Here at What Hi-Fi? we firmly believe that a higher quality stream can make all the difference to your listening experience – especially when paired with decent hi-fi.
It's why we support Neil Young's latest dig at Spotify in March. Young criticised the service’s poor stream quality while simultaneously announcing his music’s return to it. For those short of memory, he removed his catalogue to protest Spotify hosting the Joe Rogan Podcast two years prior.
Politics aside, many of the What Hi-Fi? team were nodding in agreement when they read his blog post announcing the move:
“The #1 streamer of low res music in the world – Spotify, where you get less quality than we made… I hope all you millions of Spotify users enjoy my songs! They will now all be there for you except for the full sound we created.”
Trust me, when paired with decent audio hardware, if you have the ear to hear the difference it’s hard to go back to basic Spotify.
“For most people, Spotify quality is enough,” wrote one reader on our Facebook page.
“Sorry Neil, NO ONE CARES,” chimed in another, less diplomatic reader.
The sea of thumbs-up emojis that posts like this received left us slightly sad. But, the more we pondered it, the more we found ourselves coming to a simple conclusion: in one way, you're right.
Of course, many people don’t get that opportunity. Maybe they don't have an interest in high-quality playback, which is fine, or perhaps they do but don't have the bank balance or domestic space to build a separates system, let alone one that features the kind of top-end hardware we showcase in our Temptations reviews.
With that in mind, our technical editor, Ketan Bharadia, made a very good point – if you can’t afford it, ignorance is in many ways bliss.
As an adult, I’ve always enjoyed a nice whisky at the end of a long week at work. Traditionally I’ve stuck to the single malts and blends within my budget, but recently my lovely wife has gotten into the wonderful habit of surprising me with tasting events and distillery tours for special occasions.
When buying whisky I used to get excited to see five quid off one of my favourite entry-level single malts at Tesco. Now I find myself staring at distilleries’ web stores hovering the cursor over the latest ambrosia I got a sniff of at my last tasting, wishing I could afford it.
Is this a first-world problem? Of course. Does it make the fact that I now know what I’m missing out on any less painful? No.
From there we get back to the basic philosophical question: is it better to be a fool satisfied than Socrates dissatisfied? And to that, I don’t have an answer. But I can say the fool’s bank balance will likely look healthier.
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