Spotify 320kbs

I use spotify premium, the 320 streaming is really good, i cant tell the difference between spotify or a wav rip, i sometimes listen to wav using foobar but mostly i listen to spotify.

Yep the 320k on or offline on mobile devices is new in last version. Am resyncing my playlists now (though don't expect a huge difference tbh).

Spotify may well stream in 320, but not all of its files are 320, seems that many are actually lower

Google...

Is it worth the upgrade from spotify open for the sonic improvement (if any). I know about the ability to play offline / mobile etc.

There will be a sonic improvement on those files that are 320kbps, but as 6threplicant says not all of them are. Also depends what you're streaming to/listening on.

Try it.  You're not tied into a contract, it's a card payment so if you don't like it just stop.

On my (less good) speakers, there is no clear difference in Spotify premium between the "high quality streaming" box checked or not. It feels that high quality is maybe just a little better...but I couldn't actually tell the difference in a quick blind test.

If you want to test on your system, just encode a wav rip to ogg files at both q5 (Spotify's 160) and q9 (320) and use Foobar's handy ABX comparator to see if you can really hear the difference in a true blind test. 

Or...just sign up to Premium and cancel if it doesn't float your boat!

Nah, that can't work, gotta try the real thing innit. 

Aye, trying the real thing is probably your best bet. Life is short!

Though personally, being slightly obsessive and already having installed this stuff on my PC, I find it interesting to ABX files with Foobar. Because I was able to convince myself that Spotify premium seemed "slightly" better than the standard quality, but doing a proper ABX test in Foobar I was not able to tell the difference.

OK, ABX tests are not the be-all-and-end-all, but that said, if you can't ABX it, it's probably not worth worrying about!

Fascinating stuff para, but when do you actually get to listen to an album?

I'm saving up for a turntable

There's a Naim for people like you....

I've only just read about this update from the WHF email out, though I did update Spotify from the app store notification.  It sounds a lot better on the iPhone which was always lacking at 160kbps, I can also now stream via my Onkyo dock just using the phone and not a 5m USB cable...

I guess the only thing to watch is the data usage over 3G, I estimate 2.5MB per minute?  Won't take long to use up my 500MB...

http://www.spotifyclassical.com/2011/07/spotify-bitrategate-story-so-far.html

"Spotify's Official Statement: "All music streamed through Spotify is of high quality (no less than 96 kbps for mobile and 160 kbps for desktop). We have a catalog of more than 15 million tracks and more than 99.9% are available in high bitrate (320 kbps) for our Premium users. Our catalog adds an average of 10,000 new tracks daily and we add the newly added tracks as quickly as possible."
"

It's been almost ALL 320 for a while now...