I really don't see this as being useful for anyone outside of hard archivest. The bitrates are pretty trash. I guess if you just a setup with an incredible amount of music no matter what, this is for you. IMHO the meta data is worth more than these lower quality sound files although we have meta data for what's out there now.

Outside of that here is what and how they are going to release. I'm guessing this drop was their "popular" track drop. From their site:

For popularity>0, we got close to all tracks on the platform. The quality is the original OGG Vorbis at 160kbit/s. Metadata was added without reencoding the audio (and an archive of diff files is available to reconstruct the original files from Spotify, as well as a metadata file with original hashes and checksums).

For popularity=0, we got files representing about half the number of listens (either original or a copy with the same ISRC). The audio is reencoded to OGG Opus at 75kbit/s — sounding the same to most people, but noticeable to an expert.

[+] GraveyardOrbit@lemmy.zip 18 points 2 days ago (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

It really depends on how low the bitrate is. A change from 320kbps (the highest “near-CD” bitrate that .mp3 supports) to 128kbps (standard .mp3) won’t make a huge difference, but a change from 160 to 75 will likely make a big difference… Bitrate tends to be a game of diminishing returns, where a difference between 96kbps and 128kbps is typically noticeable, even by laypeople… But a difference between 320kbps and 640kbps is harder to hear, (or makes no difference at all), even though it’s a much bigger jump between numbers. As the bitrate continues to increase, you get fewer and fewer benefits while your file size begins to balloon.

To be clear, there is a lot of snake oil in the audiophile world. I’m not denying that. I work in audio, (peep my username), and spend a lot of time dispelling snake oil myths as part of my job. My current audio rig is easily a quarter million dollars, and is located in an acoustically treated room, because it’s built for an entire audience. I’ve also worked in recording and system design. So I’m probably fairly qualified to speak about this specific topic…

Like lots of snake oil, the bitrate conversation is built upon grains of truth; Just enough to be convincing to someone who only has a surface level understanding of the underlying principles. And audiophiles tend to focus a lot on hardware and manufacturer’s claims, instead of studying what makes that hardware work… Which makes them particularly susceptible to snake oil myths, oftentimes perpetuated by the manufacturers to sell more expensive products to unsuspecting customers. An extreme “low vs lower” bitrate difference is one of the few things that laypeople will be able to identify when presented with an A/B test. In fact, low bitrate comparisons are often used by scummy audiophile companies as a bad-faith “here’s what our competitors sound like, vs what we sound like” example. And to be clear, reducing from ~160kbps to ~75kbps is an extreme difference.

I want you to think of the most crunchy and heavily compressed “downloaded from limewire on the family computer for your iPod” .mp3 file you’ve ever heard. Full of artifacts, absolutely no high end, sounds like it was recorded with a landline phone, and it crackles when the kick drum peaks. That was probably at least 96kbps, because that’s the lowest bitrate that .mp3 compression supports by default. And that’s after the mp3 compression algorithm has done its lossy “eh, people probably don’t care about this particular frequency” thing. 75kbps is crazy low, and you’ll undoubtedly hear the compression as a result. But again, increasing bitrates will have diminishing returns as the number continues to climb. Going from 75kbps to 160kbps will be a marked improvement, but going from 160kbps to 320kbps will be a much smaller change.

The reason audiophiles tend to have difficulty with (or even completely fail at) identifying different bitrates is because audiophiles live in a magical land where going from 1200kbps (high-end FLAC quality) to 1411kbps (uncompressed CD quality) makes a noticeable difference. In 99.9% of cases it doesn’t make any difference at all, (because again, diminishing returns) but audiophiles will swear that the 1411kbps sounds better simply because the number is bigger. Again, the snake oil is built upon grains of truth, (differences in low bitrates are immediately noticeable) but only enough to be convincing to people who don’t understand the underlying principles, (at a certain point, bitrate stops impacting audio quality and only makes your file size bigger).

All of this is to say that yes, the posted bitrate of 75kbps is laughably low. And even laypeople will absolutely be able to hear a difference between the two in an A/B comparison. Because as the bitrate approaches 0, the differences get more and more apparent. And (at least when compared to things like FLAC and CD quality) 75kbps is remarkably close to 0.

[–] DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 7 points 2 days ago

Compression algorithms have come a long way in the last 25 years. Comparing a 96kbps MP3 from LimeWire in 2000 to a modern 96kbps opus file will be night and day different. 96kbps opus today is extremely listenable, even on good speakers (granted I don't have a million dollar setup, but I have studio monitors.)

[–] Lorindol@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You are correct.

This anecdote is empirical, I know, but from my own experience I know how very hard if not impossible it can be to tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC tracks, even with a high quality setup.

I happened to find excellent vintage studio monitors some time ago and with my music afficionado friend we wanted to try if we could tell the difference. We are no audiophiles, but we both can tell the difference between good and bad sound.

Both selected three favourite tracks from different genres and we converted the CD-ripped FLACs to 320kbps CBR and put them on a random playlist with the originals. Then we listened.

Both got a few right, but I couldn't really say what it was that made guess the FLAC. It was more like a feeling in the back of your head than anything substantial. "This sounds somehow more alive" is maybe the best description I can give. Or it was just dumb luck.

Anyway we came to the conclusion that 320kbps can be enough to replicate an enjoyable sound, at least for us. Not one track sounded lacking and we had a good time with our little experiment.

EDIT: Fixed typos.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago

Remember kids, when trying to nail a specific guitar tone, start with the thing that actually creates the audible sound you hear: THE SPEAKER!

[–] coronach@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago

Thanks for spitting all the good facts.

[–] kambusha@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

Is there a song where you could reliably tell the difference between 320 and flac?

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Lossy at what bitrate?

[–] quips@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago

That is just such a broad statement to make that is not always true.

[–] mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 2 days ago

The point of AA is the archiving.

Anyways, from a listening perspective, 160kbit vorbis is audibly lossless I think, and there are many songs on here that are not possible to find elsewhere. For popular songs you want, yeah, just download the Flac elsewhere.

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

Most of my mp3s from back in the day are 128kbit, so 160 is an upgrade for me.