The fact that the audio is compressed should only exacerbate the compression. You know because the compressed tracks are compressed twice whereas the original is compressed once.
can still hear a little bit of difference, i mean if you lower the quality of both Original and Hi-Spotify, then the results would be both lowered quality.
Once you listen to a song on Spotify with high quality streaming enabled, it will cache the high quality version of the song on your machine local storage. After that even if you disable the high quality streaming option, it will not re-download the lower quality version and just plays the cached one (which is high quality version). That's probably the reason there was no difference in LO and HI versions.
Just to compare: Me with 200 € Wireless Gaming Headset -> there is a difference? Me with 300 € Wireless Music Headphones -> by the god, so many differences, especially in the BASS AHHH
*Me with 1$ chinese headphones, with L channel broken* OH MY GOD APPLE MUSIC STOP, THIS IS NOT RIGHT, STOP DOING THAT _any difference was heard in the entire video_
5 лет назад+957
The fact that we are listening to it on RUclips, trying to hear the difference between high quality tracks, knowing how bad RUclips audio quality is... Marvelous.
@@songsteel00 Yes you are right but I can shoot 4k with my phone and it looks like crap but 1080 on an amira is amazing. Color and dynamic range (usually given in stops) is a whole different parameter to rate a camera.
S0ngsteel actually incorrect. Resolution is just pixel size. This is is why I can play a old school game on my computer that was originally supposed to run at a maximum of 1280x800. Super sampling allows this to happen with a decent image. Resolution has nothing to do with wide color gammit or HDR or anything. Resolution is about the detail captured in the image. Everything else is processing
As a pro audio engineer myself I’m going to actually say I heard more differences than he did. I’m also listening off my old pretty used iPhone speakers 😂
Even doing this, I could hear a difference between low and hi Spotify. The vocals at the beginning have more air almost? Idk how to describe it but it’s got more clarity
Unfortunately, since we're listening via RUclips, we can't really hear what you hear. Kind of like seeing an ad for a 4K TV while watching a standard definition TV. Would be great if you could provide the A/B comparisons as a FLAC file somewhere that those of us that are interested could download.
You can do the test on yourself too but I don't see a point. It's clear that if you want the highest possible quality you either buy the lossless master or use Tidal/Deezer.
Sadly, just as Larry said, because we are listening on youtube (considered the worse quality) we will not hear any of the differences in the better ones. It would be like trying to see what is better DVD 1080 vs Blueray 4k on an old RCA tv.
I didnt look at the Screen and could clearly tell that Tidal has the best quality and i heard that Apple was rly worse, at first when the spotify came up i couldnt tell a difference but i guess that was cause i didnt concentrate.
I want to highlight that (although it doesn't look like it) I took great care and caution into aligning the audio files for the phase swap test. I only kept a small part of this process in the video, just to get you guys aware of the fact that this is important. It looks like I'm doing it quickly and by eye, this is in fact not the case. To make sure the test wasn't flawed, I did nudge and balance the tracks until I had the quietest signal left before the camera was rolling. btw: this is a test you can easily replicate yourself ;-).
Oh so Audacity sucks... Oh wait maybe I should recheck my own comparison files also comparing actual hardware output methods. Analogue 3.5mm vs HDMI. Of course I don't have access to source material.
+White Sea Studio I loved the video and would like to thank you for the time spent doing it. I know that this was done 6 months ago but how about comparing it also to the CD release?
You can a bit. Listen to the echos. The video he used for the YT version might not have been uploaded with lossless audio, because the YT audio encoder is not that bad to score under Spotify LowQ. I think the video was encoded with MP3 audio. Compressing that again to opus is a terrible idea.
@@nextlifeonearth Your Definitely right. RUclips still compresses the audio making the difference subtle. He should throw up a FLAC version so we can hear the difference better.
Incorrect it was a digital WAV file, and not a "true" tape master. While WAV is a lossless format it still adds it own artifacts to the original. Like comparing a WAV to a FLAC of the same song. Both are lossless formats but sometimes differences can be heard.
@@Diandredofus Nahh not realy let say theres low mid and high .....if the size difference between low (youtube) and high (original) is huge ....between low and mid the size difference wouldnt be that huge but the quality is much better.Also youtube is owned by GOOGLE .......if they cant do it how spotify is doing it .....yea yea videos .....blah blah .....but i realy doubt if they deleted all low quality and replaced it with the suggested mid quality (which would be much better) the size would be greater than terabyte sooooooo they realy only save on quality not size ...imo
He ran this test before high quality audio was made available on RUclips. It's very likely that he was using the 128kbps AAC version. My comment above explains it.
Spotify has a cache, so if you ever listened to the high quality before recording the low quality one, you might have got the HQ one instead (from local cache)
@@jordifrias8829 If implemented correctly, no it would not. It would have to update to the HQ version. But if the HQ version is in cache, pretty sure that is what is going to play unless you clear the cache.
Just watched the video, cancelled Spotify and started Tidal. I found a beautiful performance of Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 1 by Van Cliburn on Spotify and liked it. Now listening on Tidal... and I can't believe the difference. Can hear the bowing, the attack of the brass, when they turn the pages. My ears can hear! Thank you!
After watching this video I cancelled Tidal and started family Premium on Spotify. I will save a tons of money and 5 of us will enjoy amazing quality for less money then Tidal.
@@cosminiustin7625 i have a decent system and I cannot hear a difference except in volume between spotify and tidal. My 3 months trial is going to expire soon with tidal and been listening since the beginning. I only get issues of errors about me playing tidal in some other devices somewhere when in reality is only a broken implementation. I used to get those errors years ago and are still there. Spotify has been flawless for 10 years in a row. How do you even understand the difference between the two in quality?? I have tried very hard... I have over 20 headphones of all prices, several amps and dacs... Tried all different configurations to justify my switch to tidal but really didn't see the point.... Tidal seems highly bugged in my experience and also the music choices and recommendation on my home it is infamous.... Music I hate and never listen to always appear there. Why??? Why alway disgusting Hip Hop nd rap is always there when I never listened to those styles?? One day if they improve things I might give an other trial like I also dis few years back. Tidal is not even close to Spotify in my opinion on everything. Spotify implementation is phenomenal. I always discover new music that I love with it thanks to the good AI that is programmed into it. Give it a trial and you will switch also I am sure. So many of my friends when they came to my place and made them listening spotify via my Elac Unify UB5 and my 300w/channel power amp rest speechless. Get a good sounding gear and any of these services will sound amazing but tidal is plagued by bad programming unfortunately and bugs.
Exactly! The fact it was clipping and the others weren't showed this wasn't a fair comparison. Also, pretty useless since everyone pretty much knows RUclips streaming isn't geared towards high quality at all
Every digital VU meter shows clipping in a different way. For example Waves VU Meter shows clipping if the signal reaches -0,009dBFS, some others show clipping earlier in the scale, etc... I have no idea how reaper's VU Meter is calibrated for clipping. Also, some mastering engineers set the ceiling to -0,1db, some other to 0,3, it depends! I usually set the ceiling to -0,3 and sometimes Protools' VU meter shows clipping as well. It's normal.
Also, it's absolutely normal for lossy files to clip less than lossless files, cause they LOSE some of the signal in the process of being compressed. The fact that the original track clips more is a prove of the fact that it has more informations.
Clipped tracks loose information. As an example: if you need to store 1005 into a range of 0-1000 the 5 is gone. To fix this the whole track must be scaled down by 0.5% (or whatever percentage the maximum in the track goes over).
I just did my own testing (I am a complete noob btw) with REAPER and compared RUclips Music (the RUclips Premium service, not just YT vids), Tidal High and Tidal Masters with the Song Ashley by Halsey. The results are more interesting than I thought. YT Music compared to Tidal Masters is pretty dirty (when inverting the master track) and does sound even worse when compared to Tidal High. I am guessing it's because Masters has everything and compared to YT Music, where they cut away a lot of highs, you can clearly make out the highs, but when comparing to Tidal High, where some very small amounts of High gets removed, there are now removed sounds at different points, making it sound even worse when inverting (hope this makes sense). And yes, comparing Tidal Masters to Tidal High in inverted mode showed some removed highs but the inverted track sounded very clean and consistently only removed a tiny bit where are as YT Music was sounding dirty and not clean at all, it was just all over the place. And when listening very very close, I think I was able to hear the difference between them three, definitely noticeable was the difference between YT Music and Tidal Masters/High and there was a very very very tiny bit removed from the highs in her voice when comparing Tidal Masters to Tidal High. The voice just sounds a very tiny bit different between them three and between Tidal and YT, even the music sounds slightly different when there are a lot of sounds. But please, take this with a grain of salt as I am not a professional and not at all qualified in anything music related. I am using the Audioengine A2+ desktop speakers speakers with their built in DAC/AMP over USB so I think they should be able to utilize the high resolution audio. please correct me if I am wrong.
One very important thing to keep in mind when switching quality level in Spotify...the quality will not change right away since the way they buffer music. You have to go to another song then go back. I hope you did this when grabbing Audio between lo and hi quality.
As a fellow audio engineer, I say thank you for this video! (I loved the bit at the end about "things normal humans can't hear"). I wish that the RUclips algorithm didn't screw with the accuracy so much. It would be awesome to be able to get files from you. I am surprised about the results that you got from iTunes. I always felt, when listening, that Apple did a good job. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hear as many of the differences as you were pointing out (and I'm blaming RUclips's compression)
they both stream at 128kbps as far as i know, so... but you can download original wavs/flacs on bandcamp; original wavs on soundcloud /if the uploader lets you though/
I wonder how these stack up against each other in 2020. I believe RUclips Music has improved its sound quality, I'm sure the others possibly have as well. Would it be possible for to re-visit this?
RUclips apparently changes their audio quality and compression format from time to time. I could hear the difference between YT and Master as well as Apple music and Master, but it was much fainter than what was presented in the information difference portion of the comparison. That was crazy. Like a whole other song in there!
What only pisses me off is that CDs were always lossless WAVs in effect (commercial CDs, at least), yet now we've regressed to the point where you can't even get lossless audio anymore. And a large share of people listen to their music on RUclips. Then they make fun of people for bringing up CDs...
that's why buying CDs is still the best option for high quality music. (well, there's HDTracks.com as well, which has some stuff at higher sampling rate and bit-depth (if that would make a difference), but even if it's CD-quality they're still more expensive than the CD, so not a good option imo) But what do you mean by CDs WERE lossless? Can you give me an example of CDs that aren't lossless? That would be an insanely stupid thing to do...
@@LRM12o8 "CDs were" as in, CDs are no longer a common thing, and often considered "obsolete" by the superior convenience of streaming. Also, I think burned CDs from downloaded MP3s really didn't do much for matters when people would go around ripping burned CDs back to their iPods... etc...
@@ATTAproject um, in what way? They're 16-bit, stereo PCM with every one of 44,100 samples per channel per second individually and fully coded to the disc, which music services strive to achieve (but don't, because they all use lossy algorithmic compression). I don't think there's any bitrate constraints at all in the matter there...
Digital Downloads is what I suggest. Plattforms like Google Play STORE and Beatport still exist, and they should offer better quality, on Beatport at least you can get WAVs
So one small issue I noticed right off the bat was that when you normalize compressed audio, the volume won't match up perfectly because the transients in the signal have been altered. Peaks that have been flatted in the master file will sometimes not be perfectly flat anymore, and sometimes peaks can go up and down a little bit as the encoding compensates for the missing information. So because the volume of the files weren't matched up perfectly, you're probably getting more information in the phase test than normal. You'd probably need to use an RMS meter to maybe match all the files up perfectly.
Actually, RUclips songs are typically mastered at a slightly lower level to preserve dynamic range. The Opus codec isn't the primary reason for the difference in loudness between the two tracks.
@@bobbyc1120 I never said it was. All compressed codecs change the waveform as they throw away information. Opus, OGG, MP3, AAC. And it's not mastering at all, RUclips just uses their own sort of ReplayGain algorithm to keep volume between videos somewhat level.
Correct, this is not a music production issue but a file compression issue. He should re do the test through lossless recordings with no compression, though not sure how he would get the recordings.
When you changed from Low Quality to High Quality in Spotify, did you play another song/restart de application before re-recording? Spotify needs to play something else or get restarted for the new settings to apply (the same happens with Volume Normalization)
It's because we listen with RUclips, the worst of all... It is like he shows a color video and we watch it with a black and white monitor. The colors could be fancy as fuck, but we would still see only a black and white video.
@@Setsuna_Kyoura This. Although, even through the modest speakers in my living room, the difference between the master and the RUclips recording was pretty huge. RUclips's system does appalling things to audio.
@@ShaneJMcEntee Right, but the RUclips recording in the video has been crunched by RUclips's algorithm twice by the time we hear it, so it's still just noticeably shittier than the others.
Frank Stallone For real. I mean, like, listen to Prince's Originals compilation album on Tidal (Available in Masters Quality) and it'll blow out your mind.
Michael Garzón I was just listening to that album for my first experience it the comparison it sounds similar to me idk I’m using regular Apple earphones and I got the free trial for the hi quality version
If this means anything to anyone: I used apple music, spotify, and tidal for years now. Since I started listening to music on Tidal I could never go back, if the album you're listening to has a "Master" version on Tidal, it is amazing compared to AM, and spotify. My car doesn't have the most high end speakers ever, yet I love listening to bass heavy rap music on blasting volume, apple music and spotify both have a staticy noise that sounds like it's hurting my speakers when some bass kicks in, the same goes for normal sounding music on Tidal, but "Master" and even "Hi-Fi" music on Tidal does not have this problem and makes my car sound like it have million dollar speakers. Will never switch back to any of the other platforms for music. (Many large / upcoming artists have "Master" and "Hi-Fi" versions of their albums on Tidal btw)
I've been saying this for a long time now. 44100Hz 16bit is a digital standard FROM THE EARLY 1980s, and every professionally produced record since then has been recorded to at least that standard. I can stream 4k 60fps HDR content on my wireless 4G LTE network, but not lossless audio? Why is it too much to ask Spotify to uphold a digital standard from nearly forty years ago? And why on Earth is there only one service to choose from in lossless streaming?
You can stream lossless audio (Tidal) but its probably very expensive to store and stream those large files so other providers like Spotity don't deem it profitable. The reason that 4k HDR is so widely available is because the television manufacturers promote the hell out of it and the public buys into it. Most of the general public are too dumb to even know what Hi-Res lossless audio is, not can they even tell the difference on their shitty sound bars.
telecoms are pushing it heavily here in europe as well, so I'm puzzled as why he didn't do it. Especially their FLAC tier, or hifi or whatever it's called.
Thank you for your video. I made comparisons between Tidal and Apple Music and I found that it depends on the albums in fact, which is very strange. Here are the titles I tested and the results : -"We Got the Love" from Chaka Khan's Chaka album : Best sound at Apple Music, while it's a Master version at Tidal -"Love Having You Around" from the album Music Of My Mind by Stevie Wonder : Its identical in both. (Master Version at Tidal and Apple Digital Master Version at Apple Music) -"Automatic" and "Let's Pretend We're Married" from Prince's 1999 album : Best sound at Tidal Tests performed on MacBook Pro and iPod Touch with a Sony MDR-1A headphones
Does anyone find it ironic that we are watching this through youtube... Which is by far the worst quality. The fact that mostly the highs are distorted is not really surprising if you understand how the encoding works, at the end of the day basically it comes down to the fact that highs require much more data to transmit than lows simply because the frequency is higher. I personally listen more to punk and rock, and I can often hear very clear distortion in the cymbals on youtube. Usually I end up buying the tracks through bandcamp, there they have FLAC files available which is what I usually use. Google and youtube value every MB they can shave off a video, the amount of content they host is astronomical, so at the end of the day they can save a lot of money by reducing the filesize by a few dozen kB/s... Brings me to the point of Apple, if you ever synced music to an iPhone through iTunes you would have noticed that there are very few options available as far as the encoding, last I checked it was something like a choice between 320kb/s and 192kb/s (can't remember the encoder). The thing is, if you used FLACs you would be looking at 3x the file size of the higher and 5x the lower bitrate option. Then consider that apple "cheaped out" on their iPhones offering only very limited storage. I personally always used android phones and use a 64GB SD card, only then does storing FLACs on it really make sense, anything less than that and I would run into capacity problems... Apple aren't high end performance like some people expect.
The kick bass in the out of phase test, though? under no circumstances should it go that low.. affecting the High's should be OK in general because a normal human ear starts to loose high end pickup in our teenage years and by the time you're 30 you're not really expected to hear above 16-17khz. but all the way down to the kick bass is just ridiculous, and CLEARLY audible. I mean as you said there's so much information that's ENTIRELY inaudible to the average person above 16kz... but down to the mid bass frequencies. Funny thing is, my hearing gets tested by my work (as do most other machine operators), and my hearing currently maxes out at 21khz (at least with their over ear monitors in the testing van) and i often complain more about how vocals sound on RUclips than i do the highs on anything else. and now i can prove it's not just my imagination!!!
Lmao what? AAC is better than MP3 while still being smaller and Apple has a lossless codec you can use to rip CDs (ALAC) which is functionaly the same as FLAC. It's also on the labels to provide good sounding files to Apple which clearly didn't happen here. There is also no audible difference between a good 320kbps rip and a FLAC rip
FrostyP "no audible difference between a good quality 320kbps rips and FLAC" - ok now if this is the case you, then that sux bro. but that definitely isn't the case for me. it's like the ride in a car it's subjecting, and many people can't perceive a difference, again, like how many cant see the difference of 4k over 1080p on a sub 65" screen, yet the difference is there and witnessed by many others. what's so hard to accept that just because person A can't perceive a difference, that doesn't mean person b, c, or d can't?
Did you uncheck the sound check option in iTunes because if not iTunes will apply loudness normalization to every track it plays back. You can find the option under, Preferences, playback, then uncheck the box that says sound check. In actuality Apple's AAC encoder will sound better and is a far more complex codec when volume matched compared to any Mp3 encoded streaming services. RUclips applies loudness normalization as well. Without volume matching polarity inversion doesn't matter you will hear more differences because of the volume mismatch. This is why the loudness war is over and has been for a couple of years now slamming a song in mastering causes your songs to sound weak and smaller on streaming services that use loudness normalization when compared to a slammed lossless master. This is the same issues we all had to deal with back in the days of radio and the Oban Optimod every station had. Just look at your channel meters and use a LUFS meter. When you normalizing tracks in reaper it will not make them equal. This is a great idea for a video but understanding what is going on behind the scenes is a huge help. Even the best engineer can be fooled by loudness differences. RUclips uses the VP9 opus codec which is actually a pretty good lossy codec when compared to Mp3 if you upload a lossless file. If you use something like Handbrake then RUclips will not re-encode the video or audio it will only loudness normalize the audio. Have a great day!
If anyone is interested, the song used in this video is called "Missing U" by Hibshi feat. Rochelle I really don't know why this wasn't mentioned in the description. It feels like it should, giving credit where it's due. Just casually throwing it at the beginning of the video doesn't make it easy for people to find it.
Spotify uses both Ogg Vorbis and AAC. It depends on the device, usually AAC only on web players. Ogg/Vorbis 96/160/320 kbps AAC 24/128/256 kbps These are from their own help site/mastering guide.
Thank you for being the only person to close their mouth and use technology to solve this discussion. WE NEED AN UPDATE to this video because it's 4 yrs old and all of the streaming services have added new features.
Its called WATERMARKING which is used by UMG (Universal Music Group). Unfortunately all labels under UMG use audible watermarking. Only if you were to purchase the music outright would you avoid this audio glitch. Now even Tidal music is plagued by this problem. I have heard that MQA on Tidal and most streaming from Qobuz avoid this.
i mean why are mastering engineers give their best to get the most possible out of a song, if streaming services screw it up again oO ... and nowadays everyone is streaming
Yeah, this is why many of my fans want the best quality from BandCamp instead of just the regular streaming services ... or just the full 24 bit WAV from my website. 1:1 ratio. :)
CursedSound and yet places like RUclips are willing to host 4K or native video. Because people demand high video quality. Until people demand high audio quality, nothing will change. There is no reason we can’t have 16 bit 441.1 kHz FLAC everywhere. Or at least 320kbps MP3 or AAC.
The aspect that very few if anybody talks about is if you feel any different listening to compressed and uncompresses or higher and lower rez. It is not called SPL.. or sound pressure for nothing. You don't only listen with your ears.. your body feels it and gives feedback via skin, hair follicles, kinesthetic feedback and after effect what you previously been listening to. Controlling for 'other factors' is a mine field. We did some research comparing EEG and other sensors of test subjects before testing them for compressed and uncompressed. Was small sample size so not nearly good enough academically but it showed there is definite difference between groups of people that where 'sensitive' according to electrodermal skin response reaction and some other sensors. Main thing I am waffling on about is .. we don't only listen with ears for how we feel about music or perceive what we hear.
3 Minutes in and I'm just gonna leave this here... [Also, I'm using terms Hi and Lo because A) Lazy B) similar to the labels he already has in his Production Environment] You won't hear a difference between the Lo and Hi for Spotify if you already had Hi enabled the first time you played the song. Spotify caches a HUGE amount of songs onto your device that it 'thinks' you will listen to... So if you had Hi enabled when it was doing this caching, it'll keep that same Hi version when you disable Hi and keep it on Lo. That's because if you're wanting to 'save bandwidth' then why would you WASTE more of a customer's bandwidth by redownloading an inferior quality version of the song that they already have a decent quality version of? SO! I'm gonna bet that you had listened to this song previously within the last couple of days-weeks, and thus had a Cached version of the song that was already in Hi Quality... Thus, when you switched to Lo Quality, it just kept the Hi Quality file so that it wouldn't have to redownload and thus waste customer's money....
totally agree. couple of months ago I was driving in a place outside of a town in my country, internet connection was very very poor. I didn't enable Auto downloading or anything like that on my Spotify but what I noticed that some of the old listened before music on the list sounds better with a high quality than the new unheard before songs.
I did this test myself on Spotify and compared the low and high quality version of Africa by TOTO, because it has low frequency tones which can get chopped of with high compression. And I am save to say that there is a noticable difference between the two.
I feel like Spotify on high quality is slightly better it sounds richer maybe? However the difference is so minimal it might even be the placebo affect with me thinking its better because they says its better.
On Spotify they put out these "Remastred" albums mostly. It's re-releases of old albums. I'm pretty sure the remastering is mostly limiting to get it louder.
I know that there is more too it. But the loudness war is a big part of it. And that's a reason why alot of these remasterted albums doesn't sound right. Alot of them sound worse than the original. You get tired fast from listening to it. The subtle nuances are lost so it doesn't sound as real. ruclips.net/video/scfmFbA3DwA/видео.html
exactly, the loudness war is real. for physical media I usually end up buying original releases from Japan because that market expects quality sound with a nice dynamic range.
I've been testing all these services and i'm 100% sure. Google Play Music has the higher quality of all of them, can't hear a difference between Tidal and Google Play Music, but i can between Spotify and Tidal. Google Play Music has the upper hand despite using MP3 (inferior codec between spotify ogg and apple music AAC), they encode raw from the CD probably.
Hey, that is a great video, thank you for your work and effort. A few things I want to point out though, for the next one! 1) While you did a normalization, you did (as it seems) normalize the peak values of the audio files. - This is in fact not giving you the results you opted for. Coding into mp3 or other formats creates additional peaks and errors. You should rather look for loudness normalization instead of the peaks. That would give you more accurate and better results. 2) You have stated that you took great care of alignment, although the alignment could be done by ear. You are better of to align the audio files sample-accurate. The results would be much more comparable if you would do that. 3) You did not talk about how you got those files, if you used some URL converters for example, or if you got the original streaming source. You could have also recorded the files directly (which you kinda did) but there is not validation for dropped samples or audio processing errors. Also, a little tip how you could do this more in depth. Try to compare the frequency response of the files, you can quickly see what's going on by doing that. - I'm in to testing this myself and maybe create a video as you did. But including sample-accurate time alignment, loudness normalized audio files, and I will include some more services and also audio formats. Thank you for being a creator though! :)
1) He probably didn't normalize the peak values, because with the RUclips clip it was not peaking whereas the original was. 2) He stated in a comment that he took a great care of the alignment, despite what we see in the video
he explained that he recorded the files through internal sound card routing. Which means he played the songs and recorded them via his soundcards output
Assuming the sample rates are the same. Theoretically as long as the sample rate stays above 44.1khz it could still be audibly lossless... but the samples wouldn't match up any more.
sfscstube Which could have caused aliasing depending on the relative sample rates. Making it impossible to make sample accurate comparisons. But you're right he did do that... which means he would have to record at (at least) double the sample rate as the source streams to prevent aliasing. And then one has to consider the sample rate of whatever transport he's using to loop the audio into his mixing software.
Heads up : Spotify has never worked at switching the audio quality , when u change the audio quality in the settings nothing changes (the only way to change it is to delete it and redownload it and that only works sometimes)
The Question is, can you hear the Difference between a Lossless Flac and an compressed 320kbs MP3 File. I can, but only sometimes and only on very deep bass or high hits
That really depends strongly on the material listening to. Putting on some high quality piano solo music shows the difference very clearly where it's hard to hear a difference on some highly compressed rock music.
mp3's sound quality is absolutely terrible.. if you can't hear the difference between an mp3 and flac chances are you either can't spot the differences or your listening device doesn't have high enough sound quality so you won't be able to spot the differences
Talking about the 4K analogy: in RUclips's case as I said before their maximum is lossy 384Kbps, and when it comes to FLAC the bitrate can fluctuate between 500 Kbps and more than 2000Kbps inside the same song. Those numbers in terms of space are a GIGANTIC DIFFERENCE . . . I still want lossless audio :(
I can't tell a difference between good 128kbps compression and 320kbps compression, so I won't bother anything higher than standard high quality streaming.
I already try Apple, Spotify, amazon music, RUclips and tidal and at the end I just keep Tidal. For me is better sound quality and also my ears doesn’t hurt when I listen the music for a couple hours like I experience when I was using the rest of music streaming services
So far I’ve tried Spotify, deezer, and AM. Spotify to me sounds the worst, even using the customizable EQ (which is awesome) the audio sounded muddy and not as crisp. Deezer and AM are practically the same in terms of audio quality, but AM is more advanced than Deezer (Deezer literally released audio normalization just a few months ago, even after it was constantly asked for by users for years)
He's got studio monitors, you would be surprised what you can hear with good equipment, he can notice it but we wont... this video is helpful saves me time so I dont have to.
@@deez9353 If you also have studio monitors you can hear some of the differences between them by watching the video. Buuuuut you have to remember every single clip has been changed by youtube at this point.
RUclips does compress the highest frequencies, but they are indeed noticeable. Specially when comparing spotify lo and hi. Then apple music to original there is a difference in how clear it is. I'm listening on ATH M50s and tried bose soundports as well. Same deal. On a daily basis I dont think it really matters but the master does sound a whole lot better. That's just my 2c
Spotify's high frequencies are lacking in the low quality and get clearer in the high quality. Original master has more high mid than Spotify high quality. Tidal returns the high and high mid frequencies that Spotify high was missing. Apple Music like Spotify is missing the high frequencies. Seems Apple is also cutting some low mid. It seems RUclips is missing highs, high mids, mids as well as lowering the volume. Interesting. Btw listening on JBL 306P MKIIs off a Roland Audio Interface.
RUclips cut the frequencies beyond 15khz and farely good dac/amp combo you can easily hear the differences between the files. Thank you for this review, it really confirms what I was hearing about spotify, there isn't much difference if there is any between the two audio quality spotify offer.
Sadly we won;t hear much difference since we are watching this through a video that was re-encoded through RUclips, so we are subject to the compression on the video.
There is a very small difference between apple and the original, and a moderate difference between youtube music and the original that still comes through. But between Spotify, Tidal/Original the small differences there are masked by RUclips audio compression.
Have you ever tried applying the same filter twice? Go into a DAW, use just about any filter, apply it once - listen - reapply it - listen again. Basically, the point I am trying to make is that even though the original master has been put through youtube compression, the youtube stream has been put through that compression twice, so the difference still exists.
@@ppppatcho Depends on the filter.. If you do a short transition brickwall filter, and then do it again at a lower frequency there's virtually no trace of the first filter being run.
I really appreciate scientific audio tests like this, thank you so much! Here are my observations: Original: The best, you'll get all the details for lows, mids and highs. Loved it! Best part is the depth with details, simply amazing quality. Spotify: Highs are dominant that lows and mids are overpowered a little bit. Nah... no depth... Tidal: Just the right amount of highs and lows but they still lack detail in terms of depth.. Apple Music: Is it just me or they're modifying the sound? Not consistent and really lacking in terms of details. They got a boost for highs and tried-so-hard to catch the depth but.. no avail... RUclips Streaming: Forget it, I'd rather listen to my dab radio. Sounds like walkie talkie 😑 Overall, this video showed the true meaning of "loss-less" music 😉
You know, I'm a guy who's been listening to music (rock/meta) for almost 40 years in almost every way and every environment much to the detriment of my hearing (unfortunately). And with that said, even I heard the difference with both Apple Music and RUclips Music. Couldn't really tell the difference between the two Spotify streams and the Tidal stream; like I said, compromised hearing. For me to tell the difference with Apple and RUclips really is illustrating that their is something wrong their streams.
To do an accurate phase test you not only have to align it perfectly but you have to have the levels aligned perfectly as well. You can prove this by having two mono sine waves (with one phase flipped of course) and adjusting the gain. It'll go from silence to audible (if done correctly). I'd say that you aligned it correctly (or as close as you could get it given that the samples won't perfectly align, given that it was both recorded but especially since the signal was processed, which, like MP3s, adds a small amount of latency) but my biggest concern would be on the original track- you kept red lining where as on the other tracks you didn't. Whether that is true peaks causing that or not, it shouldn't really matter. This experiment would actually be very difficult to pull off flawlessly, so I'm not trying to be critical. I'd just say that this is probably within the ball park in terms of accuracy as opposed to being pin point accurate and final.
Thanks for this one. Just want to check in on some details -- did you disable volume normalization function in Spotify and Apple Music? What video quality did you use in RUclips, was it 720p or below?
I get tired after hearing about 25 minutes of spotify using studio monitors and about 15 minutes using headphones, this didn't used to be a problem when I listened to CDs.
Ok. . people! Audio streaming makes use of non-lossless perceptual audio coding algorithms. These are taking advantage of our ears' masking effects as there are e.g. absolute minimum hearing threshold and simultaneous and/or pre/post masking during audio impulses. This way since the 1980s with the release of mp3 it was possible for the first time ever to store and transmit audio with acceptable quality while using a reasonable low data rate. However, in the end the goal of those algorithms is to reproduce a perceived equivalent but not a wave form like equivalent signal! And this is why the comparison of difference signals is useless. The added noise in the reconstruction is brought in on purpose to save data rate and is hidden inaudibly by physical effects of our auditory organ.
When listening through decent headphones, while you were comparing Spotify High Quality with the original I can hear the Original has a much larger sound stage. Also it gets compressed twice so you can still hear small differences that change the clarity and sound stage.
Man, thank you a lot, that was really insightful. This FPS really caught my attention and then you talk about it how much data it uses. Why destroy the audio and invest so much in image right? Also, great stuff about ears getting tired, makes a lot of sense why I used to listen to LPs a lot but now I get tired of Spotify. Tidal is marginally better, but that’s where devil lives
"The difference... It's Huuuuuge" :D I am very glad you made this video. Tidal wins because of the higher quality. I had Spotify for a long time but when I tested Tidal it just sounded good enough to pay for. The origional WAV or FLAC is always best. You are fully correct, the streaming companies should invest in lossless quality.
Actually I did expect that RUclips would have the worst quality for two reasons: 1. There are a lot of videos on YT for which a high sound quality isn't really important. And so they are compressing it in order to cut data storage usage. Because… 2. YT handles way more data than music streaming services. If you simplify it, on YT's hard drives there are about all music that you find on the music streaming platforms + videos to those songs + all vlogs, live recordings and (as *everyone* can potentially upload content to YT) all that other weird stuff around here. At the end of your video you said something like "why can't I stream uncompressed music when I can stream 4K Videos?" Well, also for that there are two main explanations, I guess: 1. Don't forget that the also video information on RUclips is extremely compressed. Raw Video footage, comparable to WAV, would be tremendously big, so you won't even find uncompressed films on a BluRay or in cinemas. I'd estimate that the loss in the process of compressing the video material by YT is much worse than with the audio - video compression offers so much more data saving potential than audio compression. That's why you encounter artifacts, too dark images, bleeding and so on so often on RUclips. 2. Video is not expected to be as "portable" as music. Whilst many don't want to stream a 4K video while sitting in the metro they *do* expect that they can stream "Eye of the tiger" while they are waiting in the line for McDonalds (where the Wi-Fi always is bad). :D Very interesting video!
In youtube when you choose a higher resolution stream the audio bit rate also increases. Like for a 1080p MP4 video the audio bit rate is 192 kbit/s compared to 96 kbit/s on a 360p MP4. , removing compression, increasing the video quality of the video file, will increase the overall quality. Audio as well.
i had a 30 free trial with Tidal and their higher quality sound (Master). I could hear a BIG difference with certain audio. It's not difficult to go back to "normal-standard" streaming quality. i could hear the difference with a good pair of headset. if you are using a cheap one then, i couldn't spot any difference at all (which make sense)
Bad choice of song for the demo, way too over-produced, you should have used an acoustic track. Incidentally, I listened to the two Spotify streams with my eyes closed and one was clearly more open and 'airy' than the other, I guess that would have been the higher quality stream strutting its stuff ;).
Dont forget the audio is losing data from the original compression, the video encoders compression and then the youtube compression, so for us the difference may be less exaggerated, but I do agree, a more dynamic track would be easier to spot these differences
I believe overproduced tracks are good for comparing too, cause they are pushed to their limits, and that causes much more distortion of lower bitrates
Sadly, RUclips transcoded your audio to 121 kb/s opus, so listening along with you I had to take what I was hearing with a grain of salt. That was until you did the phase swaps. Those were certainly interesting. Thanks for making this. I would also love a reliable and trustworthy source of lossless music. I was saddened to hear allegations that some of the big-name vendors have upsampled low-quality sources, even lossy ones, then passed them off as if they're lossless reproductions of the master. That brings up the question of whether that sort of thing has happened with any regularity on the streaming platforms as well. It isn't just the digital download vendors either. I've bought CDs on Amazon that turned out to be upsampled mp3.
trough apple and the Original i hear a lot of differences. Like the Drums are not so deep and not "in your face" and its not so "big" like the original
It’s like comparing 192 kHz and 48 kHz on a 48 kHz output. In that case the 192 kHz will be downsampled to 48 kHz, and only 1 sample out of 4 will be read. That means both sample rates will sound really really close. Since the high frequencies in the audio are very fast, they will be squared out because the sampling is too slow to make them round. It’s like setting your game’s terrain detail from ultra to low (sample rate) but maxing out everything else and keeping your resolution at 4K (audio frequency). The rocks, instead of being well rounded and detailed, will turn into having only eight faces. The game will look exactly the same, but if you pay attention to the details, you will notice it. Same applies for audio, the highs are fatiguing at low sample rates, just like listening to a pure square wave on a synthesizer. RUclips is 44.1 kHz, so frequencies between 10 kHz and 20 kHz will have 2 to 4 samples and won’t even be sampled at their peak amplitude, that will just be a random triangle wave.
I’m making a prediction: RUclips is bottom or second to bottom. Edit: I was expecting it to be using RUclips music tbh and I’m not sure it was (or if they’re the same source?) since it’s clear at lower video quality rates on yt the audio is also lower quality. Disappointed Apple Music was down there.
Interesting video. To be fair to Google, YT is primarily a video platform, so you can forgive them for that. Apple on the other hand, just lolz. But then this is the company that bought Beats and market the products as being "high quality", which they never have been and never will be :P
Sorry bud, but no... "RUclips" is primarily a video platform... but RUclips music is a music platform, hense the name. So no you can't excuse/forgive google for that at all... How much money for R&D do they have/made from us viewing content on their platform? Like i said it's even called RUclips "music".. (normal RUclips's been sufficient for music vids for years already, and i already excuse normal RUclips for their dismal audio quality... RUclips music is specifically for music, and they clearly use the same damn encoders anyway..
I also find it hilarious that Apple does NOT support apt-X HD! They still use the crappy AAC compression to transmit sound to your overpriced, overhyped McDonalds-plastic headphones (a.k.a. beats). Poor Apple just can't afford licensing fees for qualcomm's hi-fi bluetooth codec. After all they sell budget phones, right? PS: yeah, RUclips sound quality is so shitty that often times, when watching one of my fav bands' new music video, I can't stand hearing the RUclips audio for even 3 seconds, so I then listen to the FLAC CD-rip on my hard drive while watching the music video on mute.
Nicholas Gilbet: I would excuse RUclips since its audio codec was only intended to be used in video streaming i.e. it would sound like shit. RUclips Music is another platform that was recently launched that is focused on audio streaming, indeed, but it isn't available to other countries aside from North America and Europe (Latin America is practically excluded, let alone Southeast Asia) and most people just use the video site to listen to music, not YTM. Google still employs a low-quality AAC encoder at 128kbps for videos. So yeah, go figure.
There is a new, updated version of this video that you can find here: ruclips.net/video/MJtf5MrhF34/видео.html
1. Tidal
2. Spotify
3. Apple
4. RUclips
Saved you 18mins
You're welcome
I love that We are listening to the differences on the worse of the 4
i find apple music quality better than spotify,
That's prob because apple music also has a higher quality setting and he is probably recording the low quality setting used for saving data...
So basically this video is sponsored by Tidal
thanks captain
The best part is that we can't even hear the difference because we’re watching on RUclips ... :D
i heard everything
The fact that the audio is compressed should only exacerbate the compression. You know because the compressed tracks are compressed twice whereas the original is compressed once.
😂🔥
can still hear a little bit of difference, i mean if you lower the quality of both Original and Hi-Spotify, then the results would be both lowered quality.
I heard the difference
Once you listen to a song on Spotify with high quality streaming enabled, it will cache the high quality version of the song on your machine local storage. After that even if you disable the high quality streaming option, it will not re-download the lower quality version and just plays the cached one (which is high quality version). That's probably the reason there was no difference in LO and HI versions.
Okay, interesting if true.
Spotify high quality = 320kbs mp3
@@Roshan_420 actually 320kbps ogg vorbis
@@costellom7656 still absolute trash compared to tidal
still no recognizable difference until put beside each other
We need part 2 of this. 2020 edition with amazon hd & yt music etc
Yes please!
and deezer
and qobuz
SoundCloud
Amazon, yt music, Pandora and soundcloud
*me listening on a 10$ headphones* yep definitely sounds different.
Me on 100$ headphones: ahhh you can clearly hear the lack of difference
Me listening on T5p: no difference cause plugged into shitty iPhone DAC ;-)
_Me on 250€ earbuds_ oh I forgot Im impaired 😂😂😂
Just to compare:
Me with 200 € Wireless Gaming Headset -> there is a difference?
Me with 300 € Wireless Music Headphones -> by the god, so many differences, especially in the BASS AHHH
*Me with 1$ chinese headphones, with L channel broken* OH MY GOD APPLE MUSIC STOP, THIS IS NOT RIGHT, STOP DOING THAT
_any difference was heard in the entire video_
The fact that we are listening to it on RUclips, trying to hear the difference between high quality tracks, knowing how bad RUclips audio quality is... Marvelous.
very similar to trying to compare 4K video to FullHD video while watching on 480p CRT screen
I thought the same, knowing that it's kind of pointless to watch mix and production videos on youtube.
@@rommysoeli Not a good comparison. 4k vs 1080p is only the pixel resolution. Spotify and others are post processing and compressing the song.
@@songsteel00 Yes you are right but I can shoot 4k with my phone and it looks like crap but 1080 on an amira is amazing. Color and dynamic range (usually given in stops) is a whole different parameter to rate a camera.
S0ngsteel actually incorrect. Resolution is just pixel size. This is is why I can play a old school game on my computer that was originally supposed to run at a maximum of 1280x800. Super sampling allows this to happen with a decent image. Resolution has nothing to do with wide color gammit or HDR or anything. Resolution is about the detail captured in the image. Everything else is processing
The human legs can only hear 8gb of ram.
Toms Piano this get’s worse the more you look at it
good to know someone thinks the same way i do
HAHAHA SO FUNNY XD LOL ROFL
╮(╯▽╰)╭
the human hear can only hear 128 kbps
I'm watching this over RUclips and with my smartphones speakers.
The perfect way to judge the sound 👍
Anyway great video
I can still hear the difference between yt music and the original on phone
As a pro audio engineer myself I’m going to actually say I heard more differences than he did. I’m also listening off my old pretty used iPhone speakers 😂
Even doing this, I could hear a difference between low and hi Spotify. The vocals at the beginning have more air almost? Idk how to describe it but it’s got more clarity
The human ear can only hear 15 FPS, or about 10 megapixel of audio
oåooåo ipip that’s funny
actually it's 20hz-20,000hz and I'd guess a couple hundred decibels would make you go deaf
uuum, actually i can hear in full 1080p 60fps
this fried my brain a little bit
Thanks, Mr Obvious
This is absolutely GLORIOUS! Thank you for blessing RUclips with this awesome analysis! 🙏
I love you Jesus
Jesus Chris it's Jesus Christ
We meet again...
Jesus Christ, it's Jason Bourne
I keep seeing you on the rendomest videos I watch
Unfortunately, since we're listening via RUclips, we can't really hear what you hear. Kind of like seeing an ad for a 4K TV while watching a standard definition TV. Would be great if you could provide the A/B comparisons as a FLAC file somewhere that those of us that are interested could download.
Chris Yuzik yess
Like playing a ps4 pro on a black and white tv
Chris Yuzik I still use youtube anyway it's just easier
I could still hear the differences though. maybe wont be as dramatic as what he was hearing but you can hear it.
You can do the test on yourself too but I don't see a point. It's clear that if you want the highest possible quality you either buy the lossless master or use Tidal/Deezer.
We need an update! those streaming services upgrade the quality!
I did hear a difference in the spotify test, but only when I saw you switch. Without that I could never tell a difference.
Probably placebo effect...
Probably because you are listening on RUclips
Sadly, just as Larry said, because we are listening on youtube (considered the worse quality) we will not hear any of the differences in the better ones.
It would be like trying to see what is better DVD 1080 vs Blueray 4k on an old RCA tv.
I didnt look at the Screen and could clearly tell that Tidal has the best quality and i heard that Apple was rly worse, at first when the spotify came up i couldnt tell a difference but i guess that was cause i didnt concentrate.
RUclips sound is compressed.
You Actually lose some details in the Mids from the quality settings. Not that much but anything with a Violine in it you will hear it easily.
I want to highlight that (although it doesn't look like it) I took great care and caution into aligning the audio files for the phase swap test. I only kept a small part of this process in the video, just to get you guys aware of the fact that this is important. It looks like I'm doing it quickly and by eye, this is in fact not the case. To make sure the test wasn't flawed, I did nudge and balance the tracks until I had the quietest signal left before the camera was rolling.
btw: this is a test you can easily replicate yourself ;-).
White Sea Studio So glad you posted this disclaimer!
Are you a dude or what's good?
Oh so Audacity sucks... Oh wait maybe I should recheck my own comparison files also comparing actual hardware output methods. Analogue 3.5mm vs HDMI.
Of course I don't have access to source material.
Did you have the option to preserve dynamics on in Spotify?
+White Sea Studio I loved the video and would like to thank you for the time spent doing it. I know that this was done 6 months ago but how about comparing it also to the CD release?
Thanks to RUclips we can't hear the difference.
RUclips is sucks quality
You can a bit. Listen to the echos.
The video he used for the YT version might not have been uploaded with lossless audio, because the YT audio encoder is not that bad to score under Spotify LowQ. I think the video was encoded with MP3 audio. Compressing that again to opus is a terrible idea.
@@nextlifeonearth Your Definitely right. RUclips still compresses the audio making the difference subtle. He should throw up a FLAC version so we can hear the difference better.
You absolutely can with great headphones
LilElliotX sad virgin
The best and most clear explanation regarding audio encoding that i've found on youtube.Good job
15:04 1) original 2) tidal 3) spotify low/hi 4) apple 5) youtube
e735star thx
Thanks, you saved me 15 minutes.
Was the original a Cd or vinyl, I didn’t catch if he said it was either
@@leoguardian3259 Neither, it is the original master file that the CD or Vinyl would be made from
Incorrect it was a digital WAV file, and not a "true" tape master. While WAV is a lossless format it still adds it own artifacts to the original. Like comparing a WAV to a FLAC of the same song. Both are lossless formats but sometimes differences can be heard.
Haha, you gotta appreciate RUclips getting SLAUGHTERED on their own platform..
Not a surprise that their compression is crap.. But then again given the volume of data they have to deal with its just impractical to do any better.
@@Diandredofus Nahh not realy let say theres low mid and high .....if the size difference between low (youtube) and high (original) is huge ....between low and mid the size difference wouldnt be that huge but the quality is much better.Also youtube is owned by GOOGLE .......if they cant do it how spotify is doing it .....yea yea videos .....blah blah .....but i realy doubt if they deleted all low quality and replaced it with the suggested mid quality (which would be much better) the size would be greater than terabyte sooooooo they realy only save on quality not size ...imo
Maybe because it's a video platform, so audio isn't their main concern?
@@veveve8489 I can tell you're a tech expert.
He ran this test before high quality audio was made available on RUclips. It's very likely that he was using the 128kbps AAC version. My comment above explains it.
Spotify has a cache, so if you ever listened to the high quality before recording the low quality one, you might have got the HQ one instead (from local cache)
jimlap777 what?
That would make sense, he may have also had the song downloaded already or something.
@@nolestrono This is true, I've even found spotify caching folder in C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Spotify, mine weights ~4 GB
Does it work in the opposite way? I mean, if you listened LQ, then you always listen LQ no matter which quality you choose.
@@jordifrias8829 If implemented correctly, no it would not. It would have to update to the HQ version. But if the HQ version is in cache, pretty sure that is what is going to play unless you clear the cache.
Just watched the video, cancelled Spotify and started Tidal. I found a beautiful performance of Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 1 by Van Cliburn on Spotify and liked it. Now listening on Tidal... and I can't believe the difference. Can hear the bowing, the attack of the brass, when they turn the pages.
My ears can hear!
Thank you!
what do you listen it on? share some information you mysterious creature
@@Drothen- :-) A pair of Focals fed by a Roland Edirol with SonarWorks Systemwide.
After watching this video I cancelled Tidal and started family Premium on Spotify. I will save a tons of money and 5 of us will enjoy amazing quality for less money then Tidal.
@@pedecia I am sorry for you but spotify has nothing amazing quality ;)
@@cosminiustin7625 i have a decent system and I cannot hear a difference except in volume between spotify and tidal. My 3 months trial is going to expire soon with tidal and been listening since the beginning. I only get issues of errors about me playing tidal in some other devices somewhere when in reality is only a broken implementation. I used to get those errors years ago and are still there. Spotify has been flawless for 10 years in a row. How do you even understand the difference between the two in quality?? I have tried very hard... I have over 20 headphones of all prices, several amps and dacs... Tried all different configurations to justify my switch to tidal but really didn't see the point.... Tidal seems highly bugged in my experience and also the music choices and recommendation on my home it is infamous.... Music I hate and never listen to always appear there. Why??? Why alway disgusting Hip Hop nd rap is always there when I never listened to those styles?? One day if they improve things I might give an other trial like I also dis few years back. Tidal is not even close to Spotify in my opinion on everything. Spotify implementation is phenomenal. I always discover new music that I love with it thanks to the good AI that is programmed into it. Give it a trial and you will switch also I am sure. So many of my friends when they came to my place and made them listening spotify via my Elac Unify UB5 and my 300w/channel power amp rest speechless. Get a good sounding gear and any of these services will sound amazing but tidal is plagued by bad programming unfortunately and bugs.
The first second I clicked on the video I immediately noticed that you were Dutch haha!
True lol, I know few people from Netherlands and I was like "He looks Dutch"
We recognise by the sound
Hahah was just about to comment that
Lol that what I thought as well, his pronunciation gave it away :p
Yeah me too lol
Why your "ORIGINAL" track is not normalized? Check your clipping indicators. And even without any indicators you can hear that it is slightly louder.
Exactly! The fact it was clipping and the others weren't showed this wasn't a fair comparison. Also, pretty useless since everyone pretty much knows RUclips streaming isn't geared towards high quality at all
Every digital VU meter shows clipping in a different way. For example Waves VU Meter shows clipping if the signal reaches -0,009dBFS, some others show clipping earlier in the scale, etc... I have no idea how reaper's VU Meter is calibrated for clipping. Also, some mastering engineers set the ceiling to -0,1db, some other to 0,3, it depends! I usually set the ceiling to -0,3 and sometimes Protools' VU meter shows clipping as well. It's normal.
Also, it's absolutely normal for lossy files to clip less than lossless files, cause they LOSE some of the signal in the process of being compressed. The fact that the original track clips more is a prove of the fact that it has more informations.
Clipping means only that it is louder... nothing to do with how much information...
Clipped tracks loose information. As an example: if you need to store 1005 into a range of 0-1000 the 5 is gone. To fix this the whole track must be scaled down by 0.5% (or whatever percentage the maximum in the track goes over).
TIDAL has masters now. I agree, we should have hifi considering the bandwidth many have now. Instead audio is continually squashed in favor of video.
I just did my own testing (I am a complete noob btw) with REAPER and compared RUclips Music (the RUclips Premium service, not just YT vids), Tidal High and Tidal Masters with the Song Ashley by Halsey.
The results are more interesting than I thought. YT Music compared to Tidal Masters is pretty dirty (when inverting the master track) and does sound even worse when compared to Tidal High. I am guessing it's because Masters has everything and compared to YT Music, where they cut away a lot of highs, you can clearly make out the highs, but when comparing to Tidal High, where some very small amounts of High gets removed, there are now removed sounds at different points, making it sound even worse when inverting (hope this makes sense).
And yes, comparing Tidal Masters to Tidal High in inverted mode showed some removed highs but the inverted track sounded very clean and consistently only removed a tiny bit where are as YT Music was sounding dirty and not clean at all, it was just all over the place. And when listening very very close, I think I was able to hear the difference between them three, definitely noticeable was the difference between YT Music and Tidal Masters/High and there was a very very very tiny bit removed from the highs in her voice when comparing Tidal Masters to Tidal High. The voice just sounds a very tiny bit different between them three and between Tidal and YT, even the music sounds slightly different when there are a lot of sounds.
But please, take this with a grain of salt as I am not a professional and not at all qualified in anything music related. I am using the Audioengine A2+ desktop speakers speakers with their built in DAC/AMP over USB so I think they should be able to utilize the high resolution audio. please correct me if I am wrong.
Too many streamers who advertise "Hi-Fi audio" use 320 MP3.
We have more than enough bandwidth for FLAC.
WebX streaming a flac is irresponsible...but 4k hdr and even higher is necessary!
@@jon4715 that sounds sarcastic, but i get the feeling it isnt?
Tanner Blake McGee im being transparently sarcastic, crazy to think that streaming music has been largely stagnant for a little over a decade
Love to see this same comparison with Amazon Prime Music.
Kip Litsey yes!!!
this guy looks like a budget version of skrillex
🤣🤣🤣
and skrillex is like a deep fried emo version of this guy
Great Value Skrillex
Just looks like a clean skrillez. Aka, cleanex
they saved money by using Eyebrows lite™
Hahaha your face when you’re comparing the Apple Music one.
Qwerasd I was making the same faces then I looked over at his face and started laughing because we were both making the face
MEME 2K19
One very important thing to keep in mind when switching quality level in Spotify...the quality will not change right away since the way they buffer music. You have to go to another song then go back. I hope you did this when grabbing Audio between lo and hi quality.
He downloaded it in reaper.
As a fellow audio engineer, I say thank you for this video! (I loved the bit at the end about "things normal humans can't hear"). I wish that the RUclips algorithm didn't screw with the accuracy so much. It would be awesome to be able to get files from you. I am surprised about the results that you got from iTunes. I always felt, when listening, that Apple did a good job. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hear as many of the differences as you were pointing out (and I'm blaming RUclips's compression)
Bro i think he compared apple music with others... Apple music and itunes are two different streaming services ..
When someone asks how big it is... 10:25
🤣🤣
Snappy BRUHH
Speechless
This needs to be a meme
@@anewdeep ikr
Omg you used our track 😍😍😍
Track name? Sounds really good!
Your voice is 😍
i love your voice!
The track is so good!
Fake
I wonder where Soundcloud and Bandcamp rank. I also wonder how much this fact contributes to the rise of lofi sound.
on bandcamp you buy the original files, plus flac etc.
森マッシモ You can listen to music without bying it in Bandcamp.
they both stream at 128kbps as far as i know, so... but you can download original wavs/flacs on bandcamp; original wavs on soundcloud /if the uploader lets you though/
On soundcloud you can hear them destroy cymbals quite easily. They sound like you make a long S with your mouth full of saliva. Just terrible.
SoundCloud is 64 kbps
I wonder how these stack up against each other in 2020. I believe RUclips Music has improved its sound quality, I'm sure the others possibly have as well.
Would it be possible for to re-visit this?
I've been hearing (pun intended) great things about YTM audio quality. He should absolutely re-visit this topic.
RUclips apparently changes their audio quality and compression format from time to time. I could hear the difference between YT and Master as well as Apple music and Master, but it was much fainter than what was presented in the information difference portion of the comparison. That was crazy. Like a whole other song in there!
Nah, they are still shit
Yeah, he needs to update this test!
I think so too
What only pisses me off is that CDs were always lossless WAVs in effect (commercial CDs, at least), yet now we've regressed to the point where you can't even get lossless audio anymore. And a large share of people listen to their music on RUclips. Then they make fun of people for bringing up CDs...
that's why buying CDs is still the best option for high quality music.
(well, there's HDTracks.com as well, which has some stuff at higher sampling rate and bit-depth (if that would make a difference), but even if it's CD-quality they're still more expensive than the CD, so not a good option imo)
But what do you mean by CDs WERE lossless? Can you give me an example of CDs that aren't lossless? That would be an insanely stupid thing to do...
@@LRM12o8 "CDs were" as in, CDs are no longer a common thing, and often considered "obsolete" by the superior convenience of streaming. Also, I think burned CDs from downloaded MP3s really didn't do much for matters when people would go around ripping burned CDs back to their iPods... etc...
CD Quality was so bad in terms of bitrate, they had to add dither (noise) when they master to make it sound decent
@@ATTAproject um, in what way? They're 16-bit, stereo PCM with every one of 44,100 samples per channel per second individually and fully coded to the disc, which music services strive to achieve (but don't, because they all use lossy algorithmic compression). I don't think there's any bitrate constraints at all in the matter there...
Digital Downloads is what I suggest. Plattforms like Google Play STORE and Beatport still exist, and they should offer better quality, on Beatport at least you can get WAVs
So one small issue I noticed right off the bat was that when you normalize compressed audio, the volume won't match up perfectly because the transients in the signal have been altered. Peaks that have been flatted in the master file will sometimes not be perfectly flat anymore, and sometimes peaks can go up and down a little bit as the encoding compensates for the missing information. So because the volume of the files weren't matched up perfectly, you're probably getting more information in the phase test than normal. You'd probably need to use an RMS meter to maybe match all the files up perfectly.
I think this test needs redoing just because of what you have described.
+1
Actually, RUclips songs are typically mastered at a slightly lower level to preserve dynamic range. The Opus codec isn't the primary reason for the difference in loudness between the two tracks.
@@bobbyc1120 I never said it was. All compressed codecs change the waveform as they throw away information. Opus, OGG, MP3, AAC. And it's not mastering at all, RUclips just uses their own sort of ReplayGain algorithm to keep volume between videos somewhat level.
Correct, this is not a music production issue but a file compression issue.
He should re do the test through lossless recordings with no compression, though not sure how he would get the recordings.
When you changed from Low Quality to High Quality in Spotify, did you play another song/restart de application before re-recording?
Spotify needs to play something else or get restarted for the new settings to apply (the same happens with Volume Normalization)
This is the same thing I thought.
Same idea here
Yes exactly.
I hear the difference
Your reaction after comparing original file to RUclips made my day. 😀
You should have included Deezer too in the list. Good job tho 👍
You look completely shocked at the bad quality while I'm here hearing everything the same. Thank you for the video though! :)
It's because we listen with RUclips, the worst of all...
It is like he shows a color video and we watch it with a black and white monitor. The colors could be fancy as fuck, but we would still see only a black and white video.
@@Setsuna_Kyoura This.
Although, even through the modest speakers in my living room, the difference between the master and the RUclips recording was pretty huge. RUclips's system does appalling things to audio.
@@joshuamckown3145 but the "master" is actually RUclips quality because you're watching a RUclips video.
@@ShaneJMcEntee Right, but the RUclips recording in the video has been crunched by RUclips's algorithm twice by the time we hear it, so it's still just noticeably shittier than the others.
@@joshuamckown3145 fair enough
These results exactly match the supposed bitrate of each service, so they make a lot of sense.
Would love to see this comparison with a Tidal master track
Frank Stallone For real. I mean, like, listen to Prince's Originals compilation album on Tidal (Available in Masters Quality) and it'll blow out your mind.
Michael Garzón I was just listening to that album for my first experience it the comparison it sounds similar to me idk I’m using regular Apple earphones and I got the free trial for the hi quality version
You need hardware to listen to mqa, like a USB DAC from dragonfly. $100
@@user-ss2zg9iz8k if you don't use a compatible DAC to listen to mqa, all you listen to is regular flc, as the code is not unfolded
YYY xxx ok so bro I just bought the Sony wh100xm3 is that good for it
If this means anything to anyone:
I used apple music, spotify, and tidal for years now. Since I started listening to music on Tidal I could never go back, if the album you're listening to has a "Master" version on Tidal, it is amazing compared to AM, and spotify. My car doesn't have the most high end speakers ever, yet I love listening to bass heavy rap music on blasting volume, apple music and spotify both have a staticy noise that sounds like it's hurting my speakers when some bass kicks in, the same goes for normal sounding music on Tidal, but "Master" and even "Hi-Fi" music on Tidal does not have this problem and makes my car sound like it have million dollar speakers. Will never switch back to any of the other platforms for music. (Many large / upcoming artists have "Master" and "Hi-Fi" versions of their albums on Tidal btw)
But we all listening through RUclips...
luancav I feel like new songs sound good enough to be compressed anyway?!
I'm pretty sure most new songs are made to be compressed because that's pretty much the only way we can get them now.
@@Cyba_IT nah you can get many songs in 24bit 88khz flac
Whatever RUclips does to audio, it accumulates. We don't hear the same thing he heard, but we can definitely hear a difference.
luancav only on Tidal or files in DSD
I've been saying this for a long time now. 44100Hz 16bit is a digital standard FROM THE EARLY 1980s, and every professionally produced record since then has been recorded to at least that standard. I can stream 4k 60fps HDR content on my wireless 4G LTE network, but not lossless audio? Why is it too much to ask Spotify to uphold a digital standard from nearly forty years ago? And why on Earth is there only one service to choose from in lossless streaming?
Qobuz ? Deezer hifi ?
You can stream lossless audio (Tidal) but its probably very expensive to store and stream those large files so other providers like Spotity don't deem it profitable. The reason that 4k HDR is so widely available is because the television manufacturers promote the hell out of it and the public buys into it. Most of the general public are too dumb to even know what Hi-Res lossless audio is, not can they even tell the difference on their shitty sound bars.
Deezer
I know is not common but in brazil it is used a lot
I use it in Australia and the audio quality is nice! 👍
telecoms are pushing it heavily here in europe as well, so I'm puzzled as why he didn't do it. Especially their FLAC tier, or hifi or whatever it's called.
True
Deezer sounds nice
I use deezer with edifier aptx hd format and when you use the extreme version the audio is so good like listening a 1 on 1 copy of a cd
Thank you for your video. I made comparisons between Tidal and Apple Music and I found that it depends on the albums in fact, which is very strange. Here are the titles I tested and the results :
-"We Got the Love" from Chaka Khan's Chaka album :
Best sound at Apple Music, while it's a Master version at Tidal
-"Love Having You Around" from the album Music Of My Mind by Stevie Wonder :
Its identical in both. (Master Version at Tidal and Apple Digital Master Version at Apple Music)
-"Automatic" and "Let's Pretend We're Married" from Prince's 1999 album :
Best sound at Tidal
Tests performed on MacBook Pro and iPod Touch with a Sony MDR-1A headphones
Does anyone find it ironic that we are watching this through youtube... Which is by far the worst quality.
The fact that mostly the highs are distorted is not really surprising if you understand how the encoding works, at the end of the day basically it comes down to the fact that highs require much more data to transmit than lows simply because the frequency is higher.
I personally listen more to punk and rock, and I can often hear very clear distortion in the cymbals on youtube. Usually I end up buying the tracks through bandcamp, there they have FLAC files available which is what I usually use. Google and youtube value every MB they can shave off a video, the amount of content they host is astronomical, so at the end of the day they can save a lot of money by reducing the filesize by a few dozen kB/s...
Brings me to the point of Apple, if you ever synced music to an iPhone through iTunes you would have noticed that there are very few options available as far as the encoding, last I checked it was something like a choice between 320kb/s and 192kb/s (can't remember the encoder). The thing is, if you used FLACs you would be looking at 3x the file size of the higher and 5x the lower bitrate option. Then consider that apple "cheaped out" on their iPhones offering only very limited storage. I personally always used android phones and use a 64GB SD card, only then does storing FLACs on it really make sense, anything less than that and I would run into capacity problems... Apple aren't high end performance like some people expect.
The kick bass in the out of phase test, though? under no circumstances should it go that low.. affecting the High's should be OK in general because a normal human ear starts to loose high end pickup in our teenage years and by the time you're 30 you're not really expected to hear above 16-17khz. but all the way down to the kick bass is just ridiculous, and CLEARLY audible. I mean as you said there's so much information that's ENTIRELY inaudible to the average person above 16kz... but down to the mid bass frequencies.
Funny thing is, my hearing gets tested by my work (as do most other machine operators), and my hearing currently maxes out at 21khz (at least with their over ear monitors in the testing van) and i often complain more about how vocals sound on RUclips than i do the highs on anything else. and now i can prove it's not just my imagination!!!
Wow! You were more informative than the video :p
You've got good observations boy.
Lmao what? AAC is better than MP3 while still being smaller and Apple has a lossless codec you can use to rip CDs (ALAC) which is functionaly the same as FLAC. It's also on the labels to provide good sounding files to Apple which clearly didn't happen here.
There is also no audible difference between a good 320kbps rip and a FLAC rip
FrostyP "no audible difference between a good quality 320kbps rips and FLAC" - ok now if this is the case you, then that sux bro. but that definitely isn't the case for me. it's like the ride in a car it's subjecting, and many people can't perceive a difference, again, like how many cant see the difference of 4k over 1080p on a sub 65" screen, yet the difference is there and witnessed by many others. what's so hard to accept that just because person A can't perceive a difference, that doesn't mean person b, c, or d can't?
@@nicholasgilbert4227 it's called placebo, they've done scientific studies on this. Your audiophile "golden ears" are all in your imagination
Did you uncheck the sound check option in iTunes because if not iTunes will apply loudness normalization to every track it plays back. You can find the option under, Preferences, playback, then uncheck the box that says sound check. In actuality Apple's AAC encoder will sound better and is a far more complex codec when volume matched compared to any Mp3 encoded streaming services. RUclips applies loudness normalization as well. Without volume matching polarity inversion doesn't matter you will hear more differences because of the volume mismatch. This is why the loudness war is over and has been for a couple of years now slamming a song in mastering causes your songs to sound weak and smaller on streaming services that use loudness normalization when compared to a slammed lossless master. This is the same issues we all had to deal with back in the days of radio and the Oban Optimod every station had. Just look at your channel meters and use a LUFS meter. When you normalizing tracks in reaper it will not make them equal. This is a great idea for a video but understanding what is going on behind the scenes is a huge help. Even the best engineer can be fooled by loudness differences. RUclips uses the VP9 opus codec which is actually a pretty good lossy codec when compared to Mp3 if you upload a lossless file. If you use something like Handbrake then RUclips will not re-encode the video or audio it will only loudness normalize the audio. Have a great day!
Music Factory Studios nigga what
Yeah he did something wrong. Apple Music is has higher quality music than Spotify.
I realized that when listening to a classical peace and boy it didn’t just sound a bit odd it actually sounded freaking terrible
(Ferdinand S) It sounded terrible on Apple Music ?
m.laylani I just tried it again and somehow it wasn’t as bad as before don’t know what that was about
FLAC is pretty easy to get. Piracy wins again.
Yes! 🤘
⚔️⛵
Most of the piracy flac that ur hearing are basically mp3 converted to flac and then uploaded...
*"Look at me. **_I_** am the DJ now"*
@@youdec Don't tell them.
If anyone is interested, the song used in this video is called "Missing U" by Hibshi feat. Rochelle
I really don't know why this wasn't mentioned in the description. It feels like it should, giving credit where it's due. Just casually throwing it at the beginning of the video doesn't make it easy for people to find it.
There are 4 different Spotify quality "Low, Normal, High, Very High"
nicolas devalck the highest one is still 320 kbps compared to 1000+ kbps of the lossless
96, 128, 192, 320 kbps maybe
Spotify uses Vorbis (iirc), so the difference in the bit rates isn't going to be that noticeable.
@@ngizingkalen9661 pretty sure it's:
24 - 96 - 160 - 320
Spotify uses both Ogg Vorbis and AAC. It depends on the device, usually AAC only on web players.
Ogg/Vorbis 96/160/320 kbps
AAC 24/128/256 kbps
These are from their own help site/mastering guide.
Apple is not going to stream high quality music if their costumers only listen to music with beats/airports
"Airports"
My airport is good for listening to plane music
yea, my JFK airport sounds great, twin towers as bass is even better
Why would they? They will amath it through hirrible bluetooth compression (APT and crap) anyways ;-)
@@minhvu241 I bet it really brings the house down, huh?
OMG the face you made when listening to the Apple Music version! #Priceless
Thank you for being the only person to close their mouth and use technology to solve this discussion. WE NEED AN UPDATE to this video because it's 4 yrs old and all of the streaming services have added new features.
Its called WATERMARKING which is used by UMG (Universal Music Group). Unfortunately all labels under UMG use audible watermarking. Only if you were to purchase the music outright would you avoid this audio glitch. Now even Tidal music is plagued by this problem. I have heard that MQA on Tidal and most streaming from Qobuz avoid this.
dude you're definetely so right ... why cant we get full quality audio, with 4k streaming getting standard and 5g around the corner ... its ridiculous
i mean why are mastering engineers give their best to get the most possible out of a song, if streaming services screw it up again oO ... and nowadays everyone is streaming
$$$$$$$$$$
The better the quality, the bigger the file of the song, and the bigger the file the more money streaming services have to pay to host them.
Yeah, this is why many of my fans want the best quality from BandCamp instead of just the regular streaming services ... or just the full 24 bit WAV from my website. 1:1 ratio. :)
CursedSound and yet places like RUclips are willing to host 4K or native video. Because people demand high video quality. Until people demand high audio quality, nothing will change. There is no reason we can’t have 16 bit 441.1 kHz FLAC everywhere. Or at least 320kbps MP3 or AAC.
How does everyone from the netherlands has this accent :D
'cause we're dutch?
All our english teachers are from germany.
@@Whiteseastudio knew it, i was sitting here wondering if you were dutch🤣 same here
Just lazy people not being critical about their accent. Like for real it sounds so bad, learn some pronunciation smh
Ruan Moleman try speaking in another language and have the right accent. Yeah, didnt think so.
The aspect that very few if anybody talks about is if you feel any different listening to compressed and uncompresses or higher and lower rez. It is not called SPL.. or sound pressure for nothing. You don't only listen with your ears.. your body feels it and gives feedback via skin, hair follicles, kinesthetic feedback and after effect what you previously been listening to. Controlling for 'other factors' is a mine field. We did some research comparing EEG and other sensors of test subjects before testing them for compressed and uncompressed. Was small sample size so not nearly good enough academically but it showed there is definite difference between groups of people that where 'sensitive' according to electrodermal skin response reaction and some other sensors. Main thing I am waffling on about is .. we don't only listen with ears for how we feel about music or perceive what we hear.
3 Minutes in and I'm just gonna leave this here... [Also, I'm using terms Hi and Lo because A) Lazy B) similar to the labels he already has in his Production Environment]
You won't hear a difference between the Lo and Hi for Spotify if you already had Hi enabled the first time you played the song. Spotify caches a HUGE amount of songs onto your device that it 'thinks' you will listen to... So if you had Hi enabled when it was doing this caching, it'll keep that same Hi version when you disable Hi and keep it on Lo. That's because if you're wanting to 'save bandwidth' then why would you WASTE more of a customer's bandwidth by redownloading an inferior quality version of the song that they already have a decent quality version of?
SO! I'm gonna bet that you had listened to this song previously within the last couple of days-weeks, and thus had a Cached version of the song that was already in Hi Quality... Thus, when you switched to Lo Quality, it just kept the Hi Quality file so that it wouldn't have to redownload and thus waste customer's money....
The more you know
sounds very reasonable! :-)
totally agree. couple of months ago I was driving in a place outside of a town in my country, internet connection was very very poor. I didn't enable Auto downloading or anything like that on my Spotify but what I noticed that some of the old listened before music on the list sounds better with a high quality than the new unheard before songs.
I did this test myself on Spotify and compared the low and high quality version of Africa by TOTO, because it has low frequency tones which can get chopped of with high compression. And I am save to say that there is a noticable difference between the two.
I feel like Spotify on high quality is slightly better it sounds richer maybe? However the difference is so minimal it might even be the placebo affect with me thinking its better because they says its better.
Something about Spotify...not all their source music is even 320 vorbis quaility
Same, I could only hear a slight difference on my studio headphones. If I were using earbuds it wouldn't have mattered.
There are Low, Normal, High, Very High on Spotify settings
I'm curious if this might have changed in the past two years and would love an update.
Lindsay PM I would like him to compare Deezer too, in the free version I feel Deezer is better than Spotify
@@brenvick98 cause it is, it has better sound quality
It donst really changed since they still output only 320kbits (Master and Tidal is ~900kbits depends on the track).
On Spotify they put out these "Remastred" albums mostly. It's re-releases of old albums. I'm pretty sure the remastering is mostly limiting to get it louder.
There's a whole lot more work put into Remastering a very old song.
I know that there is more too it. But the loudness war is a big part of it. And that's a reason why alot of these remasterted albums doesn't sound right. Alot of them sound worse than the original. You get tired fast from listening to it. The subtle nuances are lost so it doesn't sound as real. ruclips.net/video/scfmFbA3DwA/видео.html
i hope you are not listening with airpods or headphones
exactly, the loudness war is real. for physical media I usually end up buying original releases from Japan because that market expects quality sound with a nice dynamic range.
Make an extra video including Deezer and maybe the Play Music too! 🤔🧐 Tidal isn't available in Japan...
Deezer is not available in Ukraine as well D:
But I`m agree about Play Music
@@FimeZEbra Sad 😭 At least Play Music would be nice. Since it's Google probably has more coverage around the world 👍
I've been testing all these services and i'm 100% sure. Google Play Music has the higher quality of all of them, can't hear a difference between Tidal and Google Play Music, but i can between Spotify and Tidal. Google Play Music has the upper hand despite using MP3 (inferior codec between spotify ogg and apple music AAC), they encode raw from the CD probably.
@@gasparmxm in case of the play music I always hear the songs there louder than Spotify, even if I change the volume to louder in Spotify settings
@@hitsukiri Bruh Play Music only available for certain country so doesn't worth it
Pandora isn't ranked? I guess I feel old.
Keep in mind most 4k videos you're streaming are compressed as well. Check 4k Blu Ray vs 4k RUclips for example
bandcamp has original uncompressed files, flac, etc.
Glad you did this because it confirmed my personal long-standing rankings.
Hey, that is a great video, thank you for your work and effort. A few things I want to point out though, for the next one!
1) While you did a normalization, you did (as it seems) normalize the peak values of the audio files. - This is in fact not giving you the results you opted for. Coding into mp3 or other formats creates additional peaks and errors. You should rather look for loudness normalization instead of the peaks. That would give you more accurate and better results.
2) You have stated that you took great care of alignment, although the alignment could be done by ear. You are better of to align the audio files sample-accurate. The results would be much more comparable if you would do that.
3) You did not talk about how you got those files, if you used some URL converters for example, or if you got the original streaming source. You could have also recorded the files directly (which you kinda did) but there is not validation for dropped samples or audio processing errors.
Also, a little tip how you could do this more in depth. Try to compare the frequency response of the files, you can quickly see what's going on by doing that. - I'm in to testing this myself and maybe create a video as you did. But including sample-accurate time alignment, loudness normalized audio files, and I will include some more services and also audio formats.
Thank you for being a creator though! :)
1) He probably didn't normalize the peak values, because with the RUclips clip it was not peaking whereas the original was.
2) He stated in a comment that he took a great care of the alignment, despite what we see in the video
he explained that he recorded the files through internal sound card routing. Which means he played the songs and recorded them via his soundcards output
Assuming the sample rates are the same. Theoretically as long as the sample rate stays above 44.1khz it could still be audibly lossless... but the samples wouldn't match up any more.
sfscstube Which could have caused aliasing depending on the relative sample rates. Making it impossible to make sample accurate comparisons. But you're right he did do that... which means he would have to record at (at least) double the sample rate as the source streams to prevent aliasing. And then one has to consider the sample rate of whatever transport he's using to loop the audio into his mixing software.
Heads up :
Spotify has never worked at switching the audio quality , when u change the audio quality in the settings nothing changes (the only way to change it is to delete it and redownload it and that only works sometimes)
Seeing this in 04/2019, you need to add Qobuz and the new Master quality from Tidal
The Question is, can you hear the Difference between a Lossless Flac and an compressed 320kbs MP3 File.
I can, but only sometimes and only on very deep bass or high hits
@Saswata Chakraborty sure buddy
That really depends strongly on the material listening to. Putting on some high quality piano solo music shows the difference very clearly where it's hard to hear a difference on some highly compressed rock music.
mp3's sound quality is absolutely terrible..
if you can't hear the difference between an mp3 and flac chances are you either can't spot the differences or your listening device doesn't have high enough sound quality so you won't be able to spot the differences
I'd be curious to see the people who say they can do blind A/B testing
Untwinxer this
Talking about the 4K analogy: in RUclips's case as I said before their maximum is lossy 384Kbps, and when it comes to FLAC the bitrate can fluctuate between 500 Kbps and more than 2000Kbps inside the same song. Those numbers in terms of space are a GIGANTIC DIFFERENCE . . . I still want lossless audio :(
Im going to keep it Unreal Engine 4 with you chief, i don’t speak that language
Have you actually tried some ABX test to see if you can really hear the difference between 320 for example and FLAC?
@@ErikTheAndroid I have and trust me theres a difference.
Perhaps you can, but I have tried multiple times and I can most definitely not tell a difference.
I can't tell a difference between good 128kbps compression and 320kbps compression, so I won't bother anything higher than standard high quality streaming.
I already try Apple, Spotify, amazon music, RUclips and tidal and at the end I just keep Tidal. For me is better sound quality and also my ears doesn’t hurt when I listen the music for a couple hours like I experience when I was using the rest of music streaming services
I agree 🤷
I tried tidal but I did not hear any diference so I kept listening spotify
So far I’ve tried Spotify, deezer, and AM. Spotify to me sounds the worst, even using the customizable EQ (which is awesome) the audio sounded muddy and not as crisp. Deezer and AM are practically the same in terms of audio quality, but AM is more advanced than Deezer (Deezer literally released audio normalization just a few months ago, even after it was constantly asked for by users for years)
Uriel Reyes you need to listen to the lossless songs on tidal
@@marksbeats3053 and how its that
>makes a video about differences in sound that are barely noticeable
>uploads it to youtube
thanks, i hate it
WILLPORKER lol.
Dude should upload an uncompressed master of the audio of every vid.
He's got studio monitors, you would be surprised what you can hear with good equipment, he can notice it but we wont... this video is helpful saves me time so I dont have to.
@@deez9353 If you also have studio monitors you can hear some of the differences between them by watching the video. Buuuuut you have to remember every single clip has been changed by youtube at this point.
RUclips does compress the highest frequencies, but they are indeed noticeable. Specially when comparing spotify lo and hi. Then apple music to original there is a difference in how clear it is. I'm listening on ATH M50s and tried bose soundports as well. Same deal. On a daily basis I dont think it really matters but the master does sound a whole lot better. That's just my 2c
Spotify's high frequencies are lacking in the low quality and get clearer in the high quality. Original master has more high mid than Spotify high quality. Tidal returns the high and high mid frequencies that Spotify high was missing. Apple Music like Spotify is missing the high frequencies. Seems Apple is also cutting some low mid. It seems RUclips is missing highs, high mids, mids as well as lowering the volume. Interesting. Btw listening on JBL 306P MKIIs off a Roland Audio Interface.
Spotify has better quality when you have premium. They made it sound worse so you would have To pay.
Well done for hearing all this through...RUclips.
@@miscellaneous1276 Same with Soundcloud, or most other streaming services for that matter.
Hello, My name is Edward and I'm an Audiophile. It all started with a couple of songs and I just couldn't stop. 😎
No one cared
Cares*
@@serenap6651 shut up
@@tofuki3444 I think I replied to the wrong comment lol sorry
RUclips cut the frequencies beyond 15khz and farely good dac/amp combo you can easily hear the differences between the files.
Thank you for this review, it really confirms what I was hearing about spotify, there isn't much difference if there is any between the two audio quality spotify offer.
Sadly we won;t hear much difference since we are watching this through a video that was re-encoded through RUclips, so we are subject to the compression on the video.
Ha! I was thinking exactly the same. So any of should not spot any difference between them right :D
There is a very small difference between apple and the original, and a moderate difference between youtube music and the original that still comes through. But between Spotify, Tidal/Original the small differences there are masked by RUclips audio compression.
Have you ever tried applying the same filter twice? Go into a DAW, use just about any filter, apply it once - listen - reapply it - listen again. Basically, the point I am trying to make is that even though the original master has been put through youtube compression, the youtube stream has been put through that compression twice, so the difference still exists.
@@ppppatcho Depends on the filter.. If you do a short transition brickwall filter, and then do it again at a lower frequency there's virtually no trace of the first filter being run.
I sure the hell couldn't hear a difference.
I really appreciate scientific audio tests like this, thank you so much!
Here are my observations:
Original: The best, you'll get all the details for lows, mids and highs. Loved it! Best part is the depth with details, simply amazing quality.
Spotify: Highs are dominant that lows and mids are overpowered a little bit. Nah... no depth...
Tidal: Just the right amount of highs and lows but they still lack detail in terms of depth..
Apple Music: Is it just me or they're modifying the sound? Not consistent and really lacking in terms of details. They got a boost for highs and tried-so-hard to catch the depth but.. no avail...
RUclips Streaming: Forget it, I'd rather listen to my dab radio. Sounds like walkie talkie 😑
Overall, this video showed the true meaning of "loss-less" music 😉
You know, I'm a guy who's been listening to music (rock/meta) for almost 40 years in almost every way and every environment much to the detriment of my hearing (unfortunately). And with that said, even I heard the difference with both Apple Music and RUclips Music. Couldn't really tell the difference between the two Spotify streams and the Tidal stream; like I said, compromised hearing. For me to tell the difference with Apple and RUclips really is illustrating that their is something wrong their streams.
To do an accurate phase test you not only have to align it perfectly but you have to have the levels aligned perfectly as well. You can prove this by having two mono sine waves (with one phase flipped of course) and adjusting the gain. It'll go from silence to audible (if done correctly). I'd say that you aligned it correctly (or as close as you could get it given that the samples won't perfectly align, given that it was both recorded but especially since the signal was processed, which, like MP3s, adds a small amount of latency) but my biggest concern would be on the original track- you kept red lining where as on the other tracks you didn't. Whether that is true peaks causing that or not, it shouldn't really matter. This experiment would actually be very difficult to pull off flawlessly, so I'm not trying to be critical. I'd just say that this is probably within the ball park in terms of accuracy as opposed to being pin point accurate and final.
Thanks for this one. Just want to check in on some details -- did you disable volume normalization function in Spotify and Apple Music? What video quality did you use in RUclips, was it 720p or below?
MILF
Music Is Love Forever.
Hey get off my Minecraft server
On his wall.
Deezer HQ is the best Streaming Service for my ears. I test it also like you.
I get tired after hearing about 25 minutes of spotify using studio monitors and about 15 minutes using headphones, this didn't used to be a problem when I listened to CDs.
Ok. . people! Audio streaming makes use of non-lossless perceptual audio coding algorithms. These are taking advantage of our ears' masking effects as there are e.g. absolute minimum hearing threshold and simultaneous and/or pre/post masking during audio impulses. This way since the 1980s with the release of mp3 it was possible for the first time ever to store and transmit audio with acceptable quality while using a reasonable low data rate. However, in the end the goal of those algorithms is to reproduce a perceived equivalent but not a wave form like equivalent signal! And this is why the comparison of difference signals is useless. The added noise in the reconstruction is brought in on purpose to save data rate and is hidden inaudibly by physical effects of our auditory organ.
Just because you can't hear noise doesn't mean that it isn't degrading audio quality. Cassette being a prime example.
+Weareallbeingwatched Cassette being a prime example of noise *upgrading* audio quality, yes. Absolutely agree with you there.
people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
When listening through decent headphones, while you were comparing Spotify High Quality with the original I can hear the Original has a much larger sound stage. Also it gets compressed twice so you can still hear small differences that change the clarity and sound stage.
The apple music is really bad it's like someone is choke holding the sound stage through a funnel.
Man, thank you a lot, that was really insightful. This FPS really caught my attention and then you talk about it how much data it uses. Why destroy the audio and invest so much in image right? Also, great stuff about ears getting tired, makes a lot of sense why I used to listen to LPs a lot but now I get tired of Spotify.
Tidal is marginally better, but that’s where devil lives
May your candle burn brightly for many decades. You provide content that no one else can.
"The difference... It's Huuuuuge" :D I am very glad you made this video. Tidal wins because of the higher quality. I had Spotify for a long time but when I tested Tidal it just sounded good enough to pay for. The origional WAV or FLAC is always best. You are fully correct, the streaming companies should invest in lossless quality.
Actually I did expect that RUclips would have the worst quality for two reasons:
1. There are a lot of videos on YT for which a high sound quality isn't really important. And so they are compressing it in order to cut data storage usage. Because…
2. YT handles way more data than music streaming services. If you simplify it, on YT's hard drives there are about all music that you find on the music streaming platforms + videos to those songs + all vlogs, live recordings and (as *everyone* can potentially upload content to YT) all that other weird stuff around here.
At the end of your video you said something like "why can't I stream uncompressed music when I can stream 4K Videos?"
Well, also for that there are two main explanations, I guess:
1. Don't forget that the also video information on RUclips is extremely compressed. Raw Video footage, comparable to WAV, would be tremendously big, so you won't even find uncompressed films on a BluRay or in cinemas. I'd estimate that the loss in the process of compressing the video material by YT is much worse than with the audio - video compression offers so much more data saving potential than audio compression. That's why you encounter artifacts, too dark images, bleeding and so on so often on RUclips.
2. Video is not expected to be as "portable" as music. Whilst many don't want to stream a 4K video while sitting in the metro they *do* expect that they can stream "Eye of the tiger" while they are waiting in the line for McDonalds (where the Wi-Fi always is bad). :D
Very interesting video!
In youtube when you choose a higher resolution stream the audio bit rate also increases. Like for a 1080p MP4 video the audio bit rate is 192 kbit/s compared to 96 kbit/s on a 360p MP4. , removing compression, increasing the video quality of the video file, will increase the overall quality. Audio as well.
in the old days, this is true. now i read that all sound in all videos is 126 kbps AAC.
this was true until like 2011, nowadays all resolutions share the exact same audio track, you can check that with the devtools of your browser
i had a 30 free trial with Tidal and their higher quality sound (Master). I could hear a BIG difference with certain audio. It's not difficult to go back to "normal-standard" streaming quality. i could hear the difference with a good pair of headset. if you are using a cheap one then, i couldn't spot any difference at all (which make sense)
Bad choice of song for the demo, way too over-produced, you should have used an acoustic track. Incidentally, I listened to the two Spotify streams with my eyes closed and one was clearly more open and 'airy' than the other, I guess that would have been the higher quality stream strutting its stuff ;).
sgtgrash It should have been a classic hifi-test song like Bad by Michael Jackson
I agree, typical overproduced contemporary pop song, but he used this track because he was granted permission by the label to use it.
you must go to top.
Dont forget the audio is losing data from the original compression, the video encoders compression and then the youtube compression, so for us the difference may be less exaggerated, but I do agree, a more dynamic track would be easier to spot these differences
I believe overproduced tracks are good for comparing too, cause they are pushed to their limits, and that causes much more distortion of lower bitrates
Sadly, RUclips transcoded your audio to 121 kb/s opus, so listening along with you I had to take what I was hearing with a grain of salt. That was until you did the phase swaps. Those were certainly interesting. Thanks for making this.
I would also love a reliable and trustworthy source of lossless music. I was saddened to hear allegations that some of the big-name vendors have upsampled low-quality sources, even lossy ones, then passed them off as if they're lossless reproductions of the master. That brings up the question of whether that sort of thing has happened with any regularity on the streaming platforms as well. It isn't just the digital download vendors either. I've bought CDs on Amazon that turned out to be upsampled mp3.
trough apple and the Original i hear a lot of differences. Like the Drums are not so deep and not "in your face" and its not so "big" like the original
It’s like comparing 192 kHz and 48 kHz on a 48 kHz output.
In that case the 192 kHz will be downsampled to 48 kHz, and only 1 sample out of 4 will be read.
That means both sample rates will sound really really close.
Since the high frequencies in the audio are very fast, they will be squared out because the sampling is too slow to make them round.
It’s like setting your game’s terrain detail from ultra to low (sample rate) but maxing out everything else and keeping your resolution at 4K (audio frequency).
The rocks, instead of being well rounded and detailed, will turn into having only eight faces.
The game will look exactly the same, but if you pay attention to the details, you will notice it.
Same applies for audio, the highs are fatiguing at low sample rates, just like listening to a pure square wave on a synthesizer.
RUclips is 44.1 kHz, so frequencies between 10 kHz and 20 kHz will have 2 to 4 samples and won’t even be sampled at their peak amplitude, that will just be a random triangle wave.
I’m making a prediction:
RUclips is bottom or second to bottom.
Edit: I was expecting it to be using RUclips music tbh and I’m not sure it was (or if they’re the same source?) since it’s clear at lower video quality rates on yt the audio is also lower quality.
Disappointed Apple Music was down there.
Interesting video.
To be fair to Google, YT is primarily a video platform, so you can forgive them for that. Apple on the other hand, just lolz. But then this is the company that bought Beats and market the products as being "high quality", which they never have been and never will be :P
Sorry bud, but no... "RUclips" is primarily a video platform... but RUclips music is a music platform, hense the name.
So no you can't excuse/forgive google for that at all... How much money for R&D do they have/made from us viewing content on their platform? Like i said it's even called RUclips "music".. (normal RUclips's been sufficient for music vids for years already, and i already excuse normal RUclips for their dismal audio quality... RUclips music is specifically for music, and they clearly use the same damn encoders anyway..
I also find it hilarious that Apple does NOT support apt-X HD! They still use the crappy AAC compression to transmit sound to your overpriced, overhyped McDonalds-plastic headphones (a.k.a. beats).
Poor Apple just can't afford licensing fees for qualcomm's hi-fi bluetooth codec. After all they sell budget phones, right?
PS: yeah, RUclips sound quality is so shitty that often times, when watching one of my fav bands' new music video, I can't stand hearing the RUclips audio for even 3 seconds, so I then listen to the FLAC CD-rip on my hard drive while watching the music video on mute.
Nicholas Gilbet: I would excuse RUclips since its audio codec was only intended to be used in video streaming i.e. it would sound like shit. RUclips Music is another platform that was recently launched that is focused on audio streaming, indeed, but it isn't available to other countries aside from North America and Europe (Latin America is practically excluded, let alone Southeast Asia) and most people just use the video site to listen to music, not YTM.
Google still employs a low-quality AAC encoder at 128kbps for videos. So yeah, go figure.
We totally need an update about the streaming quality ! ❤👏👏