this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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You don't need that much special equipment to tell the difference. I have a lil shitty Jelly Star. I can tell the difference between Spotify's High and a FLAC from bandcamp with it's speaker, Bluetooth headphones (Sony Link Buds) and my Car speakers.
As audiophile as I am (own very expensive (> 1k) headphones for instance) and additionally I'm musician/producer.
I don't think you can hear the difference between 320kbit bitrate vs flac in a blindtest (this is important, to avoid biasing yourself). I could notice what was a 128kbit mp3 and flac in a blindtest and already that was minimal (and is likely mostly related to the 16k cut-off of 128kbit mp3), but 320kbit, nope...
If you notice a difference it likely has to do with different mastering/LUFS etc. not the compression artifacts themself.
You really can’t. With Bluetooth earbuds you absolutely can’t. With car speakers you’re not fooling anyone.
You absolutely can. It's not massive. But Spotify does sound muddy in comparison. And I'm not some crazy audiophile either. But I've definitely heard more clarity in some of my favourite songs and noticed certain parts of them that I've never noticed before just because I was using a FLAC vs using Spotify where I used to listen to it.
At a certain point, you're right you're not going to notice a difference on shitty speakers but there's something about Spotify's lossy compression that even at high you'll notice the difference between the two.