My ears.
No just joking, YouTube music mostly. It’s convenient, available everywhere, has a large catalogue, and good enough quality for me.
With all respect you’re not the definition of an audiophile at all. If anything you’re kind of the opposite
Not everyone can discern the difference between a 96KHz FLAC and 256kbps AAC. I can’t. But I still can (barely) tell the difference between 256kbps AAC, and 96kbps AAC.
But I can tell if a song was well-engineered or a mess.
I believe those who can’t discern the difference between bitrates (especially on high bitrates), but have the appreciation for good music, good mixing, and good mastering, can still be considered audiophile.
That’s not the comparison at hand, we’re talking YouTube audio compression vs any actual music track.
Especially when your browser or application requests a high quality bitrate, youtube compression is opus 128.
A person could make the argument that it’s not lossless so it’s not worth listening to, but opus is extremely high quality especially at that bitrate.
If you wanna try it for yourself, take a flac or whatever, upload it to yt, then use something like yt-dlp -x that defaults to the highest quality to redownload just the audio stream.
YouTube Music Premium offers AAC 256kbps as the highest quality.
Format ID 141: https://gist.github.com/AgentOak/34d47c65b1d28829bb17c24c04a0096f
Opus 128 is only for the audio of YouTube videos. Not YouTube Music.
and according to that same link it’s 160, not 128 (format id 251!). someone else pointed that out itt.
one of my downloads had an average bitrate of ~140 when queried with mediainfo, so i believe em.
I don’t have the premium account, what’s aac256 comparable to?
AAC 256 should be at least on par with MP3 320 CBR, might also be on par with ogg vorbis at the same bitrate
As I get older and the abuse I put my ears through starts showing up, I completely agree. After upgrading my music library to FLAC from VBR mp3s, I stopped having the, “Oh! There’s a subtle instrument going on in this part of the song!” moments.
It doesn’t stop me from trying to listen to the highest quality music formats that I can get my hands on, but I 100% know if I think there’s a difference to my mid-40s ears, it’s probably a placebo.
Yes. As a lifelong musician (live & recording), you’d think I’d be more fussy about audio quality…
But I’m just not. Just like the 4k vs 2k “debate”… It’s all about CONTENT.
Also a musician here. I cared a lot when I was younger, but I have so many other more important things to care about now. You only have so my capacity to care about stuff in your life, and the quality of my music doesn’t even come close to mattering these days.
FLACs through PlexAmp, either to nice headphones ($500 range) or two channel stereo into some decent speakers with a decent subwoofer. I’d like to upgrade to “full range” speakers one day and save the subwoofer for movies.
PlexAmp does FLAC when connected to Wi-Fi but I have it set to transcode if I’m using mobile data.
At home it gets played through Chromecast Audios (R.I.P) which keeps it all digital until it hits my receiver.
„Audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.“
Alan Parsons
I dunno if that’s actually an Alan Parsons quote but up vote for any mention of his name. Does sound like something he’d say.
Audiophiles don’t listen to music, they listen to their headphones
Spotify -> MOTU M2 -> HiFiMan Ananda non-stealth
“High resolution” audio is completely useless for listening (16 bit 44.1 kHz is the best it gets) and there is little value in lossless encodes for listening purposes too, so I don’t get the point of all those “Hifi” streaming services.
If you own lossless encodes, I guess it doesn’t hurt to use them even for listening as storage is cheap these days.Speaking of which, I’d like to switch to purchasing my music though because Spotify will certainly continue on its path towards full enshittification. I want to be in a position where I own all my favourite music before Spotify will be infected with ads on premium plans. Oh and artists are somewhat more likely to be paid a little for their work that way (I hope…)
I plan to use the free YT music for discovery at that point.Completely full of ads already, I routinely get promoted podcasts and gig ticket and merch notifications despite them being turned off.
I started using Spotify lite on my phone. And thankfully, there’s plenty of alternative clients on desktop (such as ncspot). No crap UI elements, just playlists.
Spotify through Sonos at home and work. Spotify on Google earbuds when out and about.
I used to really love music discovery on Spotify. I now find it’s the same ald songs over and over. It finds what you like and reinforces that rather than gradually expand it.
I used to really love music discovery on Spotify. I now find it’s the same ald songs over and over. It finds what you like and reinforces that rather than gradually expand it.
I’m in the same boat. For years now it’s felt like every daily mix and discovery playlist is 10 songs I recently just listened to on repeat and then 2 songs that aren’t even tangentially related and I’m left questioning why they were being shown to me.
I agree on the discovery being crap on Spotify. I started to listen to the podcast NPR new music Fridays, and get my discovery that way nowadays.
I have converted all my CDs to FLAC and I mostly listen to my music collection in stereo speakers instead of headphones because I find the sound more natural. I have built my sound system around the moOde audio software.
FLAC’s on NAS. Bluesound Node to stereo system, controlled with Roon. PlexAmp when remote.
Tidal is actually giving their lossless plan to their lower tier subscription, just got an email about it. Pretty nice.
Music collection as flac, navidrome as streaming server, symfonium as android app and B&W P5 or B&W Pi7 S2 for headphones.
I really wanted to like symfonium (even tho its not open source), bc it is a beautiful client, but it is a battery hog. I had to go back to ultrasonic.
I actually found all the subsonic clients to be quite heavy on my battery, so I just stuck with the one I liked the best.
Ehhh, I’m ballin on a budget, so take that into account.
Generally, if I really want to sink into the music, I’m going with either my lgg7 and my beyerdynamic 770 80 ohm; or whatever device can connect with my usb DAC, a fiio q3.
I do have other options, but that’s my main listening because I simply don’t have the budget to do a proper system with how little I get a chance to listen to music away from headphones. My computer has a decent sound card, and some klipsch speakers that aren’t bad. There’s a home theater unit with cd/bluray hooked up, as well as the shieldTV, and the ability to connect via Bluetooth or cable to whatever device I prefer.
My car is decent, but not audiophile level. More bass focused than anything else.
I do have other headphones. Some tin t2s, some sonys, an old set of koss, that kind of thing.
File wise, its flac and opus.
I use poweramp and/or usb audio player pro. I prefer poweramp, but the other does bit perfect, which I do like on occasion, and it’s more DAC friendly.
I’m happy with the options I have, all considered. Most of it was picked up either on sale or used. I would save up while shopping, then get the best I could get when I was ready. But the key to me is that when I want to, I can listen to anything I have and hear the nuance of it. The sound is as clean as I can get it on my budget, and in all reality, my old ears can’t make use of anything fancier.
You spend almost fifty years living and listening to it loud, you aren’t going to get much bang for your buck out of the really high dollar, precise gear. Hell, I can barely tell a difference between lossless files and mp3 om any given listening method. It’s there, I can still hear a difference, but it’s barely there for me. The better gear helps, but not enough to keep upgrading for tiny changes.
Qobuz for me.
Best streaming sound available but I had some skipping issues even on very good connections and options for auto Playlist generation and new music discovery was way behind other services. Great if you always knew exaewhat you wanted to hear, but I went to Tidal and their focus on quality is better than most other services but the music discovery algorithms really are quite good, I find myself more eager than ever to tune in to a streaming service.
My procedure is realistic and accessible unlike what a lot of people here have.
- Clean your ear wax.
- Insert eartips properly. Buy proper eartips with ideal sealing.
The above will decide about 30-40% of your hearing experience.
- Tangzu Fudu ($90) with Divinus Velvet eartips that come with it.
This decides 30% further.
- Download the highest quality audio file YouTube can provide (OPUS VBR 160kbps ≈ roughly above 256kbps MP3)
- Enjoy the music.
- If I really cherish some music even more, I get 320kbps MP3 or FLAC files via anywhere possible. Mostly this is not needed.
I enjoy the music on them, and they are top 5 relaxing, musical IEMs in the world as of now, and are easy to drive on even phones.
I use JetAudio+ on Android and Rhythmbox/foobar2000 on Linux/Windows.
Clean your ear wax.
How do you do it?
There exist earwax dissolver solutions. Consult a doctor or ENT specialist.
Cleaning out your ears is so huge.
Budget audiophile here: I wear Superlux HD681 semi-open back cans paired with a Creative G6 DAC/amp.
The headphones are $25 but have the the most realistic soundstage I’ve ever heard in a pair of cans, even better than $500+ ones. Pinna activation is almost perfect; feels more like being surrounded by speakers than wearing headphones. Makes them amazing for gaming and movies, but not the best for music due to harsh siblants in the 12kHz range, which I’ve managed to EQ out a bit using Equalizer APO. Nice neutral sound otherwise, mids are almost perfectly flat and bass is tight—yet full—extending well below 20hz. Honestly you can’t do better without spending half a grand or more.
I just use YouTube music revanced
You should give ReVanced Extended a try. My biggest complaint about YT Music is that plays music videos with long intros, but with YT Music RVX you can have SponsorBlock and skip non-music parts automatically.
CDs ripped to FLAC and streamed using Emby. I also use Amazon Music. At work I have a pair of ATH-M30x headphones I really like. At home ibhave some Sennheiser HD350, which are ok, but I don’t like them that much as they’re not that comfy. I prefer going through the hifi - Audiolab 6000A amp, Wharfedale Pacific Evo 40 floor standers and a Wiim mini. I also have a NAD C541i CD player. On my PC I go through a NAD C320 amp and Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 bookshelves.
