Bit rate when ripping from Spotify

[alex30]

Hi,
I have just bought Replay Music and think it is great, easy to use once you have got your file naming sorted out so that it fits with your player [ MediaMonkey]
I do have a query though and wondered if any one is sufficiently clued up to give a simple answer.
I am recording in Wav format as I want to play the tracks on a high end Hi Fi system and don't want to use lossy compression like MP3. I compress the Wav files losslessly to Flac using MediaMonkey.
I am recording from Spotify and my finished Wav files show a bit rate of 1144 and a typical size would be about 50 to 60 MB.
Then I find out that for free users of Spoyify the Bit rate is 128 bps and for paid users is 320 bps . Indeed if I compress my Wav files to MP3 I end up with a file with a bit rate of 128 from the starting point of 1144,
So my question is am I wasting space by recording in Wav because the end product will only be equivalent to a 128 MP3 file ? Unfortunately due to renovations I am unable to set up my hi fi or I would simply compare the Flac file and the MP3 file by ear.
Regards Alex

[maxrenn]

You're right, your wasting space; Spotify is streaming lossy ogg audio files.
Ripping them to wav is useless; you can't get uncompressed sound quality from a compressed lossy tune.
What i do is always setting RM at a slightly higher bitrate that the original file in order to avoid quality loss from the transcoding process;
For exemple if i rip a 128kb webradio i set RM to 160 or 192kb.
Doing this most of the time i can't tell the difference between the original and the copy.
If you want to be sure what kind of bitrate is sent to you; you can use this software : "NetLimiter 2", there's a freeware version that monitors your net traffic.
Bye.

[stream-recorder.com]

While you can definitely notice the difference with files ripped from CD to 128 kbps MP3 and lossless FLAC files, I do think it is a waste of space to record 128kbps files into FLAC.

IMHO only recording 320 kbps MP3s into FLAC can be justified.

[alex30]

Hi.
Thanks for that. I will copy to MP3 and save the space.
Regards Alex