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Why “quality” sound at 320 kbit/s in Yandex.Music is not better than 256 kbps in Apple Music

This week Yandex.Music has announced the addition of the mobile app quality sound 320 kbit/s. Yandex Previously only supported a stream of 192 kbit/s. Yandex Paid.The music behind sound quality from all its competitors (Google Play Music, Deezer, Zvooq) in June 2015, after 320 kbps appeared at the service Zvooq. Other competitors of Yandex, as noted Roem, good as it was before.

After running streams at 320 kbps Yandex.Music streaming among the major players there has been parity. All the visible services cost 150-200 rubles a month and they sound at 320 kbps. the Exception is Apple Music. Its price matches the price of a subscription from competitors, but the service is limited to a maximum of 256 kbps. However Apple holds a music in the AAC format. It is considered that the later the AAC format sounds better with the same bitrate with MP3.

For Apple small difference in sound is not essential, in particular because the Corporation does not anticipate that users will listen to Apple Music in expensive closed headphones or speakers the premium level. Models in Beats for $ 200 equipped with modest speakers, and the difference between 320 and 256 kbps doesn’t matter, and the volume of flow will increase significantly.

However, today fans of quality sound can make use of the services, where compression is not applied at all. French qobuz.com offers lossless audio (complete analog CD), record higher quality (24 bits at sampling rate of 192 kHz) and multi-channel (in which the compression is there, but very advanced) for flows below 5 Mbit/s (~ 16 times bigger than 320 kbps) or higher.

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French service Deezer sells subscriptions on an uncompressed sound owners electronics brand Sonos. Bet on lossless did the failed service Tidal. There are other projects. Interestingly, the launch music service with high sound quality discussed by musician Neil young and Apple’s founder Steve jobs. But their joint plans failed to be realized.

Recently experts of the company Vox Media held a “blind” test of the quality of Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal. Latest promises for additional fee sound with a bitrate of 1.4 Mbit/s, which corresponds to CD quality, while Spotify supports 320 kbps and Apple Music – 256 kbps. the results of the blind testing showed that confidently is the leader of any of the services impossible. Spotify are less fortunate than Apple Music and Tidal. In 29% of cases, panels generally found no differences in the sound tracks. Tidal, which attracts users, namely high bit rate, certainly not has got the first place in the research; in some cases this service is generally called an outsider.

If in a “blind” test Apple Music, Tidal and Spotify demonstrate approximately the same quality, the choice in favor of a streaming service worth doing on the basis of other indicators: cost, convenience of interface, system recommendations, etc.

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