It is yet to reveal the technical requirements for Spotify HiFi, but given the ubiquity of Spotify on devices around the world, we’d imagine it’ll be made widely available. Spotify says that it is working with “some of the world’s biggest speaker manufacturers” to ensure that Spotify HiFi can be accessed through the Spotify Connect. Right now, the most Spotify Premium can offer is 320kbps MP3 on desktop, mobile and tablet, so whether the service uses FLAC or something else, the audio quality the HiFi tier will (eventually) be much better than what is currently available. We wouldn’t expect Spotify HiFi to go that far. Tidal HiFi uses the FLAC format at 16-bit / 44.1kHz and MQA ( Master Quality Authenticated) for higher-resolution files (branded as Tidal Masters) such as 24-bit / 352kHz. There are various formats providing high-resolution audio, and Spotify hasn’t made clear which format it will use as yet. For example, Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis, which is said to deliver high quality sound relative to the bandwidth needed to stream it. The same file size for a hi-res track can be around 20Mb. For a 3.5-minute song, a standard compressed audio file is around 2mb.

Lossless audio ensures that there is no loss of quality in the digital music file, but it does also mean it eats up more data to stream.įor a number of music streaming services, digital music files are compressed in order to keep the file sizes down. It’s important to note that Spotify will be offering audio at CD, lossless quality, not to be confused with high-resolution audio, which is considered to be audio quality higher than 16-bit/44.1 kHz (which is what Spotify HiFi will stream at). What audio quality is Spotify HiFi streaming at? This means audio that will be much closer in quality to the original recordings, so listeners will be able enjoy more depth and clarity, provided they have headphones and speakers good enough to take advantage of the increased bitrate. Once it arrives, Spotify HiFi will offer CD-quality, lossless audio. Spotify has announced plans to offer its subscribers a higher quality audio tier, but what is Spotify HiFi and when is it due to arrive? What is Spotify HiFi? Music streaming services are offering tracks in better quality than ever, with move to higher quality music on the up. Spotify announced plans to launch a Spotify HiFi tier for Spotify Premium subscribers back in 2021, but it’s still yet to arrive.

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