Real hi-fi buffs will go for Tidal’s Hifi or Deezer HiFi settings since they are the only ones with real CD quality offerings. However their free service does offer some features that other free services do not. Tests show that many people will find this difference to be “perceptible but not annoying”. Spotify offers 160 kbps Ogg Vorbis (when set to High), which creates a file that is fairly decent quality, with only a small perceptible listening difference compared to higher quality systems.ĭeezer offers only 128 kbps MP3 that’s not only a significantly lower bitrate than Spotify, it’s also a much worse codec. If you don’t want to pay for streaming the best options as regards sound quality are: It’s perfect for people on home networks who really care about audio quality, but the extra bandwidth required means it’s not ideal for those on a mobile connection. However unlike the others it is exactly the same quality as CD. That’s about 3-4 times the data of the others, so you can see there is a big difference. FLAC runs at a variable rate of around 1000 kbps.Tests have shown that most people can’t tell the difference between these and CDs. To get something that sounds close to CD quality you need a bitrate of at least 256 kbps for AAC or 320 kbps for MP3 and Ogg Vorbis.It’s a good compromise for mobile connections where bandwidth might be limited. It should be considered a minimum quality bitrate for decent audio listening. 160 / 192 kbps is acceptable for most people, with only a very small difference in perceived quality over higher bitrates.This bitrate can be used for limited data plan mobile connections, but it should really be considered an absolute minimum for music streaming. 96 / 128 kbps is the lowest reasonable bitrate for listening to music - music streamed below that rate is perceived by most people as “annoying”.People hear things in different ways, so it’s hard to draw definite conclusions, but audio engineers who have studied the subject generally agree on the following: For example, although 128 kbps MP3 is the same bitrate as 128 kbps Ogg Vorbis or 128 kbps AAC, the MP3 will sound significantly worse, since MP3 is a less efficient codec than the others. More bits usually means better quality, but this also depends on the efficiency of the codec. Bitrateīitrate is literally the amount of information (in bits) that you can stream in a second, usually measured in kbps (kilobits per second). Like Ogg Vorbis it’s Open Source and has no cost to license. Unlike the other three, FLAC is a Lossless codec, so enables streaming at full CD quality. Proprietry and relatively expensive to license, so not as widely used as some others. Newer codec that is very efficient at medium bitrates. Also a Lossy codec, but considerably more efficient than MP3, especially at lower data rates. Good quality and free to use, no license fee required. It’s an inefficient Lossy codec, which means that a significant amount of the original audio is lost in the compression process. Oldest Codec in general use, very widely supported but not great quality, especially at low bitrates. The main Codecs used today by streaming services are (in order of perceived quality, worst to best): So Lossless audio will always sound better than Lossy, but with the disadvantage that it requires a lot more data. Most audio Codecs are Lossy.Ī Lossless Codec is different: it doesn’t throw away any original audio information when it compresses, it just repacks it into a smaller file space, and so when it is decompressed it is exactly the same quality as the original audio. The most well-known codec is MP3, but there are many others.Ĭodecs fall into two main types: Lossy and Lossless.Ī lossy Codec means that the Codec throws away some of the audio information during the compression stage, and so it can never sound as good as the original. CD quality music takes up a lot of bandwidth, so it needs to be compressed into a smaller space to be transmitted, then decompressed so you can hear it correctly. The word CODEC is short for COmpression & DECompression.
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