Streaming music: these are the qualities of the best known services depending on how (and from where) you use them
Streaming music: these are the qualities of the best known services depending on how (and from where) you use them
The world of streaming lives, even today, a permanent battle between those who champion and defend analog qualities, the course of a vinyl furrowed by the needle, against the eminently digital.
Yes, seriously, in the middle of 2018. But, before feeding this fire with more gasoline, two questions arise: to what quality do the different services emit? And two: are they enough? We are going to solve them right now.
What are kbps?
Before starting to throw figures, a brief pause: to talk about digital qualities we are forced to talk about bits. The kbps, or kbit / s, are a contraction of kilobits per second, a measure that more or less sheds light on the quality of what we are hearing. Though not always.
This bit rate defines the amount of data transmitted in an audio sequence. 64 kbps means that the sound has been encoded at 64,000 bits per second. So far so good – not really, because that’s a horrible quality. Therefore, the higher this rate is understood to be a less “compressed” format.
First paragraph: the conversion and digital export — that is, the transformation of analog sounds into encoded data packets — was born long before MP3. And very much before streaming. When the music is recorded in the studio a reduction, in frequencies, in depth is already being applied. Everything is a reading, an interpretation.
It will then be compressed and marketed in digital copies. That master’s degree will have been transformed into more or less reliable data from the original source. Those copies will then be transformed into other formats: from WAV or AIFF to FLAC or MP3. Finally, this data will be received and reinterpreted by a series of chips (hardware) and programs (software) that reproduce that sample once it has been recoded.
Second paragraph – and with this we promise to leave the theoretical part -: the constant bit rate (CBR) is not the same as the variable bit rate (VBR). The first marks a step cut and the music is encoded by an algorithm that never modifies this rate. The second, more typical of podcasting and radio, fluctuates according to some variables. Each audio segment has non-constant intervals and the quality can be greater or identical to the previous one without sacrificing the file size.
That said, reader and expert ear, let’s see what you distinguish: http://mp3ornot.com/
Quality is a sensation.
It is clear that what we perceive as high quality can be a simple compressed file in AAC at 128 kbps but reproduced through a system that ‘color’ the stereo scene enough so that our ears are pinched. And cheated.
What do the different streaming platforms do to enhance that supposed sense of quality without having to resort to large files at 24 bits and frequencies that devour our bandwidth? Use compression algorithms the sea of ready. And it all depends on where you connect (mobile, computer) or the type of service you are consuming (free or paid).
The great Spotify strategy
Spotify does not hide its figures, although its performance can be confusing. The standard quality from the desktop app is 160 kbit / s, but we are not facing an MP3 container, but an open-source codec that the community has been perfecting until paroxysm: Ogg Vorbis.
If we are subscribers, we can raise the premium quality from the desktop app to 320 kbit / s. But we must also have your offer from the web. Your web application triggers the bit rate at 128 kbit / s in AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format if we are not premium and 256 kbit / s if we have a subscription.
But there is more. From the app on iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet, the qualities are compressed to reduce data usage. The different qualities, all in Ogg Vorbis format, are quite scarce:
Normal: about 96 kbit / s.
High: approximately 160 kbit / s.
Extreme: the equivalent of 320 kbit / s.
Automatic: dynamically adjusted based on our network connection.
Finally, if we use Chromecast or similar streaming models: the quality is identical to that of the web app: 128 kbit / s in AAC format for free friends and 256 kbit / s for premium users. And which is better, AAC or Vorbis? It depends on who you ask. Both are forms of VBR, that is, they have variable bit rates, and compression models have been quite refined since the Napster generation.
