September 25th, 2020 at 3:57 PM
I discovered this recently, and it's been interesting. I don't have unlimited data, so saving data on Spotify is a big deal for me. I didn't realize this, however: It's 24kbps (HE-AAC). Spotify normally uses Ogg Vorbis, so I'm surprised they dropped it to AAC for this, but the 24kbps is shocking, to say the least.
I took a listen, and it's absolutely amazing how good it sounds at such an abysmal bitrate. Make no mistake, I can definitely tell the difference from the higher quality ones (it sounds a little more reverb/echo-ish, especially when the drums come in), but it doesn't sound terrible by any means.
Sirius/SiriusXM/XMRadio receivers generally use VBR at around 30-44kbps and sound MUCH worse (especially the old Sirius-only radios, the newer XM and SiriusXM ones sound a little better), so I'm quite surprised.
I generally can hear the difference between an MP3 and the CD at anything about 160kbps and lower, or with AAC, I can hear the differences even between 256kbps and the CD (surprisingly, as AAC is a better format).I'm not even an audiophile (haha
), and can definitely hear artifacts in higher bitrates, so I was surprised at how good Spotify pulled it off at 24kbps.
Anyone else used low bit rate audio before? What were your experiences? It's more or less obsolete with the storage we have available now, but it's still amazing how well some of the more modern formats can pull this off.
I took a listen, and it's absolutely amazing how good it sounds at such an abysmal bitrate. Make no mistake, I can definitely tell the difference from the higher quality ones (it sounds a little more reverb/echo-ish, especially when the drums come in), but it doesn't sound terrible by any means.
Sirius/SiriusXM/XMRadio receivers generally use VBR at around 30-44kbps and sound MUCH worse (especially the old Sirius-only radios, the newer XM and SiriusXM ones sound a little better), so I'm quite surprised.
I generally can hear the difference between an MP3 and the CD at anything about 160kbps and lower, or with AAC, I can hear the differences even between 256kbps and the CD (surprisingly, as AAC is a better format).I'm not even an audiophile (haha
), and can definitely hear artifacts in higher bitrates, so I was surprised at how good Spotify pulled it off at 24kbps. Anyone else used low bit rate audio before? What were your experiences? It's more or less obsolete with the storage we have available now, but it's still amazing how well some of the more modern formats can pull this off.
