That said, switching between Spotify and Tidal on the same track, I hear a pretty big difference. The lossless music has a depth that just isn't there on the compressed streams
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...
It's fun to think that I might be able to distinguish between uncompressed audio and 320kbps MP3. I didn't think it was possible. I had a hearing test recently, and they did say that I have better than average hearing. But yeah it was probably just random.
I just did this test and got the first two right: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/5/15168340/lossless-audio-mu...
The third one was really tricky so I had to guess. But the first two were a really clear difference. Uncompressed kind of sounds "fuller" and sharper, and MP3 is a bit flatter. It's a tiny difference but I think I can hear it.
The first sample surprised me on how much of a difference it was, on the 2nd I was wrong, on the 3rd completely lost, but I guess that's by design.
The 128kbps was of course very easy to pick out.
I'm of the opinion that 320 vs lossless is meaningless enough to not really bother, but I know for some tracks it was trivial for me to tell the different. Mostly it was the very complex/atmospheric tracks, Mind In A Box being a good example, where 320 lost a notable amount of quality. Probably others like Ne Obliviscaris as well.
The biggest problem with Spotify is that not all of their library is available at 320kbps.
Spotify uses 3 quality ratings for streaming, all in the Ogg Vorbis format.
• ~96 kbps • Normal quality on mobile.
• ~160 kbps • Desktop and web player standard quality. • High quality on mobile.
• ~320 kbps (only available to Premium subscribers) • Desktop high quality. • Extreme quality on mobile.
The thing that gives it away for me is the extreme highs and lows, both are clipped when compressed usually. I should note, I wasn’t picking which “sounded better”, but rather which “sounded uncompressed”. Several of the tracks sounded better at 320k than they did uncompressed to me. Despite being rather close to 40, I am still able to easily hear sounds well over 20kHz.