Tushar Mehta / Android Authority
Back in 2009, I was one of the lucky few to have an invite to Spotify’s UK launch program, when the future of music discovery was bright and exciting, unlike today’s bleak abyss of arist impoverishment and algorithm-induced repetition. How it’s taken fourteen years for Spotify Lossless to finally arrive on the scene is anyone’s guess, but now that it’s here, my interest in the world’s biggest music platform is piqued once again.
In many ways, I’m the perfect candidate for Spotify Lossless. I have a reasonable ear for quality, am savvy enough to know by bit depths from my sample rates, and own some half-decent audio kit too. Perhaps Spotify’s new setting is perfect for you too, but you should check that you meet these three criteria (in addition to living in one of the 50 supported markets) before you stump up for that Premium subscription.
A Hi-Res phone and headphone pairing As the old saying goes, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” and with 24-bit/44.1 kHz audio beaming into your phone, you need to make sure the rest of your setup is up to scratch so that the sumptuous quality holds up all the way to your ears.
If you’re rocking wired headphones (via USB-C or on one of the few phones with a 3.5mm jack), then you’re in luck. While audiophiles may quibble over whether a phone’s built-in DAC or USB-C output is absolutely perfect, the important point is that what streams in essentially comes right back out via wires. That means you’re reaping the major fidelity benefits of Spotify Lossless, so check that box.
If you’re a Bluetooth enthusiast, however, things get trickier. Bluetooth will inevitably compress your pristine Lossless stream into a lossy format, shrinking the file size so it can be sent over the air (again!), wasting much of the benefit of this premium service in the process.
Bluetooth is the bottleneck that can make lossless streaming pointless.
It’s an oversimplification, but bitrate is important; the higher the bitrate, the better the quality (yes, I know, there are plenty of caveats!). Spotify’s Lossless files stream at approximately 2,280kbps, but even the best Bluetooth transmissions are capped at under 1,000kbps and often much, much lower. To fit, the audio stream bitrate has to be compressed further using stronger lossy compression, which, unlike lossless compression, can’t be reconverted into better quality later. You can’t recover a tiny MP3 file to sound as good as the lossless master, and the same applies to Bluetooth.
Worst-case, you could end up transmitting via Bluetooth’s default 128 kbps SBC codec — think dubious bootleg MP3 quality. In this case, you might as well listen to Spotify’s Normal setting. To actually benefit from Spotify Lossless over Bluetooth, you need both your phone and headphones to support a much higher-quality codec.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
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