It's here. Yet as John Darko and I opined in a recent podcast, for many it could be a matter of too little, too late. What am I on about? Spotify LossLess. After many years of empty promises, it finally activated in my rebooted Premium subscription a few days ago. It's 44.1kHz up to 24 bits. But because it doesn't integrate into Audirvana Studio like Qobuz and Tidal do, it can't benefit from that player software's very real sound optimizations. Spotify LossLess plays 'straight thru' like Apple iTunes used to in the olden days before PureMusic inserted itself in the background. As such my Qobuz Sublime subscription still sounds better. However, Spotify has music I can't find in Qobuz. Now I can stream it on Spotify in full Redbook 1'411kbps rez rather than the previous 320kbps 'very high quality'. If I really like that music, I can chase it down for purchase somewhere else. Qobuz remains my primary just no longer solitary streaming resource. Now Spotify LossLess can fill a few holes on occasion. For me that's one in the win column. For you it could be meh because if you're into CD-quality streaming, you probably already have it with Apple Music, Deezer, Qobuz, Tidal or one of the smaller speciality services; and already had it for possibly going on a decade. So whilst Spotify LossLess inside their Premium tier is news, it could very well be stale news. No matter, it has finally arrived even on Ireland's remote west coast…
