So stoked.

Kind of an obvious next step.

 

[ericwn]

Apple Music not innovating in this space

How is that innovation? It’s been done by plenty others already. Maybe the innovative part is in the content curation.

 

[ericwn]

I don't see how high res audio streaming will be a benefit for AirPods Max customers. The bluetooth streaming technology that Apple uses will down sample any high res music.

HomePod will benefit if it’s streaming from the cloud directly.

 

[ericwn]

They do - ALAC, and it’s already in use

Not in Apple Music.

 

[ericwn]

I don't understand modern people. I listen to what I want and I don't need any algorithms.

Fair point. I guess these are just additional incentives/features that help some users discover more new stuff. That might be helpful in scenarios where you don’t discuss new music in your social circles anymore or don’t listen to much radio etc.

 

[ericwn]

Loseless music just got real, we are announcing today Apple Music+ service where you can enjoy loseless music with your lovely Airpods, and it costs only $20,99 a month. This is our biggest innovation so far.

- Apple

What’s a loseless?

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Can someone please explain the appeal of Spotify? Every time I read about them I cringe. Now they want to charge extra to get the same audio quality we had in the '80s? Why? Because other services do the same thing? Streaming audio is all they do - of course they should be better quality than everyone else. For what they charge they should be offering Atmos or High-Resolution audio formats standard..

LOL. So many people giving me a thumbs down for asking what this company does well. If you don't actually answer the question I am going to assume you are giving Spotify the thumbs down.

Definitely giving YOU a thumbs down, not Spotify.

Have you ever subscribed and used Spotify? I'm guessing not. What do you read that makes you cringe? Just curious.

Also, same quality as we had in the 80's? Music quality hasn't changed since the 80's, period -- except for the fact we don't have to carry around cases of shiny CD's and a battery powered player to listen to them.

You obviously have a bias against Spotify, and that's your choice, but when pitted against Apple Music, most people prefer Spotify for their superior playlists.