Not to start the "320kbs is better" discussion but with my Unlimited account I only heard one or two albums which sounds very compressed (spotify:album:07hc4SjPjogLqwBc7dUCiD for example: Alan Parsons). Most of the time the quality is just very good. I think the standard 160kbs is great imho.
That really depends on what you're listening to the music on.
If you want to use Spotify at home and are listening on a nice stereo, then compression artifacts are very obvious in almost everything on Spotify.
For that reason, if I'm not listening to local music I tend to listen to KEXP's uncompressed stream. It's a mere 1.4Mbps.
Which then hits on why Spotify are most likely not serving 320. "It's the bandwidth, stupid".
It's all about the bandwidth. How few people are going to hear the difference, and how much would it cost to implement? The bandwidth costs are definitely non-trivial for their subscriber base, so implementing 320 is going to hit their costs hard.
For the article linked, notice the blog title, Spotify Classical.
Classical music really does show up artifacts in compression like Hip Hop, Pop and Rock (and Prog Rock) simply doesn't. The strings and low bass both exist in the upper and lower audio ranges precisely where compression is most aggressive and therefore noticeable. This isn't going to affect greatly the Beyonces of this world, but it affects some delicate string recital.
To be honest, if I were Spotify, I'd probably just rip the classical in 320 as that is a specialist crowd who probably can hear the difference and would kick up a stink. And then keep the vast majority in 160 as the vast majority aren't going to notice and wouldn't kick up a stink. If I wanted to be more intelligent, I'd write something to try and detect artifacts, and if a 160 file exhibited above a certain threshold, then I'd make that a contender to be at 320... thus trying to find a sweet spot between quality and bandwidth costs.
To give a little context: I listen to everything from classical music to noise and use good equipment.
You make it sound like classical music is the only kind of music where quality is important. This is not true. Quality is also important in modern music. Listen to Amon Tobin or Aphex Twin for example.
Besides Ogg is not the same as MP3. It's not a "kill all low and high" format. Listening test showed that Ogg is fine for strings. Short attack times are the problem areas when using a lower bitrate.
Ogg q5 (approximately 160kbps) is not 160kbps mp3. I can tell 160kbps mp3 from CD very easily, but am unable (headphones, work PC) to tell 160kbps Ogg files from the original CD tracks.
Very unscientific I know, but still...
That said, if they say Ogg q9 it should be Ogg q9.
If you can reliably A/B test properly encoded 160kbit mp3s you have exceptional hearing and you should lend your services to the lame tuning team ASAP. I'll warn you though, these kinds of claims very very rarely hold up to a rigorous test now.
> If you can reliably A/B test properly encoded 160kbit mp3s you have exceptional hearing and you should lend your services to the lame tuning team ASAP.
there's a difference between being able to reliably distinguish them for any kind of track, and occasionally noticing compression artifacts in certain parts of certain tracks.
the first ability would indicate exceptional hearing and material for the Lame tuning team,
while the latter probably means you're useless to that tuning team, but you will still get less enjoyment from lower bitrate streams, some of the time.
I'll have to check those hydrogenaudio forums to see what "properly encoded" exactly means, btw. Because if, as you said above, encoders are just too good above 96kbps [for people to tell the difference], those must be some pretty sweet magic presets, cause I haven't been able to get that quality at such bitrates when encoding mp3s or ogg myself. It's not that I don't believe it btw, from what I've seen the hydrogenaudio people know what they're talking about. It's surprising though, that apparently some commandline switches can make such a world of difference.
However, what is relevant to this discussion, is not how a 160kbps mp3 sounds when "properly encoded", but how a 160kbps ogg sounds when encoded the way Spotify does it [which may or may not be optimal].
And to determine whether people are making a big deal out of something they ultimately can or cannot hear, they don't need to be able to reliably A/B test everything, it's enough if they are able to notice the lower bitrate some of the time for some tracks, even a littlebit is already enough to get that itchy feeling you are not quite getting what you paid for, and that alone can put a big damper on your enjoyment of the entire stream (even the parts that sound just fine!).
Properly encoding an mp3 is just a matter of using a recent version of lame and using one of the -Vn presets. It's dead easy but a lot of people don't seem to know this somehow. Ogg is a little trickier since some of the best tuning tweaks haven't been folded into the mainline code base yet.
There will probably always be "killer samples" that sound bad at any lossy bitrate. If you're really worried about this you're better off just going lossless instead of wasting tons of bits on across-the-board 320 kbit encoding.
Have you done a proper A/B test or is that just your impression from listening? A lot of people go to http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/ claiming they can ABX mp3 at 160kbit. Usually they can't.
Just my impression from listening. Most of the time you can hear it with cymbals. But I agree it's very hard to hear and I just heard it a couple of times. So I think 160kbps is enough to enjoy music.
But (this is going to get a little of-topic) I also think you are not only using your ears to listen to music. People can't hear frequencies below lets say 30Hz. But you can feel it. So yeah, maybe vinyl does feel better than an Ogg or Mp3 file.
Vinyl is a completely different medium with very different characteristics. Subjectively people might prefer it but it's not because it's higher fidelity in any real sense.
Lower range of hearing is MUCH lower than 30hz. The low E on a std 4 string bass is only 34hz, and most people can here at least an octave below that. 10-12hz is more of an accurate cutoff.
12Hz is the lowest humans can hear (under perfect conditions). But when we get older those frequencies are very hard to hear. That's why I thought 30Hz would be a nice figure. But maybe I should have used 20Hz for it's the lowest frequency on a CD.
Ogg can often achieve transparency at lower bitrates than mp3, but we're talking <128 kbits here. Above that, and certainly at 160+ very few people can tell the difference, and even then only with careful, focused A/B scrutiny.
