Hello! This is probably stupid.
So I have recently gotten rid off my streaming services to save money and I have been into transferring my new and old CDs into MP3 form (320 kbps) and listening to those either on my Sony Walkman (NWZ-B162F or something) or on my PC with the Windows Legacy Media Player/VLC and now the music sounds so, so different than the same songs sounded from Spotify or YouTube Music. (Official apps on Android, iOS and PC or the web version on PC while having the “HD Settings” on.) Headphones and the soundbar is the same as before, no changes there.
Like the MP3 form, that should be much more poorer quality and inferior in all the ways, but it sounds “deeper”? The streaming services have sounded so… flat? Sorry, English isn’t my native language but yeah, flat or shallow? Empty even? Hollow?
Is this because of I now “own” the music and possibly respect it more and that makes it sound better? Am I turning into an audiophile, which I have never had any interest in before? Or is there something real in this? Not complaining really, just been pondering this a while and my fiancé agrees on this as he’s been doing the same on his old iPod…
Thanks in advance or anyways. :)
Could be the opposite as well, youtube a while ago rolled out a “normalization” thing by default that absolutely ruins all audio on the platform and needs to be disabled on every device you have. Supposedly it was set to automatically disable for music but that depends on the uploader
Spotify streams have always been garbage in my experience, but I haven’t had a subscription in about a decade now so no idea if that’s still true
Normalisation is pretty good if you need to keep your computer quiet
Normalization is a legitimate, effective, and popular technique employed across the entire entertainment industry. Most well produced audio will have degrees of the effect applied tastefully.
I have no idea what youtube’s “normalization” is doing that ruins the quality of their audio to such a noticeable extent. It’s also totally indiscriminate of the video’s existing audio production. It sucks for someone to work hard and produce a good mix only for youtube to ruin it without your consent, possibly years after release