But I can definitely hear a little bit of difference for sure. That's my experience as someone who has FLAC files but doesn't have the proper sound equipment to tell the true huge differences. But the differences aren't too huge though. Same thing with Gold Rush when I didn't hear the footsteps in the chorus until I heard the song from the CD.

I didn't notice the birds chirping in Exile until I heard the song from the CD. I also noticed a difference when I hear Folklore and Evermore on Spotify vs CD ripped but it's quite small. So when I listened to the CD ripped files, I can hear the tracks sounding more 'layered' if you get what I mean. But the BTW songs I saved on Spotify sounded too compressed than it should be. For context, I download my songs in 'Normal' quality (96kbit/s) for storage reasons and I am contented with most of my songs sounding like this.

Let me just say that my CD copy of Born This Way arrived last week and I ripped the songs from the CD into FLAC files and I was able to tell the difference between the BTW that I have my Spotify and the ones I ripped from my CD. I have a JBL headphone that is impressive for its budget but not the HiFi-like headset that people should recommend when listening to FLAC files.

This is very hard to answer because I don't exactly have this 'great sound system' that people keep talking about.

Spotify hifi lossless coming year