Sound quality: Spotify Premium vs Qobuz. Convince Spotify very high quality has good enough sound quality.

Spotify Hifi should be released later this year. I don’t know its pricing or if it will be available in my country, but it probably will be the best streaming service for me if it’s available here. However, I don’t have that choice now so I will be choosing between Spotify Premium and Qobuz.

My setup is PC -> Topping E30 -> Topping L30 -> Focal Clear.

I don’t have golden ears. I did the NPR test and only got 1 out of 6.

I use Spotify Premium in very high sound quality without volume normalization. As far as I know, Spotify Premium with very high sound quality is 320 kbps OGG Vorbis. Qobuz is either CD 16 bit / 44,1 kHz or Hi-Res (24 bit / up to 192 kHz).

The positives of Spotify Premium:
1. It’s way faster. It works smoothly. Qobuz is slow. Starting Qobuz is slow. It takes seconds for songs to start to play while Spotify is instant.
2. Spotify has an excellent music discovery feature. Qobuz is way worse in this regard.
3. Spotify is easy to control with several devices. For example, I can control it with my phone while listening via headphones that are plugged in to a computer.
4. Spotify is cheaper. It is 6,49 euros per month while Qobuz is 19,99 euros. The higher price of Qobuz isn’t a dealbreaker, but of course the cheaper the better.
5. Spotify should have adequate sound quality.
6. Spotify playlist has a song limit of 10 000 songs, which is higher than Qobuz’s limit of 1 000.

The positives of Qobuz:
1. Higher sound quality. Either CD or Hi-Res. Whether the difference compared to the 320 kbps OGG Vorbis is audible or not is a different question.
2. WASAPI Exclusive. I don’t know if this makes a difference or not – I read that Windows 10 should have a good sound system so WASAPI exclusive isn’t needed, but I still use it just to be sure.

I want to like Spotify. It’s cheaper, faster, has a better music discovery and I can control it with several devices. However, sometimes I feel that Qobuz sounds better. Maybe it’s the WASAPI exclusive? Or different mastering? Is it just a placebo? If I go with Qobuz, will I be paying more just to benefit from a placebo? Maybe I just enjoy knowing that I have the highest sound quality even if in practice I can’t differentiate it from Spotify Premium very high quality?

If the Spotify Hifi is available here later this year I will probably go with it. But until that it’s Spotify Premium vs Qobuz. I want like Spotify, and I do like it, but I have this weird feeling of Qobuz having better sound quality. Is it just expectation bias? I have read a lot of how people find it hard or impossible to differentiate between 320 kbps and lossless, and I believe I won’t be able to differentiate them either.