I haven't used spotify, but it should be nearly impossible to tell the difference between 320 kbps lossy and lossless. I think it might be possible, but only for people that know exactly what compression artifacts to listen for.
If you check out hydrogenaudio.com, there have been some extensive tests done on audibility at various compression levels (by some of the people that designed the lossy codecs in the first place). At least for LAME MP3 128 and below is very easy, 192 is possible, 256 is very hard, and 320 would require very, very careful listening if it's possible at all. So if there's really a significant difference, something is wrong somewhere. The first thing to do is try it blind, making sure volume levels are matched. If you can still tell them apart, it's time to take a look and make sure the stream really is 320, that there's no nasty transcoding going on, etc. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82484 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
