High Quality v Normal Quality

[archerbbk]

Plan

Premium

Country

England, United Kingdom

Device

(iPhone 10XS 64GB (ios.12.3)

Operating System

(Windows 10 Pro)

My Question or Issue

I listen to Spotify a lot when transporting to work and saw there's an option called 'Music Quality'

I am very interested in the pro's/con's of the Very High music quality feature compared to the defaulted Normal. What are the comparisons in terms of storage and how much better is the quality of music? Will the quality be obvious on all headphones/speakers? I am very interested in a much better audio however am hestitant how much better it could possibily be.

[MattSuda]

Hey @archerbbk 

Personally I like to use the very high setting at 320kbps for the best quality sound that is currently available. How the quality sounds is a personal preference, everyone may have a different opinion. To me you can especially hear the difference when using headphones.

You can refer to the following help articles for more info on sound quality and data usage:

https://support.spotify.com/using_spotify/system_settings/high-quality-streaming/

https://support.spotify.com/using_spotify/system_settings/bandwidth-and-data-usage/

Note: You can have different settings for listening online (Streaming quality) or offline (Download quality). The higher the stream quality, the more data will be used. The higher the download quality, the more space is used. 

Music quality details

Check out a side-by-side comparison below.

	Free	Premium
Web player	AAC 128kbit/s	AAC 256kbit/s
Desktop, mobile and tablet	Automatic - Dependent on your network connection  Low* – Equivalent to approximately 24kbit/s Normal – Equivalent to approximately 96kbit/s High – Equivalent to approximately 160kbit/s	Automatic - Dependent on your network connection  Low* – Equivalent to approximately 24kbit/s Normal – Equivalent to approximately 96kbit/s High – Equivalent to approximately 160kbit/s Very high (Premium only)- Equivalent to approximately 320kbit/s

*The low quality option isn't available on the Windows desktop app.