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Spotify vs. Apple Music Review – 2022 Edition

23 points by ksubedi 4y ago

peapicker 4y ago
Doesn’t mention if they went into Spotify’s Settings—>Audio Quality to set it to the non-default ’Very High’ (=320Kbps). The experience described makes me think no.
- null_object 4y ago
  > Doesn’t mention if they went into Spotify’s Settings—>Audio Quality to set it to the non-default ’Very High’ (=320Kbps). The experience described makes me think no The reviewer begins by giving a rundown of quite a range of equipment they use, their knowledge and enthusiasm about music technology, and how important sound quality is to their listening experience. But you think they didn’t do the simplest and most obvious thing to maximize the sound quality on Spotify?
  - randomguy12 4y ago
    It's worth asking, sometimes people miss the obvious
    - null_object 4y ago
      > sometimes people miss the obvious I agree. But one of my (many) bugbears with Spotify is the poor audio quality of their ‘best’ setting. I haven’t tried Apple Music, but if Apple allowed access to their uncompressed stream through an API (currently only via AirPlay) to devices like my BlueSound Node then I would switch straight away. Compared to CD, the best streaming quality from Spotify is pretty abysmal.
      - user_named 4y ago
        It's also highly questionable if anyone complaining about the audio quality would do that in an AB test. See gold plated cables etc.
- bumblebritches5 4y ago
hedora 4y ago
Do Spotify and Apple Music have artist bio's and related bands / albums? Those (and the spotify-style mixes) are my favorite features of Tidal. I had mixed luck with Spotify years ago, and never looked back.
- Hippocrates 4y ago
  Apple Music does have this on most artist pages, except for more obscure ones.
- Daffodils 4y ago
  For every artist Spotify currently shows : - Top 10 tracks. - Artist posted playlist if any. (Only 1 is shown here, maybe the most popular one ?) - Entire discography. (Singles, EPs, albums in chronological order) - Spotify editorial playlists prominently featuring said artist. - Merch. - Bio. - All artist posted playlists. - Similar artists. - Soundtracks or albums where the artist was featured.
- sph 4y ago
  What's Tidal's killer feature? I've used Spotify, Deezer, currently Youtube Music because bundled with my premium. I don't like it, I'd like to move, but I'm not sure I can tell why Tidal would provide a better service that's worth the hassle of importing all my playlists. They're all a little crap in their own way. FLAC audio is cool I guess, but honestly that would not be a good enough selling point for me.
  - anderber 4y ago
    I think Tidal's biggest feature is the HiFi audio that is included in their standard subscription. But aside from that, they do have a great app that does Chromecast (for me) better than YouTube Music even.
Hippocrates 4y ago
I can attest to Apple Music recommendations having improved drastically. I’ve used it for probably 6 years now and only in the past 2 years have the personalized mixes become comparable to Spotify’s. One feature I think really deserves a lot of praise for discovery, is continuous play. The infinity icon will cause Apple Music to suggest a list of next songs based on your currently ending song, playlist or queue. This makes it easy to select one or a few songs, or a short playlist, and let it continue that vibe. The live Apple Music stations are great when you find a diamond in the rough. They let you save and like songs from the live stream. It can be a little tough to find a radio show that jibes with your taste, but there are some excellent artists and DJs on there, and most of the live shows are playable on-demand.
techdragon 4y ago
Spotify -> Better discovery story, genre classification, and theme/mood/genre automatic playlists. Apple Music -> Better integrated into my iPhone, iPad, etc, etc. Is there really much beyond this? Other than some very niche/indie stuff or contract licensing oddities with an overseas market like mine (Australia) ... I don't see any difference in catalog. Can someone more familiar with the catalog dataset weigh in? I'd be interested to know if one of them actually has a more extensive collection.
- noahtallen 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, how is Apple Music better integrated? Spotify seems just as well integrated, especially now that Siri can treat it like your default music app. (E.g. “Hey Siri, play Novo Amor” starts a song by that artist in Spotify.) Curious if there are other things I’m missing
  - techdragon 4y ago
    Having never set Spotify to my default, I have no idea how well it integrates with Siri. Does it get any better integrated with the song identification features if you make it the default?
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      You have to connect your Spotify account with Shazam in the Shazam app option and disconnect Apple Music for that. Then the integration is on par. Apple makes it really annoying to avoid their subscription services and use alternative apps. That’s the main point on which they are clearly inferior to Android.
- FumblingBear 4y ago
  The biggest technical difference between the two that actually made me switch from Spotify to Apple Music is that Spotify has a 9,999 song limit for songs stored in your library, whereas Apple Music has no limitation. My music library is around 18k songs, so not being able to store them all in my library on Spotify was not tenable.
nicemarmot 4y ago
I guess the author doesn’t use windows because otherwise they would’ve acknowledged iTunes during the application and user experience section. I tolerate it since I only use windows for gaming but if windows was my main OS the app experience would be enough to choose Spotify.
null_object 4y ago
Also worth mentioning (not discussed in the article) the awful, memory-hogging Spotify Electron app on MacOS. (For clarification, I meant the performance of the desktop app isn’t discussed).
- jonas-w 4y ago
  Same on Linux. Electron apps are often so memory-hogging and not that fast. That's why i switched to a TUI spotify player and except that i can't see album covers there is nothing that i miss.
wodenokoto 4y ago
My pet-peeves about Apple Music: - Can't search for songs in my library. I can go to a playlist and search for a song, or I can go to search, choose "my library" and search for an artist, album or playlist, but not a song. Makes it difficult to go "I want to listen to that obscure cover of All Along The Watchtower I have in one of my playlists somewhere" - No easy way to listen to a playlist on shuffle, starting from a specific song. You can search the playlist, but that limits you to shuffling the search results. You can scroll through your playlist until you find what you are looking for, but that is not easy. - Do note that fixing this makes it difficult to easily listen to your favorite songs by artist. E.g, now you can go to "my fave songs" list and search for Michael Jackson, and voila, you have a temp playlist of all your favourite MJ songs! - When creating a playlist, there are no "suggested songs" - It is very difficult to listen to 1 song. Often I just want to listen to that song and nothing else. Some life hacks for Apple Music: There's a lot of stuff you can do on Apple Music on your Mac, that you can't do on your phone. for example, in a playlist you can choose when a song should start and end (so you can cut off an unnecessary intro, or "hidden track") and this will follow into your phone.
- Jcowell 4y ago
  > Can't search for songs in my library. I can go to a playlist and search for a song, or I can go to search, choose "my library" and search for an artist, album or playlist, but not a song. Makes it difficult to go "I want to listen to that obscure cover of All Along The Watchtower I have in one of my playlists somewhere" Yes you can. Selecting My Library and putting the song will have the song show up and you can filter the results via the segmented-ish menu directly under the search bar. > No easy way to listen to a playlist on shuffle, starting from a specific song. You can search the playlist, but that limits you to shuffling the search results. You can scroll through your playlist until you find what you are looking for, but that is not easy. You select the song and enable shuffle. This will persist until you turn shuffle off. > When creating a playlist, there are no "suggested songs" Continuous mode should feel this niche but maybe not. > It is very difficult to listen to 1 song. Often I just want to listen to that song and nothing else. I listen to one song all the time by searching it putting it on repeat, or turning off continuous mode. This doesn’t work on playlist though.
- 4y ago
brundolf 4y ago
> The desktop app for Apple Music has been updated with the newer versions of Mac OS and performs well It abbbsolutely does not. Sorry, but I've been seriously considering switching to Spotify just because the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used- certainly the worst piece of Apple software I've ever used. It is shockingly, shamefully bad for what's supposed to be a flagship service of one of the worlds richest companies. And to be clear, I'm not one of the people on here who's always complaining about various apps. I think Slack is mostly fine. I think Electron apps are generally a positive thing. But the desktop Apple Music app is an abomination. If you don't use an iOS device for the majority of your listening, steer clear of Apple Music.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  > the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used Try opening Apple Mail and searching for an email you know is there.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Sorry, but I've been seriously considering switching to Spotify just because the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used Agreed, though I suspect the grass is not much greener on the other side. iTunes became worse and worse over time, but the worst of iTunes was 100 times better than Apple Music on Mac. A total embarrassment and work of utter incompetence. I'd take iTunes back any day.
- puyoxyz 4y ago
  Have you tried https://cider.sh https://cider.sh ? I use it and it’s great, but I haven’t tried the AM mac app since I don’t use a mac
  - brundolf 4y ago
    I think I tried this one several months ago and it had too many problems of its own; nicer in some ways, but with some features missing entirely. I ended up switching back, but maybe it's improved since then?
throwaway746064 4y ago
There’s no way to delete or modify your listening history on Apple Music, and thus no way to get rid of unwanted recommendations AFAIK. At least with Spotify you can just create a new account, but your Apple Music account is tied to your appleid, so that’s not really feasible if you’re a heavy Apple user. I just try to find the service with mostly the same features but with the least intrusive recommendations and use that, which at the moment is Qobuz.
- puyoxyz 4y ago
  If you scroll up in the queue you get your history and a Clear button. Not sure if it affects recommendations
lprd 4y ago
I’m winding down my reliance on subscription based services. There’s been a noticeable shift in the world when it comes to ownership; specifically the media and housing market space. Perpetual renting seems to be the way of the future. While I have my own opinions on that, I think it’s important to (at the very least) own your media library. Not only does it benefit artists and studios more, you will not be subject to any drama. Streaming has done good things for the industry, but I think we’ve swung too far. With that said, I own stacks blu rays and CD’s that can easily be imported into my NAS and then attached to servies like Plex[1] or Navidrome[2]. I can even share those libraries with friends and family which is an added bonus. Navidrome also exposes a subsonic api that clients can connect to. PlexAmp can also import your music library. With the exception of Plex, I think we’re entering a golden age of open source software to allow this type of thing. Setting up these services is fairly straightforward and maintenance is also pretty easy. Pure bliss. [1]https://www.plex.tv https://www.plex.tv [2]https://www.navidrome.org https://www.navidrome.org
- willsmith72 4y ago
  I don't get how this enables music discovery, which is one of the biggest draws of Spotify
  - panxyh 4y ago
    I don't see where GP claimed that it does.
    - willsmith72 4y ago
      I mean if you're weighing in on a discussion of Spotify and Apple and sharing your alternative, I think it would be fair to think about drawbacks or missing features along with the pros of anti-subscription life
      - lprd 4y ago
        How did you discover music pre-streaming? Either go back to that, or use something like Last.fm which is far superior for music discovery and also gives you listening stats. In addition, there are plenty of YouTubers who love talking about music and reviewing albums. I've discovered far more artists through them than Spotify. Curation will always be better than algorithms, which is why some people prefer Apple music more. As far as drawbacks are concerned: - Requires some technical know-all - Maintaining your services - though this is fairly minimal - UI not as polished as Apple or Spotify - Takes time to import your media Obviously, its not for everyone and streaming services aren't going anywhere soon. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
oknotcool 4y ago
Calling Tidal niche, and then opening with how important sound quality is to you seems disingenuous.
- cush 4y ago
  Tidal superseded Spotify a long time ago in features and quality. It's far from niche
bunnyfoofoo 4y ago
Anecdotally, Apple Music sounds much better than Spotify, but I had to unsubscribe because it didn't work on a flight earlier this year (2022). All music was downloaded in lossless, but I guess some small bit still required network access.
- denhaus 4y ago
  I think this usually happens if your wifi/cellular is still on and connected but there is no actual data connection (ie AM thinks it can contact the server but it actually can’t, so it waits forever). Usually can be fixed by just turning on/off work/cellular and making sure it’s off. I download all my music on AM in lossless and haven’t had this issue once I turn off wi-fi/cell
h0l0cube 4y ago
> While AAC and OGG codecs are very similar on paper, the way they compress music is very different as AAC uses psychoacoustics to encode music which retains more audible parts of the track. It’s about this point in the article where I lost trust in the author. A ‘psychoacoustic model’ was used for MP3, a codec built in 91. Exploiting human perceptual traits for better compression isn’t novel to AAC, though admittedly it’s slightly better in very low bandwidth applications vs OGG. Can’t say any audiophile would stream below 128k though
goosedragons 4y ago
At least where I live Apple Music has a much better catalog for what I like. Nobody else has the same amount of Japanese music without going through the hassle of using a VPN/Japanese account. It also applies to buying too which is frustrating as iTunes doesn't work well under WINE and Apple STILL doesn't have a web interface to buy/download from for some reason. I don't even want to give Apple money but it's either that or pay like $40 for an imported CD...
bumblebritches5 4y ago
jononomo 4y ago
Sheesh, this guy is concerned about exactly which codec is used, so I hope he also has one of those $10,000 home speaker systems with gold wiring because the placebo effect is really strong with that stuff.
- jononomo 4y ago
  When a song has a groove you dig, it sounds good even without the lossless codec and the gold-plated wires. But when you're listening to traditional Chinese music you're better served with a speaker system that has had the wires chewed through by mice.

23 points by ksubedi 4y ago

Doesn’t mention if they went into Spotify’s Settings—>Audio Quality to set it to the non-default ’Very High’ (=320Kbps). The experience described makes me think no.

null_object 4y ago
> Doesn’t mention if they went into Spotify’s Settings—>Audio Quality to set it to the non-default ’Very High’ (=320Kbps). The experience described makes me think no The reviewer begins by giving a rundown of quite a range of equipment they use, their knowledge and enthusiasm about music technology, and how important sound quality is to their listening experience. But you think they didn’t do the simplest and most obvious thing to maximize the sound quality on Spotify?
- randomguy12 4y ago
  It's worth asking, sometimes people miss the obvious
  - null_object 4y ago
    > sometimes people miss the obvious I agree. But one of my (many) bugbears with Spotify is the poor audio quality of their ‘best’ setting. I haven’t tried Apple Music, but if Apple allowed access to their uncompressed stream through an API (currently only via AirPlay) to devices like my BlueSound Node then I would switch straight away. Compared to CD, the best streaming quality from Spotify is pretty abysmal.
    - user_named 4y ago
      It's also highly questionable if anyone complaining about the audio quality would do that in an AB test. See gold plated cables etc.
bumblebritches5 4y ago

hedora 4y ago

Do Spotify and Apple Music have artist bio's and related bands / albums? Those (and the spotify-style mixes) are my favorite features of Tidal. I had mixed luck with Spotify years ago, and never looked back.

Hippocrates 4y ago
Apple Music does have this on most artist pages, except for more obscure ones.
Daffodils 4y ago
For every artist Spotify currently shows : - Top 10 tracks. - Artist posted playlist if any. (Only 1 is shown here, maybe the most popular one ?) - Entire discography. (Singles, EPs, albums in chronological order) - Spotify editorial playlists prominently featuring said artist. - Merch. - Bio. - All artist posted playlists. - Similar artists. - Soundtracks or albums where the artist was featured.
sph 4y ago
What's Tidal's killer feature? I've used Spotify, Deezer, currently Youtube Music because bundled with my premium. I don't like it, I'd like to move, but I'm not sure I can tell why Tidal would provide a better service that's worth the hassle of importing all my playlists. They're all a little crap in their own way. FLAC audio is cool I guess, but honestly that would not be a good enough selling point for me.
- anderber 4y ago
  I think Tidal's biggest feature is the HiFi audio that is included in their standard subscription. But aside from that, they do have a great app that does Chromecast (for me) better than YouTube Music even.

Hippocrates 4y ago

I can attest to Apple Music recommendations having improved drastically. I’ve used it for probably 6 years now and only in the past 2 years have the personalized mixes become comparable to Spotify’s. One feature I think really deserves a lot of praise for discovery, is continuous play. The infinity icon will cause Apple Music to suggest a list of next songs based on your currently ending song, playlist or queue. This makes it easy to select one or a few songs, or a short playlist, and let it continue that vibe. The live Apple Music stations are great when you find a diamond in the rough. They let you save and like songs from the live stream. It can be a little tough to find a radio show that jibes with your taste, but there are some excellent artists and DJs on there, and most of the live shows are playable on-demand.

techdragon 4y ago

Spotify -> Better discovery story, genre classification, and theme/mood/genre automatic playlists. Apple Music -> Better integrated into my iPhone, iPad, etc, etc. Is there really much beyond this? Other than some very niche/indie stuff or contract licensing oddities with an overseas market like mine (Australia) ... I don't see any difference in catalog. Can someone more familiar with the catalog dataset weigh in? I'd be interested to know if one of them actually has a more extensive collection.

noahtallen 4y ago
Out of curiosity, how is Apple Music better integrated? Spotify seems just as well integrated, especially now that Siri can treat it like your default music app. (E.g. “Hey Siri, play Novo Amor” starts a song by that artist in Spotify.) Curious if there are other things I’m missing
- techdragon 4y ago
  Having never set Spotify to my default, I have no idea how well it integrates with Siri. Does it get any better integrated with the song identification features if you make it the default?
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    You have to connect your Spotify account with Shazam in the Shazam app option and disconnect Apple Music for that. Then the integration is on par. Apple makes it really annoying to avoid their subscription services and use alternative apps. That’s the main point on which they are clearly inferior to Android.
FumblingBear 4y ago
The biggest technical difference between the two that actually made me switch from Spotify to Apple Music is that Spotify has a 9,999 song limit for songs stored in your library, whereas Apple Music has no limitation. My music library is around 18k songs, so not being able to store them all in my library on Spotify was not tenable.

nicemarmot 4y ago

I guess the author doesn’t use windows because otherwise they would’ve acknowledged iTunes during the application and user experience section. I tolerate it since I only use windows for gaming but if windows was my main OS the app experience would be enough to choose Spotify.

null_object 4y ago

Also worth mentioning (not discussed in the article) the awful, memory-hogging Spotify Electron app on MacOS. (For clarification, I meant the performance of the desktop app isn’t discussed).

jonas-w 4y ago
Same on Linux. Electron apps are often so memory-hogging and not that fast. That's why i switched to a TUI spotify player and except that i can't see album covers there is nothing that i miss.

wodenokoto 4y ago

My pet-peeves about Apple Music: - Can't search for songs in my library. I can go to a playlist and search for a song, or I can go to search, choose "my library" and search for an artist, album or playlist, but not a song. Makes it difficult to go "I want to listen to that obscure cover of All Along The Watchtower I have in one of my playlists somewhere" - No easy way to listen to a playlist on shuffle, starting from a specific song. You can search the playlist, but that limits you to shuffling the search results. You can scroll through your playlist until you find what you are looking for, but that is not easy. - Do note that fixing this makes it difficult to easily listen to your favorite songs by artist. E.g, now you can go to "my fave songs" list and search for Michael Jackson, and voila, you have a temp playlist of all your favourite MJ songs! - When creating a playlist, there are no "suggested songs" - It is very difficult to listen to 1 song. Often I just want to listen to that song and nothing else. Some life hacks for Apple Music: There's a lot of stuff you can do on Apple Music on your Mac, that you can't do on your phone. for example, in a playlist you can choose when a song should start and end (so you can cut off an unnecessary intro, or "hidden track") and this will follow into your phone.

Jcowell 4y ago
> Can't search for songs in my library. I can go to a playlist and search for a song, or I can go to search, choose "my library" and search for an artist, album or playlist, but not a song. Makes it difficult to go "I want to listen to that obscure cover of All Along The Watchtower I have in one of my playlists somewhere" Yes you can. Selecting My Library and putting the song will have the song show up and you can filter the results via the segmented-ish menu directly under the search bar. > No easy way to listen to a playlist on shuffle, starting from a specific song. You can search the playlist, but that limits you to shuffling the search results. You can scroll through your playlist until you find what you are looking for, but that is not easy. You select the song and enable shuffle. This will persist until you turn shuffle off. > When creating a playlist, there are no "suggested songs" Continuous mode should feel this niche but maybe not. > It is very difficult to listen to 1 song. Often I just want to listen to that song and nothing else. I listen to one song all the time by searching it putting it on repeat, or turning off continuous mode. This doesn’t work on playlist though.
4y ago

brundolf 4y ago

> The desktop app for Apple Music has been updated with the newer versions of Mac OS and performs well It abbbsolutely does not. Sorry, but I've been seriously considering switching to Spotify just because the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used- certainly the worst piece of Apple software I've ever used. It is shockingly, shamefully bad for what's supposed to be a flagship service of one of the worlds richest companies. And to be clear, I'm not one of the people on here who's always complaining about various apps. I think Slack is mostly fine. I think Electron apps are generally a positive thing. But the desktop Apple Music app is an abomination. If you don't use an iOS device for the majority of your listening, steer clear of Apple Music.

lostlogin 4y ago
> the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used Try opening Apple Mail and searching for an email you know is there.
lapcat 4y ago
> Sorry, but I've been seriously considering switching to Spotify just because the desktop Apple Music app (on macOS) might be the worst Mac app I've ever used Agreed, though I suspect the grass is not much greener on the other side. iTunes became worse and worse over time, but the worst of iTunes was 100 times better than Apple Music on Mac. A total embarrassment and work of utter incompetence. I'd take iTunes back any day.
puyoxyz 4y ago
Have you tried https://cider.sh https://cider.sh ? I use it and it’s great, but I haven’t tried the AM mac app since I don’t use a mac
- brundolf 4y ago
  I think I tried this one several months ago and it had too many problems of its own; nicer in some ways, but with some features missing entirely. I ended up switching back, but maybe it's improved since then?

throwaway746064 4y ago

There’s no way to delete or modify your listening history on Apple Music, and thus no way to get rid of unwanted recommendations AFAIK. At least with Spotify you can just create a new account, but your Apple Music account is tied to your appleid, so that’s not really feasible if you’re a heavy Apple user. I just try to find the service with mostly the same features but with the least intrusive recommendations and use that, which at the moment is Qobuz.

puyoxyz 4y ago
If you scroll up in the queue you get your history and a Clear button. Not sure if it affects recommendations

lprd 4y ago

I’m winding down my reliance on subscription based services. There’s been a noticeable shift in the world when it comes to ownership; specifically the media and housing market space. Perpetual renting seems to be the way of the future. While I have my own opinions on that, I think it’s important to (at the very least) own your media library. Not only does it benefit artists and studios more, you will not be subject to any drama. Streaming has done good things for the industry, but I think we’ve swung too far. With that said, I own stacks blu rays and CD’s that can easily be imported into my NAS and then attached to servies like Plex[1] or Navidrome[2]. I can even share those libraries with friends and family which is an added bonus. Navidrome also exposes a subsonic api that clients can connect to. PlexAmp can also import your music library. With the exception of Plex, I think we’re entering a golden age of open source software to allow this type of thing. Setting up these services is fairly straightforward and maintenance is also pretty easy. Pure bliss. [1]https://www.plex.tv https://www.plex.tv [2]https://www.navidrome.org https://www.navidrome.org

willsmith72 4y ago
I don't get how this enables music discovery, which is one of the biggest draws of Spotify
- panxyh 4y ago
  I don't see where GP claimed that it does.
  - willsmith72 4y ago
    I mean if you're weighing in on a discussion of Spotify and Apple and sharing your alternative, I think it would be fair to think about drawbacks or missing features along with the pros of anti-subscription life
    - lprd 4y ago
      How did you discover music pre-streaming? Either go back to that, or use something like Last.fm which is far superior for music discovery and also gives you listening stats. In addition, there are plenty of YouTubers who love talking about music and reviewing albums. I've discovered far more artists through them than Spotify. Curation will always be better than algorithms, which is why some people prefer Apple music more. As far as drawbacks are concerned: - Requires some technical know-all - Maintaining your services - though this is fairly minimal - UI not as polished as Apple or Spotify - Takes time to import your media Obviously, its not for everyone and streaming services aren't going anywhere soon. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

oknotcool 4y ago

Calling Tidal niche, and then opening with how important sound quality is to you seems disingenuous.

cush 4y ago
Tidal superseded Spotify a long time ago in features and quality. It's far from niche

bunnyfoofoo 4y ago

Anecdotally, Apple Music sounds much better than Spotify, but I had to unsubscribe because it didn't work on a flight earlier this year (2022). All music was downloaded in lossless, but I guess some small bit still required network access.

denhaus 4y ago
I think this usually happens if your wifi/cellular is still on and connected but there is no actual data connection (ie AM thinks it can contact the server but it actually can’t, so it waits forever). Usually can be fixed by just turning on/off work/cellular and making sure it’s off. I download all my music on AM in lossless and haven’t had this issue once I turn off wi-fi/cell

h0l0cube 4y ago

> While AAC and OGG codecs are very similar on paper, the way they compress music is very different as AAC uses psychoacoustics to encode music which retains more audible parts of the track. It’s about this point in the article where I lost trust in the author. A ‘psychoacoustic model’ was used for MP3, a codec built in 91. Exploiting human perceptual traits for better compression isn’t novel to AAC, though admittedly it’s slightly better in very low bandwidth applications vs OGG. Can’t say any audiophile would stream below 128k though

goosedragons 4y ago

At least where I live Apple Music has a much better catalog for what I like. Nobody else has the same amount of Japanese music without going through the hassle of using a VPN/Japanese account. It also applies to buying too which is frustrating as iTunes doesn't work well under WINE and Apple STILL doesn't have a web interface to buy/download from for some reason. I don't even want to give Apple money but it's either that or pay like $40 for an imported CD...

bumblebritches5 4y ago

jononomo 4y ago

Sheesh, this guy is concerned about exactly which codec is used, so I hope he also has one of those $10,000 home speaker systems with gold wiring because the placebo effect is really strong with that stuff.

jononomo 4y ago
When a song has a groove you dig, it sounds good even without the lossless codec and the gold-plated wires. But when you're listening to traditional Chinese music you're better served with a speaker system that has had the wires chewed through by mice.