Spotify Distortion

[braincramp]

I just started listening to Spotify premium and at times the sound quality just plain sucks. Very distorted and just all around nasty. Is this common with Spotify or do I have other issues?

 

[Condorsat]

Your signal path.

For example ... mine is

HP Laptop> AudioQuest Jitterbugs(2)> AQ Forest USB> Schiit Audio Modi 2 Uber(DAC)>Morrow MA1.1(RCA)

I'm streaming Tidal (320kbps AAC) & sounds really good ... no reason that Spotify should sound any different at 320kbps OGG Vorbis

Also ... what songs sound bad? I could try it on my rigs for comparison.

 

[+48V]

I just started listening to Spotify premium and at times the sound quality just plain sucks. Very distorted and just all around nasty. Is this common with Spotify or do I have other issues?

All services have their share of cruddy source files. Things have improved greatly over the years but some clunkers remain.

How often you experience these "all around nasty" tracks could indicate a signal chain issue if it happens more often than not. However, the more likely culprits will be deficiencies in the source file and/or network bandwidth.

Post some of "your" troublesome tracks here and others can report their experience.

 

[E.Auer]

If it's always the same tracks, Its the source.
If it's random tracks and times, it's most likely bandwith.

Do you stream thru WiFi? How old is your router? What other things use the network? How many people stream at the same time?

Eric

 

[braincramp]

I was trying to listen to the Anthology album of Grand Funk. That one was the worst but I've had some other stuff that was pretty bad also. My WiFi and router are all good. My son is a IT manager so he keeps me going pretty strong. I just never experienced this type of hit and miss audio with Pandora premium but I like to be able to listen to complete albums. Kind of frustrating.

 

[E.Auer]

The anthology GF album is a terrible 1999 digital remaster that sounds like a bag of ass IMHO.

I just took a listen on Spotify Premium and it's indeed terrible.

Eric

 

[braincramp]

I would have to agree. Plus is was all over the place volume wise and it was even dropping a channel every so often.

 

[cgutz]

I listen to Spotify a lot on several devices. The other day I had a very distorted signal when running on my android tablet to my amplifier. It was almost like two streams were intermingling - kind of like when am radio picks up two stations at the same frequency. Rebooting the device made the problem go away.
Wonder of Spotify is having some app issues?
My son said they also recently reduced the level on all their music.

 

[J English]

No problems on any of my devices. I really like Spotify. Hey, it even still runs on Blackberry.

 

[gvl]

Make sure High Quality streaming is ON, disable volume normalization. If on Windows research the workarounds that allow using Wasapi and/or ASIO with Spotify.