topic Re: BUG - 384Khz Devices in Desktop (Windows)

BUG - 384Khz Devices

Skorrn_ — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 18:58:40 GMT

Spotify will not work with devices that are set up to output anything above 192Khz. I do not need the audio from Spotify to be a higher quality. I would just like to be able to use my devices without having to constantly switch the sound settings every time I wish to use Spotify.

This bug specifically affects the Windows application.

I first discovered this bug in my post here (2020)

Apparently there were several other related posts here (2019) and here (2017)

Each time this is brought up, Spotify reps assume we are asking for HiFi music. In reality, we are actually asking for the application to be fixed. If HiFi comes later, great! However, I am more concerned with the lack of resolution for over 3 years.

Re: BUG - 384Khz Devices

enslaved2die — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 21:25:01 GMT

Yes great, but like always I think this will not be fixed. My original post was set as a bug but was later changed to not an issue.
Sooo yeah...

Re: BUG - 384Khz Devices

Novy — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:52:19 GMT

Hey folks,

Thanks for reaching out about this.

We understand where you're coming from. However, it's expected that the app doesn't support a sample rate higher than 192kHz.

We really value your feedback as it helps inform our decisions going forward, and will make sure to pass it onto the right teams.

If anything else comes up, we're always a message away.

Cheers.

Re: BUG - 384Khz Devices

Skorrn_ — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:47:24 GMT

Thanks for responding, but we aren't asking for a higher sampling rate to be sent. Spotify could send a 20.5kHz sample rate for all I would care.

Re: BUG - 384Khz Devices

enslaved2die — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:05:43 GMT

I did a little bit more research.
Spotify is probably using the DirectSound API. This API can use a max of 192khz.
You can try this yourself with VLC Player by changing the Audioouput Module from Automatic to "DirectX" to "Windows Multimedia Device Output".
You will see that you only get Sound when you set it to the 2nd option.

Spotify could switch to WASAPI to allow higher Samplerate but WASAPI works in a exclusive way so you only can here one application accessing this device at a time.

I would recommend that you use Voicemeeter and reroute spotify to your normal output device. So you dont need to switch the samplerates all the time.

As I said, changing the Sound Api to something different is probably out of the picture.

Re: BUG - 384Khz Devices

Skorrn_ — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:24:18 GMT

You're probably spot on - tough to check and I don't see it mentioned in their dev site (looks like they don't even list API docs for desktop devs). I crawled around a bit and found this community post (2014) complaining about lossy rates and with some of that (WASAPI) mentioned in the comments from 2018. It'd be fantastic if they decided to embrace that some of their users use DACs. It doesn't sound like they want to bother with that though (considering the years of complaints they've already received from everybody).