Spotify sued over music streaming technology

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Matthew - sorry for my glib response! - it uses the open-source format Ogg Vorbis - generally thought to be one of (if not) the best compressed format. My personal opinion is that it is very difficult to tell the difference between 320kbps OV stream that you get with Spotify Premium and CD - though I know others will disagree with me on that - but my ears aren't golden enough!

Hi Alex, i'm not anywhere near up to date on this but isn't OV just a different codec (along with loads of others) that is still banded under the MP3 banner?

For instance MP3 can be all sorts of bitrates & as far as i know all sorts of codecs. It's not lossless which is why it's still classed as an MP3 codec (as far as i know) because it's compressing the information to make it smaller unlike say FLAC

I think if you look up about MP4 video you'll also also find different codecs used such as AVC, MPEG4 etc...

Perhaps i need a few more tinnies though

[lurcher]

Hi Alex, i'm not anywhere near up to date on this but isn't OV just a different codec (along with loads of others) that is still banded under the MP3 banner?

Depends on what you take MP3 to mean. If you mean a generic lossy encoding scheme then yes, its the same. But if you mean the lossy perceptual encoding designed by the moving pictures experts group as MPEG-2 Audio Layer three, then no, its not the same. Vorbis is a license free lossy compression format.

It's not lossless which is why it's still classed as an MP3 codec (as far as i know) because it's compressing the information to make it smaller unlike say FLAC

Both the MPEG and Vorbis codecs are lossy in that they compress and also loose information unlike FLAC that compresses without loosing information.

[Reid Malenfant]

Ah, cheers for clearing up my misconceptions Nick Just shows how much i'm interested in it i guess

[Beechwoods]

I have a £10 subscription to Spotify and I listen to it quite a bit on my iPhone when I'm at work, but I really don't think it comes anywhere near CD in terms of quality. To me the tracks sound dynamically compressed, and there's something missing from the sound that I just don't get with CD and analogue formats, on my gear at least. Spotify is great as a musical discovery tool, but I really don't consider it as a primary source, for those reasons. And the fact it doesn't do gapless is criminal! I wish they supported streaming FLAC. There are internet radio stations that do.

[lurcher]

I am not sure you get the 300k data rate on a phone. It sounds very good with something like the squeezebox plugin.

I agree the gaps are a pain though.

[Welder]

I agree with Nick Beechwood. Spotify is excellent quality for a free listen but it falls short of streamed Flac format.
In fact, I think I prefer AAC+ at 128kbps, but then I have moments where I wonder if apev2 doesn’t sound just that bit better than ALAC

As a guide, if I’m having problems differentiating between fixed bit rate 320 and Flac, all's good.
If I’m having problems differentiating between 128 and below and Flac, I’ve either ingested a dodgy chemical mix, I need some ear care, or somats broke

[Alex_UK]

I've not tried on a 'phone either - but for the record, when I said it was hard to tell between Spotify and CD I am referring to the 320kbps "higher quality" you get with Premium, fed from my PC into the Caiman DAC via USB. I've tried A/B ing a few times, and to be honest it was just guesswork which was which - but of course I am renowned for having cloth ears!

[serendipitydawg]

Why would you sneer at a resource that can help expand your musical knowledge

Sorry but I am still in snooty mode.

Listening to music is for me mostly a subjective pleasure. But if I KNOW that I am listening to data-reduced music, to me it simply can't sound as good as non data-reduced music.

I can see the educational benefits of Spotify. However nobody is able to give me the extra time to listen to many "new" discoveries. So much music, so little time, if you will.

I'm nearly 57, and I could quite easily spend the rest of my life listening to the work of Frank Zappa.

It's cool that Spotify may make available Mr Zappa's inestimable works to those who have never heard them. It may even be possible to listen his entire life's work end to end via Spotify but IMHO nobody would reallistically achieve such a feat.

You have to live with the works of genius. In my case, for forty years.

The snooty perspective of age, alas.

[Beechwoods]

I am not sure you get the 300k data rate on a phone. It sounds very good with something like the squeezebox plugin.

I agree the gaps are a pain though.

You're right as far as my 3G connection is concerned - though there's no reason why it couldn't be rate adaptive. FLAC would make it an absolute winner on the desktop though.

[Reid Malenfant]

I only use Spotify to have a listen to new prospective purchases in the CD department anyway, just the same as Youtube.

There are so many CDs on fleabay & elsewhere that tag other band names on (to what they are advertising) due to the possible close relations in genres that it's worth having a listen...

Try before you buy

In that respect Youtube wins hands down i'm afraid, i might find about less than 5% of what i'm looking to have a listen to on Spotify (maybe less ) but in general i probably find 70%+ on Youtube...