this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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The number of people with the audio equipment needed to even notice a difference with lossless audio is a rounding error, especially on their phones using their AirPods/galaxy buds.
You don't need that much special equipment to tell the difference. I have a lil shitty Jelly Star. I can tell the difference between Spotify's High and a FLAC from bandcamp with it's speaker, Bluetooth headphones (Sony Link Buds) and my Car speakers.
As audiophile as I am (own very expensive (> 1k) headphones for instance) and additionally I'm musician/producer.
I don't think you can hear the difference between 320kbit bitrate vs flac in a blindtest (this is important, to avoid biasing yourself). I could notice what was a 128kbit mp3 and flac in a blindtest and already that was minimal (and is likely mostly related to the 16k cut-off of 128kbit mp3), but 320kbit, nope...
If you notice a difference it likely has to do with different mastering/LUFS etc. not the compression artifacts themself.
I don't think Spotify's High bitrate is as good as it says it is, though. That's what I'm getting at. Sort of like how YouTube's encoding for whatever setting you pick is never as good as a local file with the same specs.