Gadgetory

damn Chris Apple music just launched and with it all new questions about audio quality now all these major streaming services stream at different rates you have Apple music at 256 kilobits per second AAC encoded then you have Spotify at 320 kilobits per second mp3 encoded and then you have title which streams lossless at one point four megabits per second so all of these services have different streaming rates what does it mean in the real world when we wanted to find out so we invited a few of our colleagues to come in here and do a blind test let's see which one is really best to run this test we play three different songs across three different genres hip-hop pop and classical we also had a full range of audio snobbery in the hot seat ranging from the casual listener nearly indistinguishable to may to the hardcore audiophile I can't tell if like its sound profile these headphones that I'm not used to - digital audio converter yo no digital they no matter what kind of music we like one thing brings us together our endless desire to describe music with colorful adjectives crisp I guess I like crunchy look crunchy the second one was less gloomy in the bass there was like a different ramp up funny on each of them like less wishy-washy like higher a little tinny ER but could people actually tell what's better I think I liked three best the first one side of the worst the highs actually clipped really high really aggressively this is data never mind this is the data this is the rail data the first one was definitely the weakest three was the best with maybe three sounding the best cuz were the highs little better I would assume that the third one we the widest bandwidth this one's like fine but it's like kind of like whatever dude it says I'm thinking this is Apple ah the one in the middle has my choice for the top quality I felt like a second mom with the best on the base was like really pronounced and this last one is sounded the best cool three was best essence absolute trash so the first one of the worst it sounds a little more like complex than the person in the horns anyway too crunchy I know she likes country horns but I feel like they're crunchy anyway she didn't want it sounds good I think this one definitely sounds the best more definition across the rage no I think third one was the best more more texture more sound third one was definitely the best of those three sounds me like the second one would have been Flagg I had the most definition in the base and then highs if I had to say like I'd say the last one was the best but I don't know like it had thus complex range of things going on the two sounded the lowest of those second one was the worst so what are we learned from this experiment oh not very much it wasn't that title with its lossless 1.4 megabit streaming was winning every time in fact it wasn't winning a majority of the time now part of this might be that we're using very average headphones connect to a phone and if you have this on say a home audio system with very expensive components very expensive headphones very expensive loudspeakers you would be able to tell the difference but if you're just using this as a mobile audio service a mobile streaming service it doesn't seem to matter