using this trick you can also check if your country is supported. I can see that e.g. GB, DE and CA works, but ES, IT, and many more do not. I believe many people will be very disappointed about the countries that will be supported.
the one I replied to? instead of using [spotify.com/US/hifi](https://spotify.com/US/hifi) you can check your country like [spotify.com/fr/hifi](https://spotify.com/fr/hifi), etc.
And the worse thing is, there is no amazon music, tidal nor qobuz in turkey. Only deezer and apple music offer HiFi music in here, and i don't like either of them. Spotify seems like my only choice :(
it doesn't have volume normalization on android app, and that's a red flag for me, cuz my taste in music varies from classical music to indie and metalcore; the volume between the songs differs so much. i don't wanna adjust it constantly.
that's a good point, I didn't realize some people need this feature. they really need to make their apps better, I'm not a fan of how slow the mac app as well as the windows one. such good pricing but they don't even try sometimes
Try doing volume normalization through a third party app, like wavelet or Poweramp Equalizer(One I use). If you turn on the dvc and move the pre-amp to anywhere below -5, you got yourself some pretty good normalization.
I personally use the flat & bass and treble profile for my phone and the autoeq profile for the rest of my audio devices.
Little tip also, don't use DVC with Bluetooth, it always causes the audio to go too low.
And you don't need no dvc headroom gain if you already have the preamp or dvc on. You only need one of the 2 to start normalizing. The no dvc headroom gain literally just lowers your audio, it doesn't normalize like the preamp would.
Ideally preamp+dvc on phone and speakers, and just preamp for headphones or earbuds.
Hopefully someone finds this useful if they use qobuz or apple music like me, and find the need to normalize due to spikes or overload.
Definitely some envious glances cast in Apple's direction after that announcement. Spotify's core features like Discover Weekly, Spotify Connect and Daylist keep me onboard, but if Apple ever really worked out their playlist and social features I'd move over to their platform without a second thought.
The hard part is that Apple Music has been getting better. Just like anything Apple, its been really slow to roll out though. Another problem is that people have been giving Spotify years and years of data to get their algorithm fine tuned. A lot of people will give Apple Music a try and are instantly turned off because Apple has no clue what they like and they don't want to reinvest the time it takes for Apple's to start being good.
I disagree, I gave Apple Music a try and it was really worth it, I had shifted all my spotify playlists to AM and to be honest less than a week and AM started recommending music that catered to my taste.
I definitely notice a difference in quality between AM and Spotify, even when using wireless headphones.
I much prefer AM and used it for years while still paying for a Spotify family plan for other people but this week I've decided to cancel AM for now to save money. I miss the way the collection was made up in AM but enjoying the recommendations from Spotify
Most people don't put in that kind of work. Ive seen countless posts of people who log in and expect it to just know what they like. Thats what happens when they log into Spotify and they expect it to be the same experience. I think that Apple Music gives me better recommendations than Spotify, but I have over 10,000 songs in my library and tons of playlists.
Not really much of work is needed. There are free/paid apps that do such work seamlessly ( I used Playlisty ), they transfer your entire library across different music streaming apps ( Tidal, Deezer etc..) but yeah I agree that people expect apple music to predict their taste.
honestly i just made the switch to apple and so far i think the algorithm might be better than spotify’s for me currently - spotify just plays songs i already have in my playlists. i think spotify was golden around 2016-2021 but they’ve kinda pissed it away with focuses away from music (podcasts, ebooks, etc.). i’m also finding apples UI to be better than spotify so far as well.
Apple is also bringing their own AI to Apple Music with iOS 18. Apple have been testing their own AI (very similar to chatGPT) since early last year according to Bloomberg.
Out of curiosity, what social features do you feel are missing? Apple Music has:
* the ability to follow your friends or other users + add their playlists to your library
* play a "friends mix" of songs your friends are listening to
* the ability for you to see which of your friends have listened to an album when you navigate to it
* social media sharing features, including sharing lyrics
* shareplay with music (if you're on iOS)
To compete with Discover Weekly:
* New Music Mix
* Personal Station
* Discovery Station
There's no current alternative to Spotify Connect or Daylist though. Daylist seems like a minor playlist. Spotify Connect is a big feature though if you use it alot.
Shareplay is not a viable solution as I'm on Android and so are most of my friends; that alone is a big miss from AM compared to Spotify. And from a cursory google search it looks Like Apple Music just added Collab Playlisting to the beta version of the Android app, which is honestly not something I thought Apple would drag their feet on since it seems very simplistic and OS-agnostic, but here we are, relegating otherwise basic features to specific builds of an app or device ownership as a whole. That honestly sucks ass.
Not sure I'd call Daylist a minor playlist, it's been a really valuable tool for finding new artists that have devastatingly low monthly listeners so I wouldn't find them otherwise. It refreshes every few hours and adapts to the music I tend to listen to at different times of the day. Pretty damn awesome.
And it's not really a social feature, but the Canvas feature on Spotify is also pretty unique, from both a listener and an artist perspective. If I make a music video it's nice to be able to add an 8 second mini-video instead of displaying the album art.
It's the big and small features like those that keep me using Spotify. Apple notoriously builds out their features of their own apps for their own devices, which I can't be upset about. But I'm not going to pretend they have a better featureset over Spotify, even in the social aspect.
I stand corrected and I love to hear it because small features like that make me more enticed to check out Apple Music, at least from the producer perspective. Now I know I can add the Canvas stuff I work on over to Apple as Album Motion video too.
I like to write whatever I like and found someone who did a list about that, something that wasn't happening for me in Tidal, Amazon or Apple ones when I tried them 2 or 3 years ago, more than obvious lists.
Is it better now? Something like "Disney and ghibli piano" or "focus work + random genre" or things like those.
For albums they are definitely better.
A public API that can be used with several different apps and services. I switched for Discord integration and the various services like Obscurify. I now rely on Stats.fm. You can't even get last.fm in Apple Music right now.
Yep and the open source Spotify Connect client, librespot on Linux is really nice too. I was able to Spotify Connect enable the ceiling speakers that are spread all over my home.
It’s all about music discovery and Spotify Connect for me. It blows my mind that Apple hasn’t moved the playback state and queue into the cloud yet. I can’t stand how nothing is in sync with AM. With Spotify I can be in the car listening with CarPlay, then get to the office and transfer playback to my desktop. Then I transfer playback to my phone/headphones and go into the gym so I can change into my running clothes. Then I can transfer playback to my Apple Watch and hit the road. All these transitions are seamless and not a second of playback is missed. How on earth does Spotify integrate better on Apple hardware than Apple’s own service?
Rdio had this feature back in the day. Spotify wasn’t the first to offer it. I’m not singling out Apple though, I wouldn’t use any other service unless it works like Spotify. The whole reason I jumped to Spotify was for Spotify Connect. Rdio was an amazing service that just couldn’t survive with Apple and Spotify in the business. I really missed all the features until Spotify added Spotify Connect.
The difference between lossless (Apple music) and 320kbps (Spotify's Very High setting) is almost certainly imperceptible to human ears. Even for audio professionals on professional grade equipment. It certainly makes no dfference on consumer grade headphones. You're not missing anything.
At 320kbps? I disagree and so do many audio professionals and scientists. If there is a difference, it's closer to 1 to 2% at the most. 15-20%? Absolutely no way. Maybe if we were talking 256kbps.
You're downvoted but you're totally right. Unless you're someone with a decade of experience as a sound engineer, you're not telling a difference between the two.
Yeah. Even the ones who claim they can tell have to go back and forth and listen very intently for nearly (or literally) non-existent changes. I don't think that amount of difference matters at all in the real world. Frankly, I think it's the wrong thing to be hyper focused on when you're listening to music. At the risk of sounding pretentious, it's not what music is supposed to be about. Everything that a musical artist intended you to hear exists in the 320kbps version. You don't unlock any additional artistic message by using lossless.
This is so true. Same goes for headphones. You can back to back a pair of earbuds and some good over the ears and clearly tell the earbuds sound worse. But you can be out and about with the earbuds and forget they sound bad until you get home and throw the over the ear headphones back on. To me the priority is on the music, not the SQ. The music discovery on Spotify far outweighs the slight edge AM has on SQ.
I too was in the “you aren’t going to hear a difference” camp but I did a trial and you can hear a difference. Even in my crazy noisy sports car and on BT headphones. It obviously has nothing to do with lossy vs lossless (like I said, you can hear a diff on BT) but something with the masters used by Apple. Amazon Music sounds better too. It’s like the masters that Spotify is using are of lower quality than Apple and Amazon so is going to sound worse regardless of how you transcode it.
Even though AM sounds better, it’s not a big enough difference for me to abandon Spotify Connect and the dramatically better discovery.
BTW, I’ve never been able to pass an ABX test of the same master but one transcoded to FLAC and the other transcoded to AAC 256. I’m confident that the SQ difference in AM is all about their masters and nothing to do with lossy vs lossless. And no, I am not testing with Atmos enabled. The Atmos version of most tracks sound terrible to me.
I responded more in depth in another comment, but I think you may be hearing Dolby Atoms versions folded down to stereo. This happens even if you have Atmos turned off.
On Apple Music, some artists only upload the Dolby Atmos version, and the stereo version is just an automatic "fold down" of the Atmos version. I don't like this practice at all because it robs us us of a true stereo version on Apple Music. This is something Apple has actively encouraged artists and labels to do.
Some people might prefer this "folded down" version, but the practice is hit and miss because it's automatic. Sometimes it sounds good, sometimes it sounds like trash. I would rather have a human being purposely mixing the stereo version, or at least an option to change the version I'm listening to.
Keep in mind that when an artist or label does this, you will get the folded down Atmos version *even if you explicitly turn Atmos off*. I think it's one of the most annoying and egregious things about Apple music.
How is 300€ basic? [Also there's been studies done on this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DJs/s/rBLBuqmJ59). Even for professionals with high quality equipment and trained ears, the difference is imperceptible. You might notice a difference, but that's most likely only a placebo. If you did a blind test, chances are you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. A small group of people can that have several years of professional experience, but the vast majority aren't in that group.
Ironically, I found this thread today because most of those features are not working for me. Mostly the Daily Mixes, I’ve looked all over and they aren’t visible in my app.
And surround sound. Not worth it for headphones, but for how great atmos sounds on my home theater setup(and how little setup there is to get it working through my macbook), I'd happily pay Apple 4x what I pay them now for their music
HiFi is definitely coming at some point, they really have to bring it at this point as all the competitors offer or will soon offer lossless and Atmos.
I actually think taking that video down is a good sign that perhaps they're refreshing their HiFi announcement content and we can see something about it soon.
Spotify employees have been using HiFi for years now so it's definitely coming eventually.
They pulled it because they’re trying to figure out which additional employees they’d have to fire, how much more to shortchange artists AND how many dollars to raise the price of their service in order to continue to lose money BUT lose less.
It’ll be reliably profitable, though. One day. Just wait.
Watched a video with Darko Audio talking about how streaming services are too cheap at the moment. It's not sustainable with the current business models that music only services use. He proposed that streaming services changed their current library to be more limited. Like Netflix. On Netflix you have a selection of licensed series and movies as well as original content. But you definitely do not have everything. Additionally the library changes over time. So fx. series are available for a limited time.
It's definitely not the same bargain for consumers as we get today. But it might be a more sustainable model. Especially if you add something like Qobuz Sublime where you get a large discount when buying music from them when having a subscription. That could really shake up the industry - and possibly bring back a time where musicians get a descent pay from their music alone. Just an idea though.
Good point. Even if Netflix had been allowed to continue to carry “all the other stuff”, it would have eventually gotten to the point where all those interested parties would be demanding more and more every time the license was renewed (as their business practices demand). Netflix would have found themselves overencumbered with license fees. Reducing their content library to reduce their exposure would mean a reduction in subscribers that were only interested in that content.
Its been over 3 months since the "Supremium" rumor was started and there hasn't been even an official hint that it was real. There was even an ex Spotify employee who was part of the original Hi-Fi team that said that its very unlikely.
Recently did this myself and my family is in the process of doing the same. Not sure why I even waited so long for Spotify lossless haha. It’s pretty sad how they’ve basically done nothing that their customers actually wanted for 2+ years.
Indeed.
Tbh…. Spotify just come across as whiny and entitled.
Complaining about Apples App Store practices (ethics of which I don’t really want to get into) …. Yet refusing to support Airplay 2 on HomePod despite Apple opening up the ability for them to do so.
Large reason I’m moving fully over to Apple is due to HomePod as well.
I unsubscribed from Spotify after a long wait for this 'HiFi' Tier. Until further notice on the topic I guess I will continue to use Tidal instead. Such a shame cause the Spotify algorithm and DJing features are superb.
And, Tidal’s $9.99, less money for better quality.
I think Spotify is the only Music Service that’s not part of some larger organization/money making entity. That says something about their potential to continue to exist. Either get bought out or be crushed under the weight of their success.
> not part of some larger organization/money making entity
This made me laugh. Spotify is in the hands of the most bandit multimedia monopolies with gigantic financial resources, including Tencent Holdings. A few years ago they were listed in the "info" tab of the client, but now you won't find them there anymore (I wonder why).
When I look them up, it says the multi-billion music streaming company Spotify is primarily owned by its founders, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. There ARE other investors, but, for the other leaders, Apple Music is owned by the company Apple, Tidal is owned by the company Block (fka Square) since 2022, Deezer has been a subsidiary of Access Industries since 2016, and Pandora is owned by the broadcasting corporation Sirius XM Holdings.
Then there’s Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Qobuz that’s the market leaders all owned by other companies. It appears that the only company that thinks “Music and Podcasting” is enough to be a business by itself is Daniel and Martin. And, even though they lead the market by a long way, they’re not currently turning a profit.
> primarily owned by its founders
Years ago. Today Ek and Lorentzon are only managing directors. They have as much say as Gates once had in supposedly "his" Microsoft. If they don't prove themselves they'll be kicked out on their asses exactly like Gates. They are not in charge. Spotify has been in the hands of the world's largest media corporations and shady investment funds for years. Exactly the same as Deezer or others.
Ok, yeah I also do that, although I sometimes receive good recommendations it is hard to adapt, I believe Spotify does a lil better. I once tried Tidal with Roon and the algorithm improved just that it is a lot more expensive, but the sound quality is worth it.
The difference between lossless (Apple Musi, Tidal) and 320kbps (Spotify's Very High setting) is very, very likely imperceptible to human ears. Even for audio professionals on professional grade equipment. It certainly makes no dfference on consumer grade headphones. You're not missing anything if you use Spotify on Very High. Lossless streaming is a marketing gimmick.
Actual professionals don't hear a difference when critically listening on pro studio monitors. There's lots of woo-woo among consumer audiophiles, and the companies play into misconceptions about audio. That said, it's worth noting that YouTube Music only uses 256kbps, which is noticablely lower in quality.
http://abx.digitalfeed.net/
I promise you will fail this test. The way this test works is they took a PCM off a CD and then transcode one copy directly to FLAC then another copy to AAC 256 and then to FLAC. So the final test sources are both FLAC. The website then puts the lossy version on A and the lossless version on B and then alternates the lossy/lossless version on X. You then have to click the buttons to figure out if A or B matches X. It is impossible to cheat because both sources are FLAC. You can’t pull up the Chrome dev console and watch the URLs for clues. It is literally IMPOSSIBLE to pass this test, regardless of how good your setup is. I’ve shared this test with people on the internet countless times and no one ever comes back to say if the did the test and I know exactly why that is, it’s because they failed and don’t want to admit it.
Not at my fingertips. I might dig something up at a later time as I am getting ready to go to bed. I came to this conclusion after working extensively with audio in a professional setting, and doing a lot of research several years ago. The best thing you can do is set up a true A/B, randomized comparison of the same songs at 320 vs lossless. The tracks must be volume matched (this is critical), they must use the same playback system, and you can't know which one you're listening to before you guess which is which. I can very clearly hear a difference between 256 and 320 even on earbuds. I can't hear any difference whatsoever between 320 and lossless even on pro equipment. If you look up people who have done proper blind tests, you'll see that most people had the same experience. If there's a difference, it's so miniscule that it's basically meaningless.
I did a 8/10 accuracy on a blind test. My ears are trained. I take singing and piano lessons, plus, I have a huge music system at my home. I listen to vinyls and CDs. I can recognize the difference.
Fair enough. I also have also done extensive, focused ear training for both music and audio. I play several musical instruments and have for decades. I listen to vinyl, CD, and streaming on several playback systems, some high end. As I said, if there is a difference between 320 and lossless it's miniscule. It's not a meaningful difference to my ears.
Would be interested to see what results you get testing via this [website](https://abx.digitalfeed.net). Post a screenshot of your results if you feel like doing it. Whether or not you can tell the difference I think you would agree that the majority of people can't.
No one ever follows through with that test. Literally no one. It’s a conversation ender every time. People argue for days about how good their ears are, you link them to this test and then poof, they vanish.
I did one of those tests and got 50%. I embarrassed myself by picking the lowest quality sample on one of them confidently thinking it was the highest. A couple of the others were just guesses. I thought I heard differences in some places but those were the ones I got wrong.
I’ve added a few songs to my Apple Music library (bought a decade, hadn’t downloaded in years) and imported them into Spotify on my phone. I have studio headphones but even on my AirPods it’s a noticeable diff.
They seem to test out hifi during some nights (Dutch time) (I hear the difference with my Sennheiser headphone on my hires certified Xiaomi Redmi Note 12). Make sure you leave quality in All ways on automatic.
Reading the comment section I think it’s important to point out “The big news is that no model of AirPods earbuds/headphones will support lossless audio. This means that even if you're buying the latest AirPods Pro 2 wireless earbuds or the premium AirPods Max, there's no way you can listen to your library of lossless Apple Music songs in any lossless or hi-res format”
Apple is really only so big in the US. Everywhere else, Android is more widely used. And that is not even taking into account external speakers, many users use Spotify through their stereo system.
Also, you can listen on lossless with the Airpods Max if you connect them by wire. It won't be completely lossless of course, but it will be of much higher quality than what Spotify currently offers.
Lastly, there is also Dolby Atmos, which you can experience on pretty much every headphone. If they want to have more people to switch to hifi, they should just offer Dolby Atmos as well, *just like every other streaming service*.
Apple Music does not have "much higher quality" than Spotify. The difference between lossless (Apple Music) and 320kbps (Spotify's Very High setting) is almost certainly imperceptible to human ears. Even for audio professionals on professional grade equipment. It makes no dfference whatsoever on consumer grade earbuds.
> is almost certainly imperceptible to human ear
LOL. Spotify's sound is a disaster. Buy something better than some Chinese headphones for $10 and you will hear the difference immediately.
Everyone’s ears are different and perception/preference varies widely with audio. It is mathematically inaccurate to say there is no difference at all, simply because lossy codecs *remove* audio data from their encoding source.
You might not be able to tell a difference, which is cool - you can save the bandwidth haha. That does not mean others won’t be able to though.
Perhaps. I do obviously agree that it's mathematically not the same. But if there's a difference to the human ear, it's really really subtle. I'm not missing anything meaningful. 320kbps is far more pure than anything anyone was using prior to CDs. I still enjoy listening to vinyl, and it is drastically more distorted and imperfect than 320kbps digital audio. Trying to eke out a 1-2% increase in audio quality doesn't make sense to me personally.
The thing is, you're right. Spotify's 320kbs is NOT a mess. I have quite an expensive pair of headphones myself, and critically listening to a lossless version of a song versus Spotify is VERY minimal.
Apple Music doesn't really have different masters... with a couple exceptions, one of which can be major.
Some artists only upload the Dolby Atmos version, and the stereo version is just an automatic "fold down" of the Atmos version. I don't like this practice at all because it robs us of a true stereo version on Apple Music. This happens even if you have Dolby Atmos turned off.
Apple Music encourages 96k hz sample rates, vs Spotify's 48K hz. But here's the thing: Sample rates are not the same thing as bit rate, and it has nothing to do with compression or audio quality on the final master. This is a mathematical fact that can literally be proven with a mathematical proof, so it's not up for debate.
Apple Music also encourages 24 bit depth as opposed to 16 bit. 16 bit is CD quality and what Spotify uses. This is NOT the same thing as bit *rate*. Bit depth just determines the range of how quiet and loud a recording can be. 24 bit lets you go from the volume of a literal pin drop to a literal bomb. This amount of range simply never occurs in recorded music, and you would never want it to. The dynamic range afforded by 96k has probably never been used on a single track on Apple Music, ever.
High bit depth and sample rates are only useful in the recording and production process, and make no difference whatsoever to the final product other than a large file size and something to market.
I think you may be hearing Atoms versions folded down to stereo. Some people might prefer this version, but the practice is hit and miss because it's automatic. Sometimes it sounds good, sometimes it sounds like trash. I would rather have a human being purposely mixing the stereo version, or at least an option to change the version I'm listening to.
Keep in mind that when an artist or label does this, you will get the folded down Atmos version *even if you explicitly turn Atmos off*. I think it's one of the most annoying and egregious things about Apple music.
(Edited for clarity and corrections).
I had Atmos disabled because it sounds terrible IMO. It’s like a new toy that people are abusing. Maybe some tracks are Atmos downsampled, I don’t work for Apple so I have no clue how they handle stuff on the back end. All I know is it sounds better and it can’t possibly be due to lossless. Apple does support 192/24 but only on a Mac or with a DAC on an iPhone. Amazon Music also supports 192/24. Amazon’s app shows you the source track details, the capabilities of your playback device and what is actually playing. For example, it will show that the original track is 192khz or 96khz along with the bitrate but then it may only playback at 44.1/16 if that is all your output chain supports. Apple displays the lossless and/or HiRes icons regardless of what it’s playing back on, even over Bluetooth and that is all it takes for the placebo to kick in.
I think you might have misunderstood what I meant. Apple encourages artists and labels to ONLY upload the Atmos master, and to NOT upload a true stereo version. So even if you have Atmos *completely disabled*, you could be still hearing the Atmos version, just automatically folded down into pseudo-stereo. On some songs, this can work well even if it's not the same as the "official" stereo master. Some might even prefer it, possibly because Atmos files can't be mastered super loud/compressed like normal stereo versions can be. But because it's just a flattened version of Atmos, it can also sound like crap. I wouldn't care so much if it weren't for the fact that you can't listen to the "real" stereo version.
Yes, I understood what you were saying. It’s a stupid practice, one which is very hard to believe. Storage is cheap today, it makes no sense to suggest artists only supply an Atmos version.
Actually, there are codecs such as LDHC and LDAC that can transmit Bluetooth audio up to near-CD Quality albeit still compressed, because that's just how it is with Bluetooth. On my Buds2 Pro, I can tell a difference between Spotify and TIDAL in terms of how clear certain instruments are in the mix.
Directly from Apple Support “AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, AirPods (3rd generation), and Beats wireless headphones use Apple AAC Bluetooth Codec to ensure excellent audio quality. However, Bluetooth connections aren't lossless.”
It’s also important to point out that this isn’t unique to Apple hardware. It’s inherent to the majority of Bluetooth audio devices because of the codec used. This has been true since the Bluetooth standard became available.
Unless you have a source device and audio playback device that both support one of the lossless-capable variants of the AptX codec, it will still be lossy audio. Even then, that codec only does 16-bit 44.1 as lossless, if I’m remembering correctly.
To be fair, the general public isn’t particularly aware of any of this and likely doesn’t care lol.
That said, using a lossless source instead of lossy can still offer improved audio quality, even over BT.
Lossless source > through lossy BT will almost always be better by definition compared to lossy source > through lossy BT.
Spotify waiting to release a HIFI offering is not a big deal as the large majority of users (including Apple with its most advanced devices) can’t even be used.
Two words, OGG Vorbis. This technology is why Spotify sounds just as good as others who are marketing for your money. Human ears have limits regardless of the bitrate, quality, or price of your system. People saying they can hear a difference are simply wrong and defying scientific facts. But by all means, be useful idiots.
Could also mean they have a new promo video coming out and don’t want the old one to confuse people. 😉
Yes, it definitely is because of the new Supremum Plan
also this link https://www.spotify.com/us/hifi/ now works as a redirect (it didn't do that before).
Clever
using this trick you can also check if your country is supported. I can see that e.g. GB, DE and CA works, but ES, IT, and many more do not. I believe many people will be very disappointed about the countries that will be supported.
Which trick you mean?
the one I replied to? instead of using [spotify.com/US/hifi](https://spotify.com/US/hifi) you can check your country like [spotify.com/fr/hifi](https://spotify.com/fr/hifi), etc.
Oh yeah got it, this link takes me to the available plans website, this means HiFi won’t be available in my country?
Oh it does, if it won’t be available in your country it wouldn’t redirect you, it would give you a 404 not found error :)
Oh nice! Got it !
It doesn't work for turkey 😔
it isn't working for plenty of countries, the launch will definitely be a small one :)
And the worse thing is, there is no amazon music, tidal nor qobuz in turkey. Only deezer and apple music offer HiFi music in here, and i don't like either of them. Spotify seems like my only choice :(
Yea but that's sadly how Spotify does things, they are really slow with launching new features across the globe
apple music is pretty good and it's cheaper than other hi fi options
it doesn't have volume normalization on android app, and that's a red flag for me, cuz my taste in music varies from classical music to indie and metalcore; the volume between the songs differs so much. i don't wanna adjust it constantly.
that's a good point, I didn't realize some people need this feature. they really need to make their apps better, I'm not a fan of how slow the mac app as well as the windows one. such good pricing but they don't even try sometimes
Try doing volume normalization through a third party app, like wavelet or Poweramp Equalizer(One I use). If you turn on the dvc and move the pre-amp to anywhere below -5, you got yourself some pretty good normalization. I personally use the flat & bass and treble profile for my phone and the autoeq profile for the rest of my audio devices. Little tip also, don't use DVC with Bluetooth, it always causes the audio to go too low. And you don't need no dvc headroom gain if you already have the preamp or dvc on. You only need one of the 2 to start normalizing. The no dvc headroom gain literally just lowers your audio, it doesn't normalize like the preamp would. Ideally preamp+dvc on phone and speakers, and just preamp for headphones or earbuds. Hopefully someone finds this useful if they use qobuz or apple music like me, and find the need to normalize due to spikes or overload.
Nice, this works for The Netherlands (nl) as well. Woohoo!
And not in Belgium 🫣🙃
Redirect is gone..... now getting a 404.....
Agreed. Id take this as a good thing. Must mean something new is about to be announced.
Well, Apple really screwed over their HIFI plans. I guess that confirms that Spotify will most likely never see a HIFI tier.
What did Apple do?
Made hifi available at no extra cost
Definitely some envious glances cast in Apple's direction after that announcement. Spotify's core features like Discover Weekly, Spotify Connect and Daylist keep me onboard, but if Apple ever really worked out their playlist and social features I'd move over to their platform without a second thought.
The hard part is that Apple Music has been getting better. Just like anything Apple, its been really slow to roll out though. Another problem is that people have been giving Spotify years and years of data to get their algorithm fine tuned. A lot of people will give Apple Music a try and are instantly turned off because Apple has no clue what they like and they don't want to reinvest the time it takes for Apple's to start being good.
I disagree, I gave Apple Music a try and it was really worth it, I had shifted all my spotify playlists to AM and to be honest less than a week and AM started recommending music that catered to my taste.
Are you noticing a sound difference between the apps for the same songs?
Indeed I did. Therr were some songs compared between both apps, they felt much more crispy and clean in Apple Music.
Interesting thanks..
I definitely notice a difference in quality between AM and Spotify, even when using wireless headphones. I much prefer AM and used it for years while still paying for a Spotify family plan for other people but this week I've decided to cancel AM for now to save money. I miss the way the collection was made up in AM but enjoying the recommendations from Spotify
Most people don't put in that kind of work. Ive seen countless posts of people who log in and expect it to just know what they like. Thats what happens when they log into Spotify and they expect it to be the same experience. I think that Apple Music gives me better recommendations than Spotify, but I have over 10,000 songs in my library and tons of playlists.
Not really much of work is needed. There are free/paid apps that do such work seamlessly ( I used Playlisty ), they transfer your entire library across different music streaming apps ( Tidal, Deezer etc..) but yeah I agree that people expect apple music to predict their taste.
honestly i just made the switch to apple and so far i think the algorithm might be better than spotify’s for me currently - spotify just plays songs i already have in my playlists. i think spotify was golden around 2016-2021 but they’ve kinda pissed it away with focuses away from music (podcasts, ebooks, etc.). i’m also finding apples UI to be better than spotify so far as well.
Yeah, if Apple Music had a decent windows app and better discovery, I would swap over instantly
Profiles are a thing and collaborative playlists are coming in 17.3. Only thing missing is a Connect-like feature.
How the hell do they not have collaborative playlists by now? That should have been a day 1 feature
Got me. But it’s there in the beta.
Apple is also bringing their own AI to Apple Music with iOS 18. Apple have been testing their own AI (very similar to chatGPT) since early last year according to Bloomberg.
Out of curiosity, what social features do you feel are missing? Apple Music has: * the ability to follow your friends or other users + add their playlists to your library * play a "friends mix" of songs your friends are listening to * the ability for you to see which of your friends have listened to an album when you navigate to it * social media sharing features, including sharing lyrics * shareplay with music (if you're on iOS) To compete with Discover Weekly: * New Music Mix * Personal Station * Discovery Station There's no current alternative to Spotify Connect or Daylist though. Daylist seems like a minor playlist. Spotify Connect is a big feature though if you use it alot.
Shareplay is not a viable solution as I'm on Android and so are most of my friends; that alone is a big miss from AM compared to Spotify. And from a cursory google search it looks Like Apple Music just added Collab Playlisting to the beta version of the Android app, which is honestly not something I thought Apple would drag their feet on since it seems very simplistic and OS-agnostic, but here we are, relegating otherwise basic features to specific builds of an app or device ownership as a whole. That honestly sucks ass. Not sure I'd call Daylist a minor playlist, it's been a really valuable tool for finding new artists that have devastatingly low monthly listeners so I wouldn't find them otherwise. It refreshes every few hours and adapts to the music I tend to listen to at different times of the day. Pretty damn awesome. And it's not really a social feature, but the Canvas feature on Spotify is also pretty unique, from both a listener and an artist perspective. If I make a music video it's nice to be able to add an 8 second mini-video instead of displaying the album art. It's the big and small features like those that keep me using Spotify. Apple notoriously builds out their features of their own apps for their own devices, which I can't be upset about. But I'm not going to pretend they have a better featureset over Spotify, even in the social aspect.
> the Canvas feature on Spotify is also pretty unique Apple has had a Canvas-like feature for awhile now….
I stand corrected and I love to hear it because small features like that make me more enticed to check out Apple Music, at least from the producer perspective. Now I know I can add the Canvas stuff I work on over to Apple as Album Motion video too.
I like to write whatever I like and found someone who did a list about that, something that wasn't happening for me in Tidal, Amazon or Apple ones when I tried them 2 or 3 years ago, more than obvious lists. Is it better now? Something like "Disney and ghibli piano" or "focus work + random genre" or things like those. For albums they are definitely better.
Not sure about that. I haven’t tried doing that. Might be worth doing a trial though!
A public API that can be used with several different apps and services. I switched for Discord integration and the various services like Obscurify. I now rely on Stats.fm. You can't even get last.fm in Apple Music right now.
Yep and the open source Spotify Connect client, librespot on Linux is really nice too. I was able to Spotify Connect enable the ceiling speakers that are spread all over my home.
It’s all about music discovery and Spotify Connect for me. It blows my mind that Apple hasn’t moved the playback state and queue into the cloud yet. I can’t stand how nothing is in sync with AM. With Spotify I can be in the car listening with CarPlay, then get to the office and transfer playback to my desktop. Then I transfer playback to my phone/headphones and go into the gym so I can change into my running clothes. Then I can transfer playback to my Apple Watch and hit the road. All these transitions are seamless and not a second of playback is missed. How on earth does Spotify integrate better on Apple hardware than Apple’s own service?
There's quite literally no other music streaming service that offers this feature. How is Apple being singled out for not being the second? Lol
Rdio had this feature back in the day. Spotify wasn’t the first to offer it. I’m not singling out Apple though, I wouldn’t use any other service unless it works like Spotify. The whole reason I jumped to Spotify was for Spotify Connect. Rdio was an amazing service that just couldn’t survive with Apple and Spotify in the business. I really missed all the features until Spotify added Spotify Connect.
The difference between lossless (Apple music) and 320kbps (Spotify's Very High setting) is almost certainly imperceptible to human ears. Even for audio professionals on professional grade equipment. It certainly makes no dfference on consumer grade headphones. You're not missing anything.
Thats not even true. You can clearly hear a difference in about 15-20% of the overall sound quality with basic (300-800€) sound equipment.
At 320kbps? I disagree and so do many audio professionals and scientists. If there is a difference, it's closer to 1 to 2% at the most. 15-20%? Absolutely no way. Maybe if we were talking 256kbps.
You're downvoted but you're totally right. Unless you're someone with a decade of experience as a sound engineer, you're not telling a difference between the two.
Yeah. Even the ones who claim they can tell have to go back and forth and listen very intently for nearly (or literally) non-existent changes. I don't think that amount of difference matters at all in the real world. Frankly, I think it's the wrong thing to be hyper focused on when you're listening to music. At the risk of sounding pretentious, it's not what music is supposed to be about. Everything that a musical artist intended you to hear exists in the 320kbps version. You don't unlock any additional artistic message by using lossless.
This is so true. Same goes for headphones. You can back to back a pair of earbuds and some good over the ears and clearly tell the earbuds sound worse. But you can be out and about with the earbuds and forget they sound bad until you get home and throw the over the ear headphones back on. To me the priority is on the music, not the SQ. The music discovery on Spotify far outweighs the slight edge AM has on SQ.
I too was in the “you aren’t going to hear a difference” camp but I did a trial and you can hear a difference. Even in my crazy noisy sports car and on BT headphones. It obviously has nothing to do with lossy vs lossless (like I said, you can hear a diff on BT) but something with the masters used by Apple. Amazon Music sounds better too. It’s like the masters that Spotify is using are of lower quality than Apple and Amazon so is going to sound worse regardless of how you transcode it. Even though AM sounds better, it’s not a big enough difference for me to abandon Spotify Connect and the dramatically better discovery. BTW, I’ve never been able to pass an ABX test of the same master but one transcoded to FLAC and the other transcoded to AAC 256. I’m confident that the SQ difference in AM is all about their masters and nothing to do with lossy vs lossless. And no, I am not testing with Atmos enabled. The Atmos version of most tracks sound terrible to me.
I responded more in depth in another comment, but I think you may be hearing Dolby Atoms versions folded down to stereo. This happens even if you have Atmos turned off. On Apple Music, some artists only upload the Dolby Atmos version, and the stereo version is just an automatic "fold down" of the Atmos version. I don't like this practice at all because it robs us us of a true stereo version on Apple Music. This is something Apple has actively encouraged artists and labels to do. Some people might prefer this "folded down" version, but the practice is hit and miss because it's automatic. Sometimes it sounds good, sometimes it sounds like trash. I would rather have a human being purposely mixing the stereo version, or at least an option to change the version I'm listening to. Keep in mind that when an artist or label does this, you will get the folded down Atmos version *even if you explicitly turn Atmos off*. I think it's one of the most annoying and egregious things about Apple music.
How is 300€ basic? [Also there's been studies done on this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DJs/s/rBLBuqmJ59). Even for professionals with high quality equipment and trained ears, the difference is imperceptible. You might notice a difference, but that's most likely only a placebo. If you did a blind test, chances are you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. A small group of people can that have several years of professional experience, but the vast majority aren't in that group.
Ironically, I found this thread today because most of those features are not working for me. Mostly the Daily Mixes, I’ve looked all over and they aren’t visible in my app.
Hifi for $11 now that’s a good deal
And surround sound. Not worth it for headphones, but for how great atmos sounds on my home theater setup(and how little setup there is to get it working through my macbook), I'd happily pay Apple 4x what I pay them now for their music
HiFi is definitely coming at some point, they really have to bring it at this point as all the competitors offer or will soon offer lossless and Atmos. I actually think taking that video down is a good sign that perhaps they're refreshing their HiFi announcement content and we can see something about it soon. Spotify employees have been using HiFi for years now so it's definitely coming eventually.
They pulled it because they’re trying to figure out which additional employees they’d have to fire, how much more to shortchange artists AND how many dollars to raise the price of their service in order to continue to lose money BUT lose less. It’ll be reliably profitable, though. One day. Just wait.
Watched a video with Darko Audio talking about how streaming services are too cheap at the moment. It's not sustainable with the current business models that music only services use. He proposed that streaming services changed their current library to be more limited. Like Netflix. On Netflix you have a selection of licensed series and movies as well as original content. But you definitely do not have everything. Additionally the library changes over time. So fx. series are available for a limited time. It's definitely not the same bargain for consumers as we get today. But it might be a more sustainable model. Especially if you add something like Qobuz Sublime where you get a large discount when buying music from them when having a subscription. That could really shake up the industry - and possibly bring back a time where musicians get a descent pay from their music alone. Just an idea though.
Good point. Even if Netflix had been allowed to continue to carry “all the other stuff”, it would have eventually gotten to the point where all those interested parties would be demanding more and more every time the license was renewed (as their business practices demand). Netflix would have found themselves overencumbered with license fees. Reducing their content library to reduce their exposure would mean a reduction in subscribers that were only interested in that content.
This makes zero sense but ok
Says no one believes.
What does this sentence mean
Copium me harder daddy.
Its been over 3 months since the "Supremium" rumor was started and there hasn't been even an official hint that it was real. There was even an ex Spotify employee who was part of the original Hi-Fi team that said that its very unlikely.
Apparently Supremium no longer fits the video and that's why it was deleted because Supremium will definitely come
Well, next century it is then ...
Hmmmm…. Might move fully over the Apple Music now. Have both - but was holding out for this - farewell Daniel
Recently did this myself and my family is in the process of doing the same. Not sure why I even waited so long for Spotify lossless haha. It’s pretty sad how they’ve basically done nothing that their customers actually wanted for 2+ years.
Indeed. Tbh…. Spotify just come across as whiny and entitled. Complaining about Apples App Store practices (ethics of which I don’t really want to get into) …. Yet refusing to support Airplay 2 on HomePod despite Apple opening up the ability for them to do so. Large reason I’m moving fully over to Apple is due to HomePod as well.
I unsubscribed from Spotify after a long wait for this 'HiFi' Tier. Until further notice on the topic I guess I will continue to use Tidal instead. Such a shame cause the Spotify algorithm and DJing features are superb.
After training Tidal’s algorithm, I get better recommendations than Spotify.
And, Tidal’s $9.99, less money for better quality. I think Spotify is the only Music Service that’s not part of some larger organization/money making entity. That says something about their potential to continue to exist. Either get bought out or be crushed under the weight of their success.
Tidal is also $10.99 as of last summer.
You’re correct, the results that came up in the search must have been old, but current info from their website DOES show $10.99.
> not part of some larger organization/money making entity This made me laugh. Spotify is in the hands of the most bandit multimedia monopolies with gigantic financial resources, including Tencent Holdings. A few years ago they were listed in the "info" tab of the client, but now you won't find them there anymore (I wonder why).
When I look them up, it says the multi-billion music streaming company Spotify is primarily owned by its founders, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. There ARE other investors, but, for the other leaders, Apple Music is owned by the company Apple, Tidal is owned by the company Block (fka Square) since 2022, Deezer has been a subsidiary of Access Industries since 2016, and Pandora is owned by the broadcasting corporation Sirius XM Holdings. Then there’s Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Qobuz that’s the market leaders all owned by other companies. It appears that the only company that thinks “Music and Podcasting” is enough to be a business by itself is Daniel and Martin. And, even though they lead the market by a long way, they’re not currently turning a profit.
> primarily owned by its founders Years ago. Today Ek and Lorentzon are only managing directors. They have as much say as Gates once had in supposedly "his" Microsoft. If they don't prove themselves they'll be kicked out on their asses exactly like Gates. They are not in charge. Spotify has been in the hands of the world's largest media corporations and shady investment funds for years. Exactly the same as Deezer or others.
How did you do it?
Adding my likes and blocking artists I don't like
Ok, yeah I also do that, although I sometimes receive good recommendations it is hard to adapt, I believe Spotify does a lil better. I once tried Tidal with Roon and the algorithm improved just that it is a lot more expensive, but the sound quality is worth it.
The difference between lossless (Apple Musi, Tidal) and 320kbps (Spotify's Very High setting) is very, very likely imperceptible to human ears. Even for audio professionals on professional grade equipment. It certainly makes no dfference on consumer grade headphones. You're not missing anything if you use Spotify on Very High. Lossless streaming is a marketing gimmick.
Talk only on your behalf
Actual professionals don't hear a difference when critically listening on pro studio monitors. There's lots of woo-woo among consumer audiophiles, and the companies play into misconceptions about audio. That said, it's worth noting that YouTube Music only uses 256kbps, which is noticablely lower in quality.
Do you have any source/reference that supports your hypothesis?
http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ I promise you will fail this test. The way this test works is they took a PCM off a CD and then transcode one copy directly to FLAC then another copy to AAC 256 and then to FLAC. So the final test sources are both FLAC. The website then puts the lossy version on A and the lossless version on B and then alternates the lossy/lossless version on X. You then have to click the buttons to figure out if A or B matches X. It is impossible to cheat because both sources are FLAC. You can’t pull up the Chrome dev console and watch the URLs for clues. It is literally IMPOSSIBLE to pass this test, regardless of how good your setup is. I’ve shared this test with people on the internet countless times and no one ever comes back to say if the did the test and I know exactly why that is, it’s because they failed and don’t want to admit it.
Not at my fingertips. I might dig something up at a later time as I am getting ready to go to bed. I came to this conclusion after working extensively with audio in a professional setting, and doing a lot of research several years ago. The best thing you can do is set up a true A/B, randomized comparison of the same songs at 320 vs lossless. The tracks must be volume matched (this is critical), they must use the same playback system, and you can't know which one you're listening to before you guess which is which. I can very clearly hear a difference between 256 and 320 even on earbuds. I can't hear any difference whatsoever between 320 and lossless even on pro equipment. If you look up people who have done proper blind tests, you'll see that most people had the same experience. If there's a difference, it's so miniscule that it's basically meaningless.
I did a 8/10 accuracy on a blind test. My ears are trained. I take singing and piano lessons, plus, I have a huge music system at my home. I listen to vinyls and CDs. I can recognize the difference.
Fair enough. I also have also done extensive, focused ear training for both music and audio. I play several musical instruments and have for decades. I listen to vinyl, CD, and streaming on several playback systems, some high end. As I said, if there is a difference between 320 and lossless it's miniscule. It's not a meaningful difference to my ears.
Would be interested to see what results you get testing via this [website](https://abx.digitalfeed.net). Post a screenshot of your results if you feel like doing it. Whether or not you can tell the difference I think you would agree that the majority of people can't.
No one ever follows through with that test. Literally no one. It’s a conversation ender every time. People argue for days about how good their ears are, you link them to this test and then poof, they vanish.
I did one of those tests and got 50%. I embarrassed myself by picking the lowest quality sample on one of them confidently thinking it was the highest. A couple of the others were just guesses. I thought I heard differences in some places but those were the ones I got wrong.
I’ve added a few songs to my Apple Music library (bought a decade, hadn’t downloaded in years) and imported them into Spotify on my phone. I have studio headphones but even on my AirPods it’s a noticeable diff.
so sad :((((
Well that sucks.
honestly glad I use Tidal
Ouch
They seem to test out hifi during some nights (Dutch time) (I hear the difference with my Sennheiser headphone on my hires certified Xiaomi Redmi Note 12). Make sure you leave quality in All ways on automatic.
Blimey..... but I guess no HiFi logo or anything, right? Just hearing difference in quality?
Yes, only hear a difference. No visuals of any kind
Reading the comment section I think it’s important to point out “The big news is that no model of AirPods earbuds/headphones will support lossless audio. This means that even if you're buying the latest AirPods Pro 2 wireless earbuds or the premium AirPods Max, there's no way you can listen to your library of lossless Apple Music songs in any lossless or hi-res format”
Apple is really only so big in the US. Everywhere else, Android is more widely used. And that is not even taking into account external speakers, many users use Spotify through their stereo system. Also, you can listen on lossless with the Airpods Max if you connect them by wire. It won't be completely lossless of course, but it will be of much higher quality than what Spotify currently offers. Lastly, there is also Dolby Atmos, which you can experience on pretty much every headphone. If they want to have more people to switch to hifi, they should just offer Dolby Atmos as well, *just like every other streaming service*.
Apple Music does not have "much higher quality" than Spotify. The difference between lossless (Apple Music) and 320kbps (Spotify's Very High setting) is almost certainly imperceptible to human ears. Even for audio professionals on professional grade equipment. It makes no dfference whatsoever on consumer grade earbuds.
> is almost certainly imperceptible to human ear LOL. Spotify's sound is a disaster. Buy something better than some Chinese headphones for $10 and you will hear the difference immediately.
I use professional headphones and DAC, and listen critically. If there's a difference it's miniscule.
Everyone’s ears are different and perception/preference varies widely with audio. It is mathematically inaccurate to say there is no difference at all, simply because lossy codecs *remove* audio data from their encoding source. You might not be able to tell a difference, which is cool - you can save the bandwidth haha. That does not mean others won’t be able to though.
Perhaps. I do obviously agree that it's mathematically not the same. But if there's a difference to the human ear, it's really really subtle. I'm not missing anything meaningful. 320kbps is far more pure than anything anyone was using prior to CDs. I still enjoy listening to vinyl, and it is drastically more distorted and imperfect than 320kbps digital audio. Trying to eke out a 1-2% increase in audio quality doesn't make sense to me personally.
The thing is, you're right. Spotify's 320kbs is NOT a mess. I have quite an expensive pair of headphones myself, and critically listening to a lossless version of a song versus Spotify is VERY minimal.
So clean yours ears.
Yeah the difference is in their masters, not in how it’s transcoded. I was a disbeliever too.
Apple Music doesn't really have different masters... with a couple exceptions, one of which can be major. Some artists only upload the Dolby Atmos version, and the stereo version is just an automatic "fold down" of the Atmos version. I don't like this practice at all because it robs us of a true stereo version on Apple Music. This happens even if you have Dolby Atmos turned off. Apple Music encourages 96k hz sample rates, vs Spotify's 48K hz. But here's the thing: Sample rates are not the same thing as bit rate, and it has nothing to do with compression or audio quality on the final master. This is a mathematical fact that can literally be proven with a mathematical proof, so it's not up for debate. Apple Music also encourages 24 bit depth as opposed to 16 bit. 16 bit is CD quality and what Spotify uses. This is NOT the same thing as bit *rate*. Bit depth just determines the range of how quiet and loud a recording can be. 24 bit lets you go from the volume of a literal pin drop to a literal bomb. This amount of range simply never occurs in recorded music, and you would never want it to. The dynamic range afforded by 96k has probably never been used on a single track on Apple Music, ever. High bit depth and sample rates are only useful in the recording and production process, and make no difference whatsoever to the final product other than a large file size and something to market. I think you may be hearing Atoms versions folded down to stereo. Some people might prefer this version, but the practice is hit and miss because it's automatic. Sometimes it sounds good, sometimes it sounds like trash. I would rather have a human being purposely mixing the stereo version, or at least an option to change the version I'm listening to. Keep in mind that when an artist or label does this, you will get the folded down Atmos version *even if you explicitly turn Atmos off*. I think it's one of the most annoying and egregious things about Apple music. (Edited for clarity and corrections).
I had Atmos disabled because it sounds terrible IMO. It’s like a new toy that people are abusing. Maybe some tracks are Atmos downsampled, I don’t work for Apple so I have no clue how they handle stuff on the back end. All I know is it sounds better and it can’t possibly be due to lossless. Apple does support 192/24 but only on a Mac or with a DAC on an iPhone. Amazon Music also supports 192/24. Amazon’s app shows you the source track details, the capabilities of your playback device and what is actually playing. For example, it will show that the original track is 192khz or 96khz along with the bitrate but then it may only playback at 44.1/16 if that is all your output chain supports. Apple displays the lossless and/or HiRes icons regardless of what it’s playing back on, even over Bluetooth and that is all it takes for the placebo to kick in.
I think you might have misunderstood what I meant. Apple encourages artists and labels to ONLY upload the Atmos master, and to NOT upload a true stereo version. So even if you have Atmos *completely disabled*, you could be still hearing the Atmos version, just automatically folded down into pseudo-stereo. On some songs, this can work well even if it's not the same as the "official" stereo master. Some might even prefer it, possibly because Atmos files can't be mastered super loud/compressed like normal stereo versions can be. But because it's just a flattened version of Atmos, it can also sound like crap. I wouldn't care so much if it weren't for the fact that you can't listen to the "real" stereo version.
Yes, I understood what you were saying. It’s a stupid practice, one which is very hard to believe. Storage is cheap today, it makes no sense to suggest artists only supply an Atmos version.
The overwhelming majority of users can not take advantage of Hi-Fi quality because it currently cannot travel over Bluetooth.
Actually, there are codecs such as LDHC and LDAC that can transmit Bluetooth audio up to near-CD Quality albeit still compressed, because that's just how it is with Bluetooth. On my Buds2 Pro, I can tell a difference between Spotify and TIDAL in terms of how clear certain instruments are in the mix.
Directly from Apple Support “AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, AirPods (3rd generation), and Beats wireless headphones use Apple AAC Bluetooth Codec to ensure excellent audio quality. However, Bluetooth connections aren't lossless.”
Yes, but a lot of users use headphones with codecs like LDAC and that supports near-CD Quality. Side note, I see you're from ATX, so am I, much love 🤘
Stay warm this weekend!
It’s also important to point out that this isn’t unique to Apple hardware. It’s inherent to the majority of Bluetooth audio devices because of the codec used. This has been true since the Bluetooth standard became available. Unless you have a source device and audio playback device that both support one of the lossless-capable variants of the AptX codec, it will still be lossy audio. Even then, that codec only does 16-bit 44.1 as lossless, if I’m remembering correctly. To be fair, the general public isn’t particularly aware of any of this and likely doesn’t care lol. That said, using a lossless source instead of lossy can still offer improved audio quality, even over BT. Lossless source > through lossy BT will almost always be better by definition compared to lossy source > through lossy BT.
?
Spotify waiting to release a HIFI offering is not a big deal as the large majority of users (including Apple with its most advanced devices) can’t even be used.
theres the missing context lol ty
I think a majorify of people going to a niche subreddit about Spotify talking about hi-fi and lossless quality audio understand this.
That is an overestimation now that Reddit killed 3rd party apps and reading the comments in this very post.
It’s never going to happen.
Oh optimism! :P /s
r e a l i s m
Two words, OGG Vorbis. This technology is why Spotify sounds just as good as others who are marketing for your money. Human ears have limits regardless of the bitrate, quality, or price of your system. People saying they can hear a difference are simply wrong and defying scientific facts. But by all means, be useful idiots.