PolarBearSequence t1_isu6lr1 wrote on October 18, 2022 at 6:56 PM

Use Spotify Premium on the highest possible settings. The difference between that and uncompressed files is probably undetectable for 99.9% of humans.

madmidget OP t1_isvevg4 wrote on October 18, 2022 at 11:55 PM

I'm gonna just copy and paste a response I made above because my question is basically the same.

But the thing is, I heard that the problem is not necessarily the size of the audio file (mp3, flac, etc), but rather the quality of the recording. Even if a song you're listening to is flac, if the recording was shit then it won't sound good with revealing headphones.

Do you agree with this? Or do you think its nonsense? These are just things I read while researching, I have no idea if its true lol

audiophile_lurker t1_iswk4jl wrote on October 19, 2022 at 5:45 AM

> Even if a song you're listening to is flac, if the recording was shit then it won't sound good with revealing headphones.

This is sort of true? Depends on what is wrong with the recording, and what is meant by revealing. There are headphones that make specific recording mistakes really stand out (Beyerdynamic DT880 for example), but that is because they have treble spikes in specific regions that help detect that. Those headphones can make it straight up punishing to listen to a badly made record. Well tuned high quality headphone will still enable you to hear those mistakes, but it should not punish you.

PolarBearSequence t1_iswsiud wrote on October 19, 2022 at 7:37 AM

It’s definitely noticeable: badly recorded or mastered songs are going to sound bad, no matter the quality, and some headphones can make that quite noticeable.

RB181 t1_isucgif wrote on October 18, 2022 at 7:33 PM

I agree that the majority of people can't tell the difference, but 99.9% is an exaggeration.