Spotify to introduce lossless audio streaming: Better sound or inefficient gimmick?
- Reference: 1614111323
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/02/23/spotify_lossless_audio/
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The streaming biz was early to market with its service, launching in 2008 when music downloads were more of a thing, but is facing competition from Apple Music and Amazon Music, both companies able to integrate the music service into other products such as iPhones or Echo and Alexa devices.
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Differentiation is difficult, but lossless audio addresses the most fundamental part of an audio service – sound quality. At Spotify's Stream On virtual event yesterday, Billie Eilish and her brother and musical partner, Finneas O'Connell, attempted to articulate the benefits of lossless audio.
"There are things you will not hear if you don't have a good sound system... there's so much detail," said Eilish, while Finneas offered: "It's an expansion of actual frequencies that you're able to hear through headphones or through speakers, it's in the details, there's so many little weird things that we've buried in our stuff."
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[3]Spotify HiFi will link to Spotify Connect-enabled speakers and the company said it is working with speaker manufacturers to enable this.
Late in 2019, Amazon introduced Music HD, with lossless audio in both CD quality (16-bit, 44.1 kHz) and a few tracks in "Ultra HD", 24-bit and up to 192kHz. Now Spotify is catching up, at least with respect to CD quality, and both will be hoping for some advantage over Apple Music, which has lossy 256kbps AAC streaming. Majors getting into the game may also make it harder for specialists like TIDAL and Qobuz, both companies that appeal to audiophiles by offering lossless high-resolution streaming.
Media and technology analyst Mark Mulligan told us that lossless audio from Spotify is "part of a broader market shift not unlike HD in TV... Consumers wanted HD TV because it was what they were being marketed. Though the market dialogue is skewed by being dominated by musos who think hi-res quality audio is more important than it is."
Epic, Spotify, ProtonMail and pals rise up as one against Apple's 30% cut, call for end to Cupertino-style markets [4]READ MORE
A dig at Eilish and O'Connell? The problem is that audio technology is a slippery subject and there is risk of misinformation both from the industry and from enthusiasts convinced of the value of things such as boutique cables or equipment supports, for which the benefits are hard to prove.
Lossless formats are a neat technical solution to the fact that uncompressed formats store data that humans cannot hear. There are compromises but the difference between Apple Music's humble 256kbps AAC and a lossless CD quality file is hard to hear.
In 2013, audio blogger Archimage conducted a survey to test the audibility of uncompressed audio versus 320kbps MP3 in a blind (unless you cheated) experiment so listeners did not know which was which. The [5]result showed that that 52 per cent preferred the MP3, 30 per cent the lossless audio, and 18 per cent could not tell the difference.
No such experiment is definitive (particularly with only a small sample); it can always be argued that with a different selection of music, or different playback equipment, or different ears, the benefits of lossless audio will be revealed, but studies that demonstrate this are hard to find.
High-resolution audio is different from CD quality but how much of the additional data is audible? Very little, according to most studies, which is unsurprising. When bit depth is increased in PCM format audio, the potential dynamic range (the difference between the quietest and loudest sounds) increases, but even CD quality has dynamic range beyond the requirements of most music. When the sampling rate is increased the frequency response improves, but even CD quality at 44.1kHz extends to over 20kHz (half the sampling rate is the theoretical maximum), which is beyond the hearing range of most humans.
Audiophiles talk about required digital filters harming the sound, or high frequencies being perceived but not heard, but if there are differences, they are hard to discern and the details and "many little weird things" mentioned by O’Connell are not under threat. The audio transducers, microphones, and loudspeakers remain the largest source of distortion in the audio chain from studio to listener.
Listeners with wireless earphones will generally lose the lossless element in the final wireless connection. Many Bluetooth devices use SBC (sub-band codec) and manufacturers do not always bother with better (though still lossy) formats like Qualcomm aptX – because it is not the biggest factor in the perceived audio quality.
Talking of dynamic range, the music industry is also notorious for deliberately reducing it in order to increase the perceived loudness of recorded music. The idea is that louder music is more likely to be noticed and therefore streamed or purchased, never mind that it reduces the quality for discerning listeners.
Apple [6]Digital Masters , formerly "mastered for iTunes", is a voice of sanity in that it emphasises mastering decisions above formats.
"Making decisions about gain levels, dynamic range, and frequency response is what mastering is all about," said its paper on the subject. "The highest frequency audible to humans is around 20kHz; therefore a sampling rate of over 40kHz is required to accurately capture the audible range of frequencies. Compact discs' 44.1kHz rate is adequate for this need."
Nevertheless, the company asks for high-resolution files from music producers because it then has the best source for encoding for AAC. Apple also said that "keeping the highest-resolution masters available in our systems allows for full advantage of future improvements to your or your client's music" so it has the capability to switch to lossless streaming in future.
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Mulligan told us that in audio, perception is all-important. "People bought Beats headphones because of a perception of quality, even if the reality fell far shorter. In my opinion Spotify HiFi is more about branding than it is audio quality, and eventually everyone will follow suit." ®
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[3] https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/five-things-to-know-about-spotify-hifi/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/24/app_apple_developers/
[5] http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/02/high-bitrate-mp3-internet-blind-test_3422.html
[6] https://www.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/
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[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I think this is more important
Good luck, if history is anything to go by we'll just end up with super-loud dynamically compressed music so that people perceive it as "high-res".
Re: I think this is more important
Bingo. If they can screw up CD audio then they can screw up HD.
If the master is very good and I am listening at home in a quiet room with my best headphones and best DAC then I can _BARELY_ tell the difference between 320kbs and CD-quality Flac. But it's only in certain tracks in certain areas were it's very quiet, etc. Any sort of air conditioning blowing or background noise going on and it's going to be impossible to tell the difference.
Lossless audio streaming is a 'why not' scenario. If you are on metered wifi networks then it's dumb, but if you are at home, then why not? It's a nice to have.
However the HD formats are pure 100% audiophile hucksterism. It's for the same market of people that buy Monster HDMI cables for 50 dollars, lust over nitrogen gas infused copper audio cables, and wear copper wristband bracelets with magnets to help with the RSI.
Having "high resoluiton" audio is nice for studio work you need to do a lot of manipulation of multiple tracks and do different audio mixes to get the best results. The real purpose to them is to makes a audio engineer's job easier.
But for a end user format it's a scam.
AB Testing
TLDR; Too old, can't tell the difference, saved loads of cash to spend on other things.
About five years ago I thought about upgrading my music collection to hi-res audio so did a bit of research including AB testing. I couldn't tell the difference between a hi-res and a 'standard' audio source. This was with a hi-res audio player and Sennheiser studio monitor head phones etc. Saved a fortune by sticking with MP3s. Tried again recently with Amazon HD and normal Amazon Music. Again no difference. It didn't lead to better quality or more satisfying listening. Even ripping my own CDs to FLAC does not really show any difference. I admit that I am in my fifties, and attend far too many rock concerts. I am not an audiophile and can't tell the difference between speaker cable at 100 GBP per metre or 5 GBP per metre which may be why I can't tell the difference between hi-res and normal quality.
Re: AB Testing
Philistine. You know all those valves on certain high end amps are there not for their quadratic gain not for any other acoustic properties. It's all about snobbery. How dare you criticize these high end brands.
What make me laugh too is these 200 squid + microphones that don't use anything better than a 2 buck MEMS device to do the ADC.
Compressed to within an inch of its life
Little point in offering high bit-rate audio on the internet as, these days, there is an incredible amount of compression, processing and butchering applied at source. Can't recreate what's been taken away. Most CD's and radio (both FM and DAB) sound absolutely foul, as there is very little in the way of proper dynamics left after being pumped through such monstrosities such as "Optimod" and the like. It's only too obvious when fed into an audio editor like Audacity. It almost flatlines! Not a scrap of life left in the music, any semblance of a decent dynamic range having been completely wrung out to dry. Fit only for background music! Every production is now trying to sound louder than anybody else's, with the result that EVERYTHING now sounds awful. Decent sound quality now seems to be a thing of the past.
"it reduces the quality for discerning listeners"
The music industry doesn't give a damn about discerning listeners. The music industry is all about whatever the young people care about, because they are the ones glued to their phones and most susceptible to spend money on streaming services.
The discerning listener can go buy vinyl.
Re: "it reduces the quality for discerning listeners"
"The discerning listener can go buy vinyl"
Absolutely agree - and on the day my limited edition copy of Mike Lindup's Changes album arrived - made of top quality orange vinyl.
Re: "it reduces the quality for discerning listeners"
I quite like vinyl because you past music playing has left an imprint on the needle thereby slightly affecting all subsequent music that is played thereon in a subtle and almost indubitable way, but one that only the owner of the device can truly appreciate as he bores you to near death telling you about it.
FLAC
I ripped all my CDs to FLAC and can hear the difference between those that I originally ripped to 320Kbps MP3s. It's not dramatic but content that has a lot of high-frequencies -- cymbals, plucked strings, some electronic music, etc. -- benefits. It surely sounds better than most streaming content that I've heard. I can't imagine Spotify streaming FLAC-encoded music, though.
Lossless is only one third of the issue
I've been working with audio all my life and my experience has been that while lossless is sold as important, that attitude ignores the conversion of pure, accurate electrical signals into sound pressure. And even if you get both of those perfect, you still have to consider the environment that you are in when the perfect sound is playing.
Remember the old days of TV when everyone was concerned about "ghost" images? Well that exists in sound too and affects the quality - a perfect sound applied to a room with a hard ceiling or a mirror means that it is not the original sound. Yes, it might have been lossless but that mirror or ceiling has changed it - and this is assuming that you have a perfect set of speakers ... LOL, most people are listing on earbuds or their phone.
I think this is more important
"Talking of dynamic range, the music industry is also notorious for deliberately reducing it in order to increase the perceived loudness of recorded music. The idea is that louder music is more likely to be noticed and therefore streamed or purchased, never mind that it reduces the quality for discerning listeners."
I can certainly hear the difference in quality between music which was mastered with more dynamic range versus the squashed-together music common today. I imagine that "HD" music combined with an enhanced dynamic range could yield more satisfying audio quality, even if the average user would be hard-pressed to identify the difference. I am happy to see that there are people raising the bar for audio quality--maybe it will drive a revolution in dynamic range as well.