Hacker News Reader

Comment by lelandfe | Hacker News Reader

If you can consistently tell the difference between Spotify Premium's 320kbps and Apple Music's lossless, I am very impressed. Most folks reading this won't be able to.

Having used both, I'm now happily paying for Spotify to avoid using the train wreck that is the Apple Music app. It is a true shame what Apple has done to iTunes.

View on HN

You can definitely hear a difference when the Apple track is using Atmos or spatial audio and your system or headphones support it.

Also, I’m not certain, but I think the tracks that are studio masters are often mixed differently. I’m not sure what it is, maybe greater dynamic range (cd tracks are louder). I think it sounds better.

Even though Apple sounds better, I probably still use Spotify more because the client isn’t as terrible (or at least is terrible in different ways that I’m used to).

Not sure if that’s the question you’re asking but, the Atmos mixes are a completely separate deliverable. They need to be the same length as the original stereo master and obviously shouldn’t deviate so much that they sound like a different piece of music, but there’s a lot of scope. Also, the loudness wars are kind of over now that streaming platforms normalize to a loudness target; if your track is super hot it’s just going to get turned down.

I think it’s less the lossless than the higher bit depth & Atmos adding extra channels.

I’ve been a long time Spotify user but the difference in quality is very perceptible (to me at least) and I find myself using Apple Music a lot more.

Just depends on how you are driving it. I can tell the difference on Homepods, Airpod Max, my car (wired) and few other places, but barely on airpod pros and most other bluetooth headphones. And to the crowd that has their keyboards handy to say "but the airpod max and homepods do not support lossless", you are absolutely right but the quality of the source does make a difference, even though those devices will not be playing lossless, they will still have better quality if the source is better.

I am not completely sure if its the codec Apple uses that is making the difference or if it is because the source is lossless, but bass sounds punchier and instrument separation is much better with Apple Music compared to Spotify's best quality.

I was really looking forward to Spotify's lossless that was announced (I think it's called Spotify HQ?), but I haven't heard about that in a long time.

Edit: If you plug in your Airpod Max with a hardwire cable, the difference is even more noticeable, even with iPhone's internal DAC.

Also want to clarify that the differences and not so pronounced that you will be able to tell right away, but if you listen to Apple Music for a while and try to listen to the same song on Spotify, it will not sound the same. It's one of those cases where you don't know what you don't know till you know it once.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com