Vinyl Vs Spotify Home Test

Makis

Member
I tried a very interesting experiment and the results puzzled me. I was listening to a yes album on my turntable and decided to compare the sound quality with that of spotify. My setup is the following:
-Marantz 4400(recapped)
-Pro-ject essential II(only upgrade is the cork mat).
-Cambridge Audio 551P phono
-Acoustic Energy 301 speakers(standing on some old sony floorstanders!)
On the other hand was my cellphone with spotify premium(if it makes any difference) and a really long and cheap rca to jack cable.
So I pull out my brand new "Yes-Fragile" 180gr remastered record, and started playing "Roundabout" .i synced the phone and started going back and forth between the 2 sources. I must admit that the difference was so small that if I couldnt compare so fast, I wouldnt notice any. So I got my wife in the room,sat her down on the sweet spot, and started swapping between vinyl and spotify. She couldnt even understand when I was changing!
So we decided to proceed with Edith Piaf's "Exodus". To my ears,the highs from spotify were a little high but again, not something I would notice if there wasnt the side by side test .of course I was not telling my wife from which source she was listening at the time, and she chose spotify! At tbe previous song she didnt even bother to tell me which one she preferred since "they both sound exactly the same".
The turntable is totally level, calibrated(alignment,tracking force etc), and the stock stylus seems to be fine.
Sooo whats the point? Do I have to climb to car high price tags to get really better sound from a turntable?
Have you ran a similar test? What did you make out of it?
 
Do I have to climb to car high price tags to get really better sound from a turntable?
Have you ran a similar test? What did you make out of it?
Everything is relative. Your phono preamp is a modest op amp based unit. Yes, much better can be found.

As an old guy, I've got a higher resolution vinyl playback system but I'm really liking a downloaded 96/24 recent remaster of Fragile. Spotify is 320 kbps MP3.
 
Audio codecs have improved drastically over the last while. Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis, not Mp3. Actually, I think Mp3 has now been discontinued.( https://www.sciencealert.com/the-mp3-is-officially-dead-after-its-creators-abandoned-it )
You have just discovered how good a 320kbps file is. It’s actually very good.

Most can’t distinguish it from higher resolution formats in blind tests. Anyone here who can needs to post here:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....d-vs-mp3-abx-test-online.640307/#post-8506214
 
As I get lazy in my very long listening sessions I have discovered Spotify Premium. I also tried Tidal and it's very spotty so I gave up on that. Spotify's sq is good and a great tool to leans there's other music out there. Can't wait for them to go lossless. Now what to do with 8000$ worth of records.
 
As an old guy getting lazy in my dotage I find the 'old ways' work best for me.

Pick a CD or LP, then play it.

Streaming has been a constant test of patience of figuring out why stuff doesn't work when it did the other day, as well as an ever ending battle of escalating costs of connection.
 
I'm not using CCA. Using Spotify premium @ $10 a month thru my PC. Mini rca plugged into the headphone jack, then to the amp with rca's. It's a Y cable. Nothing fancy smanchy. If this 65-year-old can do it you can.
 
Last edited:
How do you plug a mini RCA anything into a USB port? Could it be you actually mean the headphone jack? If so, be advised there are better sounding alternatives, mainly DAC's that actually connect to a USB port and output stereo on a 3.5mm headphone type jack.

FWIW: My music server is a laptop w/external HDD connected to an Emotiva XDA-2 DAC via a USB port. This is for my main system. The laptop in my bedroom has a HiFiMe DIY DAC connected to a Little Dot MkII and a Yamaha HT receiver via a USB port.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for that. It's plugged into the headphone receptacle, marked green. Above post edited.
 
I'm not using CCA. Using Spotify premium @ $10 a month thru my PC. Mini rca plugged into the headphone jack, then to the amp with rca's. It's a Y cable. Nothing fancy smanchy. If this 65-year-old can do it you can.
The CCA is a one time $25 cost.

I can't even get it to work thru 2 different laptops with 2 different OS's, and thru my android phone it sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't.

I've spent more time delving into arcane memory, power, network, and software settings as actually listening to lo-res app based website audio feeds.

I would SOOOOOOO like this to....just....work and be as easy as putting a CD into my player or LP on my TT. But it hasn't.

Really - I would SOOOOO like this to be easy.

But, I don't want to have figure out why s*** doesn't work.

I can't answer the OP's original question as to what sounds better or the same, cuz I can't even get streaming lo-res to work reliably.
 
I’m sorry but you’ve got a Marantz 4400 and it’s comparable to what ??? Are you using four speakers with that quadradial quadraphonic sound ??? Are you using a FM antenna on the roof to take advantage of that quadraphonic FM ?? But primarily the wow and flutter on the Pro*ject would make the sound similar to that of a phone, an SL-1200 has a wow and flutter that would greatly surpass the Pro*ject and reduce the background noise in the speakers....plus the SL-1200 is comparably priced within the same price range. Stereo equipment is only a tool and using a popular TT is just sentimentality.

Like we use to say in the seventies....don’t believe the hype man because they only want your money !!!

You want something durable that has already outlasted most turntables and will outlast all the new entry and mid level tables and sounds better and even better with a few improvements.....get a good used well taken care of SL-1200 from someone on this site on Barter town.

Because the weak link in the comparison is the turntable due to the wow and flutter....
 
Considering the number of little things that can go wrong in setting up a turntable, I think you are doing fairly well, actually. If your vinyl front end sounds as good as your streaming service, it says that your basic setup is OK.

Some folks who either get too romantic or hear differently than I do, seem to think that records sound better intrinsically. I think that it takes much more of an investment in analog gear to get to the same level as a common digital source. I don't know about car-high price tags - I suppose it depends on the car in question. I remember feeling that I had records sounding better than CDs with a Denon DP1200 turntable, with a Denon DL-103 moving coil cartridge, Denon AU-300LC step-up transformer, into a Hafler DH-110 preamp w/phono. The TT and preamp were used, and the cartridge and SUT were new. That cost me about $1200 total, maybe 8-10 years ago. Pretty much a beater, for a car. :)
 
Back
Top Bottom