I don’t understand why people buy these nice and expensive headphones only to use Spotify, arguably the worst quality music streaming service that exists. It sounds so bad compared to Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Deezer, or even Napster. At least you are getting lossless sound with those, it won’t be the same as having a ripped flac from a CD but anything is better than the AAC 128/320kbps that Spotify offers. It just bothers me when I see photos of headphones on this sub and then they have Spotify open in the background, I just can’t understand!
Here is a fun one for you all. I am around 60 years old. I can’t hear anything above around 12 kHz. So no air or sparkle for me! Guess what happens when higher frequency stuff gets lossy encoded at progressively higher compression ratios? Audio compression artifacts! Not just audio compression artifacts, but audio compression artifacts which create sounds at LOWER frequencies! In other words, totally false lossy audio compression artifacts of higher frequencies which are actually heard at lower frequencies and in the upper midrange and the lower treble.
So what do I do? I use an aggressive preprocessing rolloff filter for anything above 12 kHz when I convert original sources to 320 bitrate MP3 files. This prevents any lower octave artifacts from being created during the MP3 compression when set for a 320 kbps bitrate during compression to MP3. How? Since there basically is nothing above around 12 kHz for the lossy MP3 compression algorithm to compress. Since there is nothing to compress, then no lower octave artifacts are created. The result is that, given my age limited hearing which extends only up to 12 kHz, I don’t hear any compression artifacts or any difference between the MP3 file and the original source.