Spotify hasn’t issued any statements addressing the delay at the time of writing, so it’s not 100% clear why Spotify HiFi has yet been released. Your quality will still depend on the quality of your tech, but HiFi should help you get more out of cheaper headphones and speakers too. In the case of Spotify HiFi we’ve been told that it will be at CD-quality, and a previous leak showed music playing at 16-bit/44.1kHz quality. The highest quality MP3 track has a bitrate of 320kbps (this is the bitrate Spotify uses currently), CDs are transferred at 1,411kbps and a 24-bit/192kHz file is transferred at a rate of 9,216kbps - the latter being the level considered hi-res audio. Lossless audio uses higher speeds and more data-filled streams in order to prevent these details from being left behind, with none of the audio lost in transmission i.e.

They’re cut for space in order to push through the most prominent aspects of what’s playing. If you’re playing music from a low-quality stream the slower speeds they operate under will cause some of these finer details to be lost.

But to relay this information your speakers need to actually receive it in the first place. The best speakers and headphones can help you detect minor details in songs, from the subtle ways that a guitar’s strings are plucked to inflections in a backing singer’s performance. Spotify HiFi - like other streaming services - will be a huge deal for audiophiles looking to get the best performance out of their sound system or headphones.

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