Spotify Premium sound quality issues - 320 kbps "equivalent" not equivalent to 320 kbps at all

[rpapp]

Hi,

I use spotify premium, set to "extreme" quality (always have). So far I have used it to stream music to my AirPlay speakers for background music listening. Everything was fine and I did not detect problems with quality (would be difficult with AirPlay in any case).

A couple of days ago however I started to listen to Spotify "properly", as I usually listen to music. I usually encode my music to 320 kbps AAC, and listen to it using my UE in-ear RMs, or my Theorem 720 DAC / DT880 setup.

I did not expect miracles, mind you, just that the 320 kbps "equivalent" would be in the same league as my AAC 320 recordings. But they are not! Not at all, in fact. If I am generous, then I'd say they are a little bit better than 160 kbps MP3.

I started to investigate wheter this is consistent across the board, and made some listening tests comparing the same songs from my library (320 kbps AAC), Spotify Premium, and Deezer HQ.

I found 320 kbps AAC to be best, and Deezer HQ (320 kbps some-encoding-or-other) to be roughly in the same category - worse, but still acceptable, with comparable frequency spectrum and soundstage. "In the same league", as I was hoping Spotify to be.

Spotify premium was way below this in quality - closer to (but somewhat better than) Deezer 160 kbps! I'm not talking about subtle differences here, but big in-your-face very clear drop in quality compared to the other 320 kbps music I tested (and now I remember some posts I've seen claiming there's no big difference between Spotify "high" and "extreme" and in this sense it seems correct - "extreme" did not seem to me to be much better than 160 kbps indeed).

I'm using Spotify 1.4.1.4 on iPhone, with "extreme" audio quality for both sync and stream. I have spent some time testing - using songs that I never before listened to on Spotify as well, to avoid any potential caching issues. I have restarted the app, restarted the iPhone... Same result across the board.

Am I missing something, or is this the expected result with my gear?

Thanks,

Roland

[jeremygoh]

Spotify uses lossless sound format ogg, more details here:
https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/faq/#!/article/What-bitrate-does-Spotify-use-for-streaming

[rpapp]

Thanks for the reply... and also: what? 🙂

320 kbps Ogg Vorbis is not lossless. But nevertheless, it should sound pretty good (see here: http://soundexpert.org/encoders-320-kbps). As good as AAC 320 - but the problem is that this is not what I'm hearing at all with Spotify "extreme".

Spotify never actually says anywhere that their encoding IS Ogg Vorbis 320 kbps. The link you provided does not say that either! What they have said is that it is EQUIVALENT to Ogg Vorbis 320 kbps - and this is tricky, because this can be interpreted in many ways. If you are using low quality earbuds, for instance, 256 mbps MP3 is equivalent to lossless, because you would not hear the difference. It IS not lossless, but can be considered "equivalent" in these circumstances. To put it in another way, if I give you something "equivalent" to gold, would you pay gold price? Maybe I just meant equally shiny... "Equivalent to" is tricky, when it comes to meaning.

This would be put to rest immediately, if Spotify would tell us what encoding they are acutually using, and not what it is equivalent to 🙂

I have found a review which claims Spotify is using something slightly better than 192 kbps MP3 (http://www.marcurselli.com/2014/03/03/the-truth-about-music-streaming-services-and-the-ultimate-audi...

Is this true? If it is, then problem solved - I hear what I should hear. Slightly better than 192 kbps MP3 sounds a lot worse than 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis (with good audio gear). But if not, if Spotify is actually using Ogg Vorbis 320, or lossless (where does it say that? I have not found any reference), then I have a problem I need to fix.

Thanks,

Roland

[jeremygoh]

Thanks for the extensive research on this @rpapp

Gained much more insight, but as much as I know from all of the streaming music services I use (except for MOG), I compared and tried many of them (incl Deezer) and in my own opinion, I think Spotify has great sound quality on both mobile and desktop devices, the rest is just simply inconsistent.

[rpapp]

After some more research, I have found that Spotify - indeed quite consistently - offers 192 kbps across the board (at least on Mobile, where I tested) instead of 320 kbps as advertised. I have finally decided to cancel my Spotify subscription. I found it interesting, that when I did, and Spotify asked me why, sound quality was not even an option to choose. Obviously, Spotify does not think sound quality could be of concern to its customers... Which also means I am obviously not the target audience. From now on, I will use Spotify free to select the songs I want to listen to, and I will use Deezer HQ to actually listen to them 🙂 Best of both worlds.

[Bassohr]

I recorded a spotify stream of Sting's "Fragile" using my free account.
A quick frequency analysis on the resulting audio data offers frequency range up to 20kHz. Since there is no cut-off at around 16kHz it is no mp3 stream for sure. 
Doing same with the Deezer (low quality) stream exposes a steep cut-off wich is characteristic for mp3, even on high bitrates.

From objective point of view Spotify delivers high sound quality through the OGG-vorbis encoded stream.

[camillo75]

This is awesome guy!

Nice analysis!

Camillo

[SolecismCentral]

Rpapp,

You are absolutely correct, but in fact, I think you are too generous. I am a musician and DJ with experience both recording and mixing different kinds music, and I can tell you, I did the same tests that you did and came up with the same results. I've done side to side comparisons, and actually, the alleged 320 kbps qualiy is only a TINY bit better than 128 kbps AAC tracks in iTunes. It's much closer to 128 than 160. In several cases YOUTUBE HD uploads had NOTICABLY better quality. This is just how it is, but it's disappointing. 70% of the reason I upgraded to premium today is for the increased quality. To bad it isn't there. I will probably revert to non-premium when my free month runs out.

            To Jeremygoh (who replied to Rpapp's post), despite what the Spotify website says, I have great ears (and better reason to believe them) and this is patently degraded audio quality, period, even in the "High Quality Streaming" mode available on premium, which is what I used. I use very good headphones to listen to music.

            Also, I can detect no difference in quality when I check the "High Quality Streaming" box and listen to the same track. Not sure what is up with all this, but it isn't pleasing. If anyone knows how to make the quality better I would love to be able to change this post and tell people how to do it.

Thanks

[SolecismCentral]

And as for these graphs, can't say I believe they mean much. I doubt that they are accurate, and even if they are, they certainly don't correlate with the obvious sound-quality differences between Spotify and other platforms. I'm about to DJ a Valentine's party, so we just listened to "Heartbreaker" by Pat Benatar on the desktop client using "High Quality Streaming," and my wife, who really couldn't care less about music, pointed out what was already patently obvious to me in her own words: the dynamic range was compromised ("flattened"), the parts were less distinct, and the bass was thinner.

[Sergio-bo]

Spotify, I'm disappointed!!!

[Indigenous]

Techincally you are correct.

http://www.winxdvd.com/resource/aac-vs-mp3.htm

However, also a musician/engineer etc and my ears are very sensitive, I take spotify for what it is, a cheap $10 per month streaming service that allows offline playback. If I want the proper quality, I certainly wouldn't be playing back AAC, MP3 or OGG, but would be playing back uncompressed WAV much like we would when multitracking etc or pop in a CD...

But I have to say that you have mde me curious of Apple music now, so thanks 😉

just my $0.02

[somedayj]

This has been bugging me for a while.  I thought if I "downloaded" songs and made them available offline they would sound "near-CD quality" eg. 320kbps (close enough for me), but some records sound just terrible.  Almost like 128kbps mp3s. (swishy highs, lack of body and low-end, no power)

Data storage and transferance have gotten so cheap and effective that there is absolutely no reason for Spotify to encode music in an inferior manor!!  And it really is very much a devious trick for them to offer a listening setting that is "Extreme", and "320kbps", when their encoding process is OBVIOUSLY below that standard.

Time to start over with Apple music i guess.

[Lothlórien80]

I found this article: http://theamnisinitiative.com/spotifyquality.htm

It looks like the problem relates to an option (on by default) which applies dynamic compression with poor quality results. It can be turned off.

[88charlie]

not the solution to my problem.  Some songs are simply encoded from inferior sources to spotify.  I can name specific albums that sound terrible (low bit-depth).  Spotify needs to fix this.  I love everything else about Spotify

[Lothlórien80]

I'm curious, any example ?

[somedayj]

Anthrax the Persistance of Time record in particular (and most of their back catalog) -- the encoding is so bad it sounds like the rhythm guitars are recorded through a leslie cabinet ("washy" "swishy" - lacking clarity and power).  If you compare to 320 AAC you WILL hear the difference.  I also noticed it on Danzig 3 - a record I wasn't familiar with - at first i thought it was supposed to sound that way until i realized spotify had inconsistent encoding.

[tetsuohiryu]

The solution is that Spotify give us the choice of 320Kbps or a higher resolution because my ears are so tired of that low quality of sound... 

I even don't recognize the 320kbps provided by Spotify. It seems so bad... 

Please Spotify !!! We are soon in 2018 !  

Time to step up and offer us a higher quality. 

Do you agree with me, folks ?

[jaden425]

I have been testing Apple Music for the past couple of weeks and it is noticeably better sound.

It sucks, because I use Spotify so much and the selection of playlists and sharing I do with my friends is so convenient. 

But, at the end of the day I am looking for music quality. So, I think I may be making the leap from Spotify premium. 

It really sucks, because there isn't a customer service person to call, and the board posts don't ever seem to go anywhere with the people that post issues.

Super maddening.