Spotify Lossless

[SteadySteve]

It’s finally been here for a week or two.

I’ve had access to Spotify since very early on.
Used it on Symbian smartish phones way back.

So how does it stack up Vs say Qobuz in 16/44 and 24/44/48/96 formats?

This is also the tale of two different streaming methods. One vastly more expensive and audiofool, the other a cheapie.

So buckle up, if you have a short span of attention - F off somewhere else!

In the red corner; Sonore Ultrarendu into Gustard U18 reclocker into 4 in 8 out Najda DSP. This is using Qobuz.
Ultrarendu does not have Spotify Lossless Connect implemented yet / still!

In the blue corner; Wiim Pro Plus into Najda.
Using Spotify Lossless Connect.

Both using Lan connection.

This came about as brother in-law is over from Sweden for the week - he’s interested in music and hifi, plays a mean death metal guitar and much Metallica on acoustic.

We set up the Wiim Pro Plus (still on loan cough from @dom.
Played it in using Optical SPdif, so I could seamlessly switch between Ultrarendu on Coax in and Wiim on the fly.

Cued up the same playlist on both and had a back to back listen..

It surprised us. Was much closer than expected!

I had previously dismissed the Wiim Pro Plus and even the Ultra reclocked by Gustard U18 at the time. (Was using Qobuz at the time).

We then cooked up a blind test between the two streamers/services.

6 tracks, 3 normal res and 3 hi res in Qobuz, all lossless in Spotify..
Qobuz was played using DLNA.
Spotify using Connect.

Made sure the listener had no idea which streamer was playing.
Could be switched at the whim of the listener.
Preference recorded.

The results were interesting.

Brother in-law chose 4 of 6 in favour of Wiim / Spotify Lossless.
All 3 hi res lost - he chose lossless/Wiim!

Tested a fresh set of 6 songs on me..

I chose 5 of 6 in favour of Spotify lossless/Wiim!

Absolutely gobsmacked.
What the!..

Can it be Spotify and Wiim have cooked up the perfect match that suit my system / ears.
Is it that it sounds new and fresh to me?
I’m so used to the Ultrarendu/Quobuz sound.

Listened to Spotify Lossless / Wiim rest of the evening. Genuinely impressed!

More evaluation required.

Will Ultrarendu (when Spotify lossless implementation arrives) sound even better?

Might be selling the Ultrarendu / Gustard U18 soon!

Would simplify things.

Next up is blind test comparing Qobuz Vs Spotify lossless on the Wiim.

[Gyroscope]

One would have thought that at any given resolution e.g. 16/44.1 both Qobuz and Spotify should be delivering exactly the same data to the point where it gets converted to analogue. The provider and protocols don’t* matter.

* assuming that everybody is telling the truth

[SteadySteve]

Yes!

Qobuz is a mix of 16/44, 24/96 and 24/192.
Mostly 16/44 I find.

The biggest difference is in the recording / mix / master I’ve found.

Spotify lossless is said to be all 24/44.

My Najda DSP runs at 96KHz.
It can also run at 48 and 192, although 192 uses much processor so there’s little left over for XO / PEQ functionality.

[Ruprecht]

[SteadySteve]

Yes, we’re no fans of Spotify politics and payments.

It’s just so well integrated into what we use as a family.

Wife expects voice control our Sonos systems to start playing Michael Bubble etc - not faffing with an app.
Daughters like the Spotify features.
I didn’t use it for Hifi at all or much since the early days but like the lyrics feature.

We’ve had Spotify family for ages.
I’ve had Qobuz.

Now the PC part in all of us wants to drop Spotify like a stone, just as it begins to complete with other platforms in terms of sound quality potential, go figure.

[Ruprecht]

I’m not citizen Smith but sod Spotify. They have devalued and trivialized art to the point of aural junk food. It might be convenient, might even ‘taste’ good but it’s soulless, crippling and fucks creativity.

[SteadySteve]

Stolen with pride from another forum🙂

“Would seem that Spotify have approached some select mfg to trial rolling this out and want to be sure it fully works before releasing the notes to others . This has been done by Spotify before in that they changed the specifications for Spotify Connect a few years ago and in so doing bricked it for mfg such as Onkyo and others.
From what I have gleaned the Spotify Connect needs to be able to be updated and Wiim and others have been given the details of what is needed.
Librespot and others are looking at the Wiim application of Spotify Connect to try and reverse engineer the connection and then alter their App accordingly.
As Librespot is not approved by Spotify they are not going to get any help but I am sure as they and others have done in the past they will find a work round.
The good thing with Librespot and LMS is that when fixed it will be a straight clean Flac file delivered to your player so all of the issues noted in the original video will not apply.”

I feel Spotify should have gone out with this to all who are Premium subscribers so we would understand and then they would not seem so chaotic etc.

They especially should have contacted me and @coco - spent most of our careers working on large mission critical Telecoms SW implementations.

We would have been very understanding🤓

“It’s all about communication, the rest is technology” (to borrow a slogan of Ericsson’s from the 90s).