Hi,

I use spotify premium, set to "extreme" quality (always have). So far I have used it to stream music to my AirPlay speakers for background music listening. Everything was fine and I did not detect problems with quality (would be difficult with AirPlay in any case).

A couple of days ago however I started to listen to Spotify "properly", as I usually listen to music. I usually encode my music to 320 kbps AAC, and listen to it using my UE in-ear RMs, or my Theorem 720 DAC / DT880 setup.

I did not expect miracles, mind you, just that the 320 kbps "equivalent" would be in the same league as my AAC 320 recordings. But they are not! Not at all, in fact. If I am generous, then I'd say they are a little bit better than 160 kbps MP3.

I started to investigate wheter this is consistent across the board, and made some listening tests comparing the same songs from my library (320 kbps AAC), Spotify Premium, and Deezer HQ.

I found 320 kbps AAC to be best, and Deezer HQ (320 kbps some-encoding-or-other) to be roughly in the same category - worse, but still acceptable, with comparable frequency spectrum and soundstage. "In the same league", as I was hoping Spotify to be.

Spotify premium was way below this in quality - closer to (but somewhat better than) Deezer 160 kbps! I'm not talking about subtle differences here, but big in-your-face very clear drop in quality compared to the other 320 kbps music I tested (and now I remember some posts I've seen claiming there's no big difference between Spotify "high" and "extreme" and in this sense it seems correct - "extreme" did not seem to me to be much better than 160 kbps indeed).

I'm using Spotify 1.4.1.4 on iPhone, with "extreme" audio quality for both sync and stream. I have spent some time testing - using songs that I never before listened to on Spotify as well, to avoid any potential caching issues. I have restarted the app, restarted the iPhone... Same result across the board.

Am I missing something, or is this the expected result with my gear?

Thanks,

Roland