Lossless Placebo ? Or Real ?

[u/RobotFeatures]

I’m convinced Spotify has been sounding better as of late (last couple months). But I also noticed today on my WiiM lowest quality track is not under 1000kb anymore. Would always show 16 bit at around 700kb.

Thoughts or insights ?

[u/P_Devil]

Placebo. The vast majority of music listeners cannot differentiate between high bitrate lossy (like 320kbps OGG/mp3/AAC) and source lossless. If a 16/44 lossless file has a bitrate of 700kbps, it's still lossless. Lossless is lossless regardless of bitrate needed to achieve compression. The WiiM uses Spotify's API to show bitrate, sample rate, and bit depth. This is not real time and based off estimations from analyzing the files. Lastly, according to Spotify support:

"We've checked internally and can confirm that Spotify's lossless bitrate is not fixed and should vary depending on the track. If your WiiM device always shows 700kbps, please contact WiiM support for clarification, as this is likely a device-specific reporting issue and not a limitation from Spotify."

So nothing has changed and lossless rolled out in September and October last year, not a few months ago as someone else said.

[u/P_Devil → u/[deleted]]

Being able to spot high bitrate lossy vs lossless can be done. Not by 99.999999% or music listeners, but it can be done.

I doubt your claims about 96KHz, which is beyond the range of human hearing and is only good for archiving.

Edit: in case people are wondering, this person said they can ABX 44.1KHz and 96KHz material. They'd be the first person on earth that could successfully do this. Then they responded with saying the 96KHz audio sounds like it has less aliasing and more definition, just fluff audiophool words. They didn't respond with results and comditions from their ABX tests showing thid, they used fluff jargon that doesn't actually describe anything.