Look at this article comparing 48kbps and 160 kbps streams http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/spotify-vs-sky-songs-sound-quality-blind-test-49303980/
at the end they say Things to bear in mind Although conducted fairly, our test was still very subjective. Everybody hears 'quality' differently -- to some it's that bass sounds deeper or louder, to some it's that higher-frequency sounds are "crisper" or better defined. Also, AAC+ and OGG Vorbis compression methods offer different advantages in terms of compression efficiency, largely because the psycho-acoustic algorithms they use are different. But we were also testing on very high-end equipment. Many people will simply use iPod earbuds to listen to music, or bog-standard PC speakers. And through this lower-quality gear, the differences between Sky Songs and Spotify's free service could be harder to identify. Conclusion Whatever the reasoning, Spotify's bit rate is higher, and the majority of our participants correctly identified this. If you choose to pay for Spotify's premium service, the quality is higher still. We can only conclude, therefore, that if you're purely looking for quality of streaming audio, Spotify is still your best choice. Update: We have added a paragraph to clarify that this is simply a casual, anecdotal comparison of two products, and not a definitive study of the benefits of AAC and OGG Vorbis compression formats. We are well aware that AAC, OGG Vorbis, MP3 or WMA files of identical bit rates will not sound the same. If this was a serious study of codec performance, we would have used 16,000 people, not 16. Must say, this bears out my findings, different codecs sound different, that's why I use quicktime 320 vbr for my mp3s and wav for my main system. Interesting that out of 16 people the majority of them identified the higher sample rate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SBGK's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=52003 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=98374 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
