Spotify Premium v FREE - is it worth it?

[BOONDI]

Originally Posted by Shian7

All interesting stuff....

But, erm, what has it got to do with Spotify?

Question is "Is Spotify worth the premium"

It depends on the exact implementation or use of spotify....

Free stuff can also do most of what Spotify does, so why pay anything....

You could always turn on the radio or use internet radio...

There are millions of free streams out there

[Laz Baz]

Originally Posted by soulminer

Why? What's wrong with compression? Why waste space unneccesarily? Lossless is just that.... Nothing is lost. Not sure I follow your reasoning to be honest. I can't tell any difference between WAV or FLAC (because there is none or it would be a lossy compression).

Please keep in mind that I am on a steep learning curve!!
1. Having read a little about compression and seen the wave traces, I am now convinced that any compression that creates a loss in dynamics should be banned. I downloaded two different tracks of different artists on WavePad and I can see the difference.
2. As I am going the route of ripping all my CD & Vinyl to PLAC at 24bit/192Khz, I have a question. (a) when saving, the file size can be reduced (term compressed is used here as well) then will this still maintain the full resolution when played back?
3. I have a few CDs & Vinyl that have some very low frequencies and I would like to be able to identify them. I have the WavePad Master and is this good enough for the purpose to do analysis? Is anyone into wave frequency analysis?

Look forward to some advice.

[BOONDI]

Welcome at last Laz....

The Flac codec is lossless in it's compresion method. So it's OK to use just the basic compression settings. Can't really hear any difference.

Other lossy methods are MP3 and etc.... Not so good....

I have a couple of 1.5 TerraByte drives so I have given up using compresion in any shape or form whatsoever....

Use Exact audio copy software to render the wave files from your CD's...
I upsample mine as I like the sound better. There is no technical reason why this should be, it just is my preference....

I have a 24/192 native resolution input on my soundcard , so any recordings I make from Vinyl are always recorded at the best/highest res I can manage...

Spotify premium just allows higher bitrate peer to peer transfers of MP3's so is in my eyes flawed because it uses compresion...

Better to download the flac copies that are appearing on the net if you can...

HTH....

[soulminer]

Originally Posted by Laz Baz

when saving, the file size can be reduced (term compressed is used here as well) then will this still maintain the full resolution when played back?

If using FLAC, then yes as it is LOSSLESS. The level of compression just effects the size of the final FLAC file. Higher number gives you smaller file. None of it has any effect on final playback.

[BOONDI]

P.S. Just to add that because I now store in full size uncompressed wav files, I save time cutting out the FLAC conversion step. I was only using upsampling to make a DVD-A disk that I could play in my Pioneer DVD 575 player. However I discovered that my PC soundcard runs native at 24/192 even when playing CD's so the upsampling is done in real time in hardware on the card so no performance hit on the mainboard. Connected direct to my power amps the quality is exceptional. Now I can really hear what the recording engineers were hearing when they laid down the master.

There is a caveat and it's a massive caveat....
Some recordings that sound OK through the CD player sound really bad through the PC due to poor mastering or medioaker mixing....
You have been warned...

Most CD's about 500 - 700Mb but we'll call it a GIGAbyte....

1.5 TERAbytes is about 1400 CD's at maximum size.

Flac files can be about 1/2 that size so about 2800 CD's in FLAC...

24/192 WAV files are about 1.5 to 2 GIGAbytes for both sides of an album, so about 1000 albums on 1.5 TERABYTES....

And finally....

Hard disk sizes are set to go up to PETAbytes in the very near future. They will also be constructed with no moving parts, so no transport noise or jitter or vibration from spinning platters or whirring motors.....

Hi-Fi will evolve into this technology rapidly, as noise from vibration etc is a major cause of distortion. Also, with no physical media to deteriorate or scratch most users will just download the albums in the highest quality available to them.....

20 songs per CD X 1400 CD's = 28 000 songs at 3 minutes each is 1400 hours of music.

Listening for 5 hrs per day is 280 days continually listening

That's a lot of listening....

[Shian7]

Originally Posted by BOONDI

Question is "Is Spotify worth the premium"

It depends on the exact implementation or use of spotify....

Ah, right!

You mean people use Spotify as a storage medium? I never even thought of doing that! I use the free version in much the same way as internet radio.

[BOONDI]

Originally Posted by Shian7

Ah, right!

You mean people use Spotify as a storage medium? I never even thought of doing that! I use the free version in much the same way as internet radio.

I think thats one of the features that comes with the pay version. Not really 100% sure about this though, I may be wrong......

I have about 40 000 songs on my disks so I just cue up windows media player and randomly play songs from my collection. I also use Iternet radio, but look for high bitrate, high quality music streams....

Too much good free stuff on the net to bother paying for apps of any kind these days.....

Also use VLC media player. It can handle 24/192Khz audio, Flac, MP3, DVD, Blueray, HD-DVD, MKV, MPEG-1 & 2, AVI, XVID, etc and it's free to boot.....

Sourceforge..... http://sourceforge.net/

VLC PLAYER ...http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

i never knew you could use that, I have an external hard drive, you can pick them up pretty cheap, and as most folk have iPods or the like, I never thought that was the primary attraction of using Spotify. and i thought itunes converts most forms into a readable format?
I used to use the free version for parties and the like, but as these new complicated rules came into play, now I just use youtube, but i was thinking of investing in Spotify premium because you can often find albums or tracks or cover versions that are unavailable through other means.