If 320kbs lossy compressed tracks are close enough to CD, why would we need something even better? The research into this topic is pretty poor, to be honest, but we do have a meta-analysis (a sort of study of studies) that looked specifically at the high sampling rate. We can further muddy the waters by going to the pièce de résistance of Qobuz, it’s offering of High-Resolution tracks. Am I fooling myself into believing something that research doesn’t support? Well, I don’t think research on this topic is so clear cut. In my listening comparisons, I have been able to identify particular musical content that remains easily distinguished between lossless and lossy compression, and it was these comparisons of these particular tracks that lead me to decide I couldn’t live with a lossy streaming service. Extensive research into how we hear and how masking works has allowed us to create models of hearing that suggest that compression at 320kbs is, for the most part, close to indistinguishable from CD quality. It is generally built around red book CD at 16 bits and 44.1 kHz, which gives a theoretical 96dB dynamic range and extension from below 20 Hz to around 22 kHz. It relies heavily on the notion of masking, which is where certain sounds or artifacts are masked by other sounds, especially as they get louder. This is a method of getting rid of parts of the music that we don’t tend to perceive when presented in conjunction with other aspects of the music. Let’s start with the basics lossy compression uses what is known as perceptual coding. Any difference I heard could be associated with a difference in provenance. All this to say, in most cases, there is no sound quality difference between CD and the FLAC based streaming services. Tidal being the bigger offender in this regard. While it should be obvious in the labeling of the music, I found a handful of Queen and Elton John albums which appeared to be mislabeled as the original, but sounding and measuring the same as a later remaster. A lot of classic albums have been reissued and remastered (often to the detriment of good sound) making the provenance of the streaming track come into question. My guess is that these reviewers are not listening to the same albums. With that being true, I see no reason that a CD-quality FLAC stream could possibly sound worse than the original CD. Any loss of quality would be the result of a modification the studio has made. They do not process the files in any way, they simply take the music they get from the studios and host it on their servers for streaming. Or, is something else going on here? Could Tidal and Qobuz modify the albums they stream to lower the data rate of their lossless FLAC files? I asked Qobuz and Tidal and received the same basic answer. However, just like no amount of science will ever convince a flat-earther that the earth is really round, no amount of science will likely help me prove to a non-believer that lossless FLAC is the equal of CD. It is not perceptually lossless, it’s actually lossless. The main reason to choose one service over another is likely going to be sound quality and the selection of more obscure music.įirst, a FLAC file provides no loss of sound quality over that of the original file stored on the CD. They all seem to equally cover modern pop, rock, hip-hop, electronic music, and classic rock. I do find that they seem to have more eclectic choices, with a broader selection of world music, classical, and jazz. The great thing about these boutique services is that they claim to offer even more music, 60 million tracks for Tidal and 40 million for Qobuz. I love music and never have I had so much access to music as I have with streaming services. Further, we can recreate the fun of those mix-tapes with playlists- the modern equivalent. The world and technology moved on, and now it doesn’t make sense to build giant collections of albums and cd’s when a streaming service can offer us far more music than any reasonable human could ever own.
I used to spend hours in my bedroom making mix-tapes I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, when we thought mix-tapes were cool. To me, it was a dream to someday have as large a music collection as my father, so I could listen to so much great music any time I wanted. As a budding audio enthusiast, I used to borrow albums and CD’s from my father's collection, each having over 1000 albums to choose from. This is exactly why I love streaming services so much. Whatever the true number is, it’s certainly enough music to keep you busy for centuries. Of course, what good is the streaming quality if the music catalog is weak? I was unable to find a reliable source with the exact size of the catalog for Apple or Spotify, but best I can tell, it appears to be around 45 million songs for Apple and over 35 million songs for Spotify.