As audiophile as I am (own very expensive (> 1k) headphones for instance) and additionally I’m musician/producer.
I don’t think you can hear the difference between 320kbit bitrate vs flac in a blindtest (this is important, to avoid biasing yourself).
I could notice what was a 128kbit mp3 and flac in a blindtest and already that was minimal (and is likely mostly related to the 16k cut-off of 128kbit mp3), but 320kbit, nope…
If you notice a difference it likely has to do with different mastering/LUFS etc. not the compression artifacts themself.
I don’t think Spotify’s High bitrate is as good as it says it is, though. That’s what I’m getting at. Sort of like how YouTube’s encoding for whatever setting you pick is never as good as a local file with the same specs.
As audiophile as I am (own very expensive (> 1k) headphones for instance) and additionally I’m musician/producer.
I don’t think you can hear the difference between 320kbit bitrate vs flac in a blindtest (this is important, to avoid biasing yourself). I could notice what was a 128kbit mp3 and flac in a blindtest and already that was minimal (and is likely mostly related to the 16k cut-off of 128kbit mp3), but 320kbit, nope…
If you notice a difference it likely has to do with different mastering/LUFS etc. not the compression artifacts themself.
I don’t think Spotify’s High bitrate is as good as it says it is, though. That’s what I’m getting at. Sort of like how YouTube’s encoding for whatever setting you pick is never as good as a local file with the same specs.