[Satellite John]

I am checking out Spotify and the software and selection of music is really impressive, but the sound quality is terrible. Does anybody else find the low bit rate really irritating? I was fully prepared to subscribe, but it just does not sound good enough. I will stick to Youtube.

[ovbg]

Sounds absolutely fine to me, and it is a lot more practical than YouTube.

[Vincent_Willcox]

If you subscribe, you get access to the higher bit-rate streams. Free streams are limited in quality (but still sound acceptable to me).

[Dan 8t1]

Yep, if you subscribe and set it to high quality (I'm assuming you're using the PC software) then it's 320kbps Ogg Vorbis, and the sound quality is superb. Having said that, I don't recall it sounding particularly bad on standard quality (that's 160kbps on the PC).

[Resonance]

Details on the various available bitrates here. https://support.spotify.com/uk/learn...-for-streaming

[Satellite John]

Thanks for the replies. Might go Premium to get 320kbps.
I just find the standard free streams a bit tinny.

[wavy-davy]

160k Ogg Vorbis should sound decent so maybe it's the quality of the recordings they have.

Although if you're listening on a mobile it's only 96k which I can imagine does sound a bit iffy.

[barbeler]

I've recorded direct from the sound card using Audio Recorder For Free and I have to say that the results are perfectly listenable in the car. In fact in many cases they sound better than some mp3 downloads. Obviously a bit naughty though.