Dan Pražák The streaming service Spotify currently has around 60 million users who subscribe to it. A significantly larger number will be those who use Spotify in free mode, i.e. without the ability to switch songs and with ubiquitous advertisements. If you're thinking about buying a subscription, the company announced a special annual deal over the weekend that will be available until the end of this year. As part of it, you will purchase an annual membership with a discount of 20 dollars, i.e. approximately 430 crowns.
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David Hanak Discounts can be used by both new and existing customers. Once you purchase a discounted $99 (€72) annual subscription, you will have a one-year period after which the subscription price will return to the standard level (i.e. $10 per month). As part of the current promotion, you get twelve prepaid months for the original price of ten.
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Tomas Chlebek This promotion applies to the personal subscription model only. There is no discount for family sharing or family membership. This special offer can only be paid by card, does not apply to discounts and is only available from the company's official website. As part of this promotion, Spotify's subscription level has been brought to the same level as Apple Music's annual subscription, which also costs $99 per year for an individual. Will you be taking advantage of this Christmas offer, or are other streaming services closer to you? Share your thoughts with us in the discussion.
Well, let them start using AAC, and I'll go to them right away :)
AAC? And what would it be good for? 20 years old cow format at .mp3 level. If that's the case, it would be nice to switch to at least FLAC or even better MQA, but Apple can't handle that on the iPhone.
In addition to the fact that Apple currently cannot send any other reasonable codec to wireless headphones.
Well, AAC is not such a big advance. I understand this as an argument. However, I solved it better by moving elsewhere. I don't mean another service, but other products.
Clear. I do not plan to leave Apple, so I will continue to ignore services that do not support AAC. I really don't miss listening to SBC quality on the road. And I won't buy Spotify just for the sake of listening via cable.
Btw - I have for sale one Sennheiser Momentum Wireless 2.0 AEBT with AptX support, I'm getting rid of them only and only because of the absence of AAC - with Android and of course also with a wire (I have my own DAC).
I solved it by buying the Onkyo DP-X1 player. That is, even without leaving iP.
Yes, it's two boxes. But I have a lot of FLAC so I have it connected at home too. 2x 200 GB card and I don't have to limit myself, I'm no longer interested in that.
I have a Cardas EM5813, that's enough for now, I'm quite an old-timer in "Hi-Fi"?
I have a Sony MDR-1000X at home and I use them for listening via iPhone / iPad / MAC and I have Spotify set to 160 kbit/s and I have no problem listening. When I tried at 320 kbit/s, it sounded louder, but better? Not even that.
That is, should I know the difference with some free android or other free device? I need a Samsung Galaxy S5 mini or a Samsung Galaxy J3 at home. Or should it be better on cable?
I also played music bought in iTunes and just asked if I might recognize myself. Maybe it occurred to me that with the Sony MDR-1000X cable connection it was a little worse than without it ;-).
It's quite a big deal. I also have the MDR-1000X, but you have to play either AAC or use a cable. Otherwise, you only get the basic SBC codec through BT, which sounds a lot worse, and it doesn't matter how many kbps music you have on the input.
Those sonaks can tell you in which mode they are running — hold Power for a while, and then quickly press NC to it, if they flash blue once, they are in SBC, if they are in some better codec (AAC, AptX, etc.) - in in the case of iOS devices, therefore, only AAC. You'll know the difference right away.
Great, I'll try it when I'm home :-).
Bacha forced-SBC mode — then they will always run in a compatible SBC codec — it can also be switched, but I can't figure out how, look at the instructions. Alternatively, factory-reset the headphones.
So when connected from an iPhone, it flashes 3 times when I'm already playing Spotify, YouTube or online purchased music in iTunes. It's the same when connected to a MAC, so it definitely doesn't work in some weaker mode.
The sound from the MAC and the iPhone is exactly the same, including the volume, so I don't really know the difference.
When I have some time, I will try to force the SBC mode, if I hear any difference in it. Anyway, it just works for me :-).
And the truth is that it seems strange to me that the protocol would automatically switch with every other file. That's pretty weird.
So when connected from an iPhone, it flashes 3 times when I'm already playing Spotify, YouTube or online purchased music in iTunes. It's the same when connected to a MAC, so it definitely doesn't work in some weaker mode.
The sound from the MAC and the iPhone is exactly the same, including the volume, so I don't really know the difference.
When I have some time, I will try to force the SBC mode, if I hear any difference in it. Anyway, it just works for me :-).
And the truth is that it seems strange to me that the protocol would automatically switch with every other file. That's pretty weird.
Ok, thanks for the info. Then one should know how to do it :)
I was still trying to find out which codec is used, and through the Bluetooth Explorer utility it is possible to find out and set which codec the headphones should connect to. I'll try again in the evening, if there's time for it after the certs, and then I'll let you know ;-).
In this utility, it is possible to Force aptX, enable or disable AAC, etc. So I'm wondering if I know those who split up ;-).
What kind of utility is this? On PC, Mac or iOS? Please send a link. Thanks
It's a developer utility from Apple:
https://www.areilly.com/2017/07/29/enabling-aac-and-aptx-over-bluetooth-on-macos/
Oh, I don't have a Mac, so try it and let me know :)
It was quite complicated, but I finally put it together :-).
1. Using the left alt and clicking on the bluetooth icon, you can find out with which codec it is connected at any time. On MAC, aptX is the default.
2. The bluetooth explorer application measures a billion quite technical things, so quite interesting. However, thanks to the help of the GUI, it is possible to force certain codecs. So interesting.
3. I just let it go for a while and it took a while to switch, turn off and on bluetooth, but it occurred to me that the SBC is worse, but if someone hadn't switched it quickly, I might not have known it for sure. It also probably depends on what kind of music is being played.
4. The triple flash on the headphones did it even when the SBC was turned on, so it's really just the headphone settings that don't reveal anything (I'll try tomorrow, if it forced SBC in the MAC when I turned on the set).
5. The codec does not change automatically. It changes only when changing and then disconnecting and reconnecting, so the fact that the codec would change according to what is currently played is nonsense.
6. Article on Zive https://www.zive.cz/clanky/bluetoothove-patalie-o-bezdratovem-prenosu-hudby-a–problemech-s-kodeky/apple-a-aac-sony-a-ldac/sc-3-a-190519-ch-110461/default.aspx#articleStart but that's completely different. They claim that transcoding occurs because of the bluetooth transmission, and I'm probably not able to verify that.
7. However, it seems that the MAC devices and the Headphones can automatically agree on the best, so I assume the same for the iPhone. So what I know is that I'm a pretty good listener (I support absolutely all codecs :-) ). So it might still be worth it to convert the possible music to AAC, but I will decide if it is at all as it is written.
Excellent, I'm looking forward to further insights, finally it will be a little clearer :)
Well, that remains to be seen :-). Then I don't know how to verify that transcoding occurs and, thanks to it, quality reduction. However, I currently have one bluetooth headset at home, which does not support other codecs, and I can force SBC on those Sony headphones via MAC as well. So I'll probably try to listen again, it'll be a while, but I probably won't be able to ;-).
Spotify doesn't use AAC natively, but Ogg has nothing to do with using AAC as a Bluetooth transfer protocol. If I have an iPhone and headphones with AAC support, the phone will also use Spotify AAC. It just crunches the phone and sends it to the headphones in AAC. Mac same thing. I'm currently listening to Spotify via Airpods via AAC on my Mac.
Well, I'm not really sure about that — I read somewhere that the source must be directly in AAC format, otherwise it just doesn't work; and what I tried, the MP3s sent to the Sony ones still went in SBC and the AAC codec was not applied at all. iOS definitely won't do on-the-fly conversion of input to AAC - at least not for me :)
There is no need to solve it at all on the Mac, because it knows AptX.
And is there any way to know what mode it is in?
Theoretically, if it is true that the format from Spotify goes through SBC and from MAC goes through AptX, then you should be able to hear the difference immediately? I'll give it a try if I know it.
In short, I used any combination, so the quality came to me the same (with active headphones).
But I also read that these Sonky have some technology to improve, so that would be it?
DSEE HX (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine HX) technology will enhance the sound quality of compressed digital files (MP3, ACC, ATRAC and WMA) to near high definition. DSEE HX technology restores the wide-spectrum sound lost during compression and reproduces your digital music files with a rich and natural sound.
The MDR-1000X can even show if they are going in SBC or "something else" - it can't do anything more precise. I have no experience with Macama, but perhaps the codec used there will be seen somewhere. on iOS it is not possible to find out by itself - except with the appropriate application for headphones (such as Sony has for example).
For myself, I can even say that when connected to an iPhone, I play the Sonaks incomparably better than the previous Sennheiser Momentum — because they went clean in SBC (although it can also AptX, but it can't do iOS), and it was different to hear on the first listen. Unfortunately, I cannot judge how much DSEE HX contributed to it, and how exactly it is implemented.
This is exactly where opinions differ. If it is as you write, then it is at least a very unluckily chosen duplicate name.
However, I'm not really good at telling the difference between different combinations.
I'll try a couple of them ;-).
It would make no sense to me that the source file can be in anything, but then that the codec according to the relevant HW is used. However, I cannot find this information anywhere.
So I don't think it's selected enough — it clearly says that if you have an AAC format at the input, and the BT receiver can accept the AAC stream, then no recoding is done, and it is sent straight to the headphones. That's why it seems suspicious to me that you would need MP3 or OGG to send without recoding.
Other sources claim that if you need FLAC as an input, it is automatically recoded to AAC in the background and sent to the headphones. Then the only advantage of Apple Music (or AAC libraries in general) would be that you don't have to recode at all. I'll check it so I don't make any mistakes :-)
I don't know what is in the price of 72 Euros per year with a discount, when after budgeting it comes out to the classic 6 Euros per month…….
Exactly, the normal price is €5,99 per month :D by the way, until the end of the month there are 3 months of spotify premium for €0,99
Apple Music costs €59 per year
This will be a hoax, Spotify offers an annual subscription just for a family account. And even if, the price of €72 listed here is a mere twelve times the current monthly price of €6. so I don't really see any discount there. Now I'm browsing my Spotify account at http://www.spotify.com, there is exactly the annual price of €71.88, or exactly twelve times the monthly price of €5,99. If I'm wrong, someone enlighten me.