Spotify Is Planning a “Supremium” Tier with HiFi Audio: Report

[Tsing]

Sources with Bloomberg have learned that Spotify is planning a new premium tier for its music streaming service that will include HiFi audio, a potential boon for audiophiles and other critical listeners who can actually tell the difference between standard-bitrate MP3s and more sophisticated formats that include FLAC. The new tier, which is being referred to as "Supremium" internally, is expected to surface this year, although it's reportedly launching in non-US markets first. Coincidentally, Spotify has just released a new version of its desktop app, featuring redesigned "Your Library" and "Now Playing" views, plus other improvements.

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[Uvilla]

And I thought they said their "high quality" setting was incredible. Its not, its garbage.

 

[Zarathustra]

Lol. That's hilarious.

Golden eared audiophiles can pay for their placebo all they want.

And I thought they said their "high quality" setting was incredible. Its not, its garbage.

High bitrate OGG/Vorbis audio is completely indistinguishable from lossless audio to human ears on any level of audio equipment, as is high bitrate content compared to 44.1khz 16bit.

If you are hearing a difference it is literally all in your head.

DSD, and high bitrate PCM is all a con to separate people from their hard earned cash. As are lossless streaming services.

This should be eye opening to some:

 

[Uvilla]

Lol. That's hilarious.

Golden eared audiophiles can pay for their placebo all they want.



High bitrate OGG/Vorbis audio is completely indistinguishable from lossless audio to human ears on any level of audio equipment, as is high bitrate content compared to 44.1khz 16bit.

If you are hearing a difference it is literally all in your head.

DSD, and high bitrate PCM is all a con to separate people from their hard earned cash. As are lossless streaming services.

This should be eye opening to some:

I don't know what is high quality in spotify, but is complete garbage compared to tidal. I don't deal with anything loss less or what have you, just the normal tier of tidal. It may be the kind of pre processing they do, it may be that Spotify manipulates the original too much, but a year or more into using them ( long ago) I started to notice sound quality took a nose dive, bass was gone or very muted was the very first thing I noticed.
I had many other issues with the app, so I jumped ship. To be honest, even though I was so sure their sound quality became garbage, i was still telling myself ' im imaging things' , but of course the app.issues broke the camel's back. When I got tidal the difference was massive, and it was, very much like I remembered spotify.
Bit rate blah blah, don't care, spotify does something, their bit rate could be 8billion doesn't matter, they did something to the originals, they screw with them somehow, process them somehow, their quality bis complete garbage.

 

[Zarathustra]

I don't know what is high quality in spotify, but is complete garbage compared to tidal. I don't deal with anything loss less or what have you, just the normal tier of tidal. It may be the kind of pre processing they do, it may be that Spotify manipulates the original too much, but a year or more into using them ( long ago) I started to notice sound quality took a nose dive, bass was gone or very muted was the very first thing I noticed.
I had many other issues with the app, so I jumped ship. To be honest, even though I was so sure their sound quality became garbage, i was still telling myself ' im imaging things' , but of course the app.issues broke the camel's back. When I got tidal the difference was massive, and it was, very much like I remembered spotify.
Bit rate blah blah, don't care, spotify does something, their bit rate could be 8billion doesn't matter, they did something to the originals, they screw with them somehow, process them somehow, their quality bis complete garbage.

I suspect (but am not sure) what you are running into is not a bitrate or encoder problem, but rather an issue with the source material.

The truth is, a lot of masters really suck, and Spotify tends to present them as they were originally released, without manipulating them.

A recent example I ran into was the original release of Christopher Cross' 1983 hit "All Right". The original release is pretty bad. Very low mix, flat, muddled, awful. I could barely listen to it in the car, it wasn't getting loud enough.

Onmy Desktop equipment, I can compensate by boosting the volume, but in my car that just wasn't working.

The 2019 remaster of the same song, also on Spotify, is a HUGE improvement.

I'm not sure what the answer is for this stuff. On the one hand you want the intent of the artist, but on the flip side there are so many bad masters, some auto-eq might go a long way to help.

I'm not sure what Tidal does.