The most common question people have when it comes to streaming and audio is: does lossless really sound better than MP3? The answer is an emphatic “yes”. I have done A/B comparisons between lossless and lossy streaming with many people and most of them were able to consistently tell which tracks were lossless. I have also compared different streaming services such as Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, and Apple Music, and the lossless files on the hi-res services always sounded either better, or the same. Never worse. First, let’s define what a lossless file is and the most common formats.
Lossless vs Lossy
A lossless file is a file that contains 100% of the recorded information without any…loss. The most common lossless formats are WAV and FLAC. They both should sound the same, however FLAC has the added benefit of taking up less space, and it can contain metadata, or information about the song and cover-art. Now is the time to explain an important concept: There is a difference between lossless and uncompressed. The two are independent of one another. For example, WAV is lossless AND uncompressed, while FLAC is lossless, but compressed. Compression is simply a way to create a smaller file. This compression can either retain 100% of the data, which would be lossless, or less than 100%, which would be lossy.
Streaming Service Codecs and Lossless benefits
Each of the streaming services I mentioned above use different codecs, or ways of encoding the audio file. These codecs can either be lossy, or lossless. Spotify uses OGG Vorbis, while Apple uses AAC in their MP3 files, and ALAC for their lossless files. Qobuz uses FLAC, but also allows for download in other formats. Tidal uses MQA for their hi-res files, which is a (supposedly) higher quality lossy compression format.
Since each streaming service uses a different codec, or method of encoding their files, they sound different. It is best to try a few lossless streaming services and determine which one you think sounds the best. For me, I have found that Qobuz sounds the most tonally accurate of all the mainstream streaming services. Due to their small user base, their ability to recommend songs and share with others is quite limited. The second best is Apple Music lossless (you have to change stream quality in settings but it is completely free) which is almost indistinguishable from Qobuz in terms of sound quality, but has the added benefit of a much larger user base and library. I would not recommend Tidal, because the MQA format is a license based format that requires special gear to “unfold” the file, and because, in my opinion, the sound is exaggerated and more distorted than Qobuz and Apple Music.
You might wonder why lossless sounds better than MP3. The most obvious difference to my ear is the improvement in dynamics of the music. Everything sounds more open, less compressed and more detailed. But don’t just take my word for it: Listen! If you can’t tell the difference, that is ok. Your gear may not be at a level where you can hear the difference, and that is totally fine. But I encourage you to try and see what differences you can pick up, if any. In general, unless your system is particularly revealing, you may not notice a difference between MP3 and lossless FLAC. What I can tell you is that, especially if you plan to rip files locally, you should ensure that your files are the highest quality possible. You don’t want the source to be the bottleneck, and as I said, it will either sound better, or the same, never worse.
Sample Rates and Bit depth
Sample rate is related to, but not the same as bitrate. A standard lossless file is 16 bits/44.1kHz. This means that the recording was sampled 44,100 times per second. A standard high-resolution file is 24 bits/ 96kHz. The number of bits (bit depth) refers to the amount of information contained in each individual sample, while the sample rate is the number of samples of the track taken per second. A higher sample rate and bit-depth will sound better, but the biggest difference in sound quality comes from switching from lossy to lossless formats rather than a higher bit rate and bit depth. Additionally, very few tracks are available in resolutions higher than 16/44.1. This means that the benefit of listening to hi-res tracks is limited to a small portion of your music library.
It is important to understand that the resolution of the track is NOT correlated with the quality of the recording. You can listen to a file in 24bit/ 176.4kHz quality, but if the song was recorded in 16 bit / 44.1kHz, there will be no extra information being conveyed. When a song is played in a resolution higher than it is recorded, the song is “upsampled”. Upsampling does not increase the amount of information in the track; However, DAC’s may utilize upsampling internally to make it easier for it to reconstruct the digital signal accurately. To summarize, streaming higher bit rates will improve sound quality if the recording was recorded in that higher bitrate, otherwise there will be no noticeable improvement in quality. Leave it up to the DAC to upsample. There is no need to take up extra bandwidth trying to hear information that was never there! Standard 16/44.1 files sound pretty damn good and are more than sufficient for all but the most discerning listeners.