topic Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting in Desktop (Windows)

Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

MDL78 — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 22:59:30 GMT

Plan

Premium Family

Country

Italy

Device

HP laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

Running Spotify Win 10 app from CMD, and using the --show-console switch, I can see in the log that the quality is 160kbps, despite the Streaming Quality is set to "Very High" (so should be 320kbps) in the preferences, and Volume normalization is turned off. Tried with many different songs.

Also would like to know if there is a full list of command-line switches available for Spotify.exe, as I could not find any.

Thanks a lot!

--- See log excerpt below:

Opening driver (182EB540)
22:40:59.886 I [/f:743 ] sample rate: 44100 Hz
22:40:59.886 I [/f:744 ] channels: 2
22:40:59.887 I [/f:745 ] sample format: 32-bit-float-pcm
22:40:59.887 I [/f:746 ] stream type: default
22:40:59.887 I [/f:747 ] audio content type: music
22:40:59.888 I [/f:748 ] paused: false
22:40:59.888 I [/f:281 ] Opening sink for playback.
22:40:59.888 I [/f:282 ] codec: vorbis
22:40:59.888 I [/f:283 ] bitrate: 160000 bits/s
22:40:59.889 I [/f:284 ] sample rate: 44100 Hz
22:40:59.889 I [/f:285 ] channels: 2
22:40:59.889 I [/f:286 ] sample format: 32-bit-float-pcm
22:40:59.889 I [/f:289 ] duration: 408480 ms

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

CarlosE — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 17:58:54 GMT

Hi there @MDL78,

Thanks for reaching out about this and welcome to the Community.

Could you send us a screen recording while using the app where we can see the script you mentioned in real time? This would help us have a better understanding of what's going on.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

MDL78 — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 09:31:17 GMT

Thanks Carlos,

short video rec in attachment. You will see:

- running spotify with console option from command line

- short playback

- going back to DOS window, the log and highlighted the part saying it's at 160kbps.

Thanks,

Marco

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

MDL78 — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 09:32:57 GMT

Also I guess it might be handy for you to have the log, I'm attaching it here.

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

Jeremy — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 11:08:02 GMT

Hi there @MDL78,

Thank you for your reply and for the screen recording.

Can you perform a clean reinstall of the app? This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

Another useful step to do is to remove any hosts files. You can do that by following these steps:

Open Notepad as an administrator (right-click - Open as Administrator)
go to File - Open and navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
Choose "All Files" instead of "Text Documents" next to the File Name box. You'll see a handful of files. Pick hosts and click on Open
When the file is open, you will see a block of text with # in front of each line and might see entries like 0.0.0.0 website.com127.0.0.1 website2.com
Check for any entries with Spotify in the address. Examples may look like: 0.0.0.0 weblb-wg.gslb.spotify.com0.0.0.0
If you do find any lines with Spotify, please remove them
Save your changes and restart Spotify

Let us know how everything goes.

Take care 🙂

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

MDL78 — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 17:36:42 GMT

Thanks a lot Jeremy, I tried both your suggestions unfortunately with no luck.

(Btw hosts file had no entry at all, except localhost).

Any other idea?

thanks,

Marco

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

Jeremy — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 12:51:00 GMT

Hi again @MDL78,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

Can you log in with another account - such as a friend's or a family member's to see if the issue persist? This will help us understand if it's account related or not.

Keep us posted 🙂

Take care!

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

MDL78 — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:39:02 GMT

Thanks again Jeremy, unfortunately still same issue.

Sorry it took a bit because I did not want to use a login from one of my family account (in my mind this was not a fully reliable test), but instead I asked to a friend that has a totally unrelated account.

You can see result in the log I am attaching.

Btw let me mention something I did not write so far: normally I play either on PC (like the tests I'm doing here) or on a connected device (Marantz NR1504). Not sure if this can somehow influence the bitrate honestly - I guess it should not.

Thanks,

Marco

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

Ver — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 12:58:54 GMT

Hey @MDL78,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop 🙂

We've passed the info on to our tech teams. We'll let you know as soon as we have any updates on this.

We'll be right here if you have any questions.

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

Ver — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 07:27:20 GMT

Hey @MDL78

We are back with some news.

We'll need a screenshot of the audio settings in the app. Once we have it, we'll pass it on to our teams as well so the folks there can investigate this further.

Keep us in the loop. If you have questions, you know where to find us.

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

MDL78 — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 11:34:11 GMT

Thanks a lot Ver, here you go.

Quality setting is Very high, that should be 320kbps.

Thanks,

Marco

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

Ivan — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:00:18 GMT

Hey @MDL78,

Thanks for providing us with the requested details.

We've forwarded your info to the right team and we'll get back to you here once they let us know how to proceed.

Stay tuned!

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

MDL78 — Wed, 12 May 2021 16:33:36 GMT

Hi Ivan,

while we wait for the main question to be addressed, can you please share the answer to my second one - can you share the full list of command-line switches/parameters?

thanks a lot,

Marco

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

Novy — Sat, 15 May 2021 20:14:57 GMT

Hey there @MDL78,

Thanks for your patience and for trying everything we've suggested.

We've taken a deeper look at this and seems like the issue is most likely isolated to your specific device or setup. However, we're unable to share any list of command-line switches/parameters from our end.

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and will make sure to pass it on to the right folks.

Apologies for the inconvenience. Don't hesitate to let us know if anything else comes up.

Cheers.

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

MDL78 — Mon, 17 May 2021 08:45:47 GMT

Thanks Novy.

I'm sorry I'm not understanding precisely what would be the issue here, can you expand on why my setup would cause the bug? It's a plain HP laptop with Windows 10, up to date. I guess the bitrate for playback should not be depending on the device, especially when you force it by selecting a precise value in the config page.

Thanks,

Marco

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

Ver — Wed, 19 May 2021 10:43:47 GMT

Hey @MDL78,

Thanks for getting back to us 🙂

This could happen due to running it in a console state, in an emulated or VM environment or due to the audio driver. It seems like Spotify cannot detect the capacity of the device to play at 320kbps.

We tried on our end and it correctly played at the 320kbps quality.

We apologize that we're not able to identify the cause remotely.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us.

Re: Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

AeroZ — Wed, 19 May 2021 14:06:44 GMT

Tried it as well:

14:04:32.083 I [/f:300 ] Opening sink for playback. 14:04:32.083 I [/f:301 ] codec: vorbis 14:04:32.083 I [/f:315 ] transition: none 14:04:32.084 I [/f:302 ] bitrate: 320000 bits/s