Is Premium Audio a SCAM?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
871 words · ~4 min read
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hey what are you listening to t swift buddy
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converted a youtube rip to lossless and it sounds amazing it's like there's a
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tawny taylor playing in my brain um actually that's not how lossless
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music works at all but it's high bit rate that's
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more realistic the only reality is that you're taking
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up way more space in your mobile device for no reason do you have any idea what
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happens when music is converted from one file format to another
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no okay
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so when taylor swift is in the studio cutting her new album her voice actually
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does get recorded as lossless audio which means that the computer stores as
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much of her song as practically possible in digital form that essentially is what
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lossless audio is it means that the song was originally recorded at a high bit
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rate and hasn't been compressed since but
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whenever a record label puts their music on youtube or on a service like spotify
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it gets compressed and not just a little bit
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lots of streaming services compress music down to about a tenth of what it
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originally was to save space and they do this by discarding a lot of the data in
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the original file so you can't truly convert back up to lossless it's a bit
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like trying to take a well done steak and get all the medium rare juices back
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into it and besides like good steak most people can't tell the difference anyway
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whoa i'm a golden eared audiophile i even got a certificate from the
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appropriate subreddit look did you take a test for that yeah i did
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i had to listen to a bunch of sample tracks and then blindly say which ones
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were the high bitrate ones took me like at least five minutes and i got them all
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right please don't tell me you used those headphones yeah so
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dude you got lucky beyond a pretty low threshold maybe
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around 128 kilobits a second it's pretty
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hard to hear quality differences using low end equipment low end this cost me
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like 22 dollars all right look
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the reason cheap speakers and headphones don't let you fully enjoy high bitrate
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audio is because at higher bit rates you might be able to hear more subtle parts
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of the track that would get discarded if it were compressed any further lower end
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hardware just simply can't replicate sounds like that correctly so i have to
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like buy expensive headphones and then subscribe to tidal or spotify premium
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well it depends
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as bit rates get higher and higher many people can't hear the differences
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between them if you have a good pair of headphones or speakers you might be able
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to hear the difference between a regular and a premium stream on spotify but it's
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less likely that you'll be able to hear the difference between a 320 kbit
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spotify premium song and a lossless track on title
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and even if you can hear the difference think about your typical day are you
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really the guy with the dedicated listening chair or are you walking down
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the street enjoying some tunes without really focusing on every nuance of every
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note of the song so what you're saying is lossless music is like pretty
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pointless no what i'm saying is
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before plunking down tons of money on expensive equipment and subscriptions
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maybe try out some solid mid-range gear with free high bitrate or lossless music
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you can find online if it's easy for you to tell the difference between that and
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a standard stream it might be worth exploring some higher end options but
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there's also no shame in just rocking out to low quality mp3s of your favorite
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weird al parodies if that's what makes you happy thanks man i don't want to contribute to
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jay-z's bugatti fund anyway right on
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