topic Re: Sound keeps briefly dropping out in Android

Sound keeps briefly dropping out

MarkusLaker — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 18:08:30 GMT

Plan: Premium Duo

Country: UK

OS: Android 16

Device: Google Pixel Tablet

I'm trying to use Max Richter's "Sleep" album as a sleep aid, but the sound keeps glitching and it has the opposite effect. There are two problems:

Gapless playback doesn't always work, and the audio sometimes cuts out momentarily between tracks
More seriously, the audio sometimes cuts out for about 300ms in the middle of a track

Things I've tried, none of which has worked:

Clean reinstall
Download the music to avoid connectivity problems
Disable Wi-Fi to reduce background work done by the tablet
Listen on battery power or mains power
Turn the screen on or off
Check that EQ is disabled in case CPU is overloaded
Drop sound quality from Very High to Normal (then clear saved data and download again) to reduce system demands
Disable volume normalisation, likewise
Allow battery background usage in Android system settings
Disable data-saver
Check (by replaying sections) that glitches are not on the original recording
Check that other apps (e.g. YouTube in Firefox) can produce sound without glitching, so the problem is specific to Spotify
Try listening via the Spotify Web site in Firefox. Guess what: that glitches worse than the app.

I've given this a good shot. I'm out of ideas. What's the answer?

Re: Sound keeps briefly dropping out

MarkusLaker — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 21:12:16 GMT

I tried four more things that didn't work:

I uninstalled the Wavelet app in case it was adding latency or CPU load.
I disabled spatial stereo, likewise.
In Android's developer settings, I disabled child process restrictions. (When this didn't help, I changed the setting back.)
I rebooted the tablet.

I should say explicitly that I'm using the tablet's built-in speakers rather than a connected device.

I listened to the same music using the Linux desktop app and a pair of headphones, and it was flawless. Kudos to Spotify for supporting Linux! Unfortunately, my PC is on the wrong floor to serve as a sleep aid and it has no speakers.

Re: Sound keeps briefly dropping out

MihailY — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 10:15:03 GMT

Hey @MarkusLaker,

Thanks for reaching out and kudos for the troubleshooting you've already done.

To investigate this further, can you check if you get the issue with any other album from the catalogue or when you add this specific one to a playlist? Also, is it possible to log into a different account on the tablet and test again?

This will help us determine if it's an account-, device- or content-related issue.

Keep us posted.

Re: Sound keeps briefly dropping out

MarkusLaker — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 13:12:36 GMT

Thanks, Mihali. I appreciate your coming back to me.

I played Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here on the tablet, and it glitched in under three minutes.

Next, I created a new "Test" playlist and added the Richter music to it. I then played the playlist. It glitched within five minutes.

I tried to create a throwaway Spotify account using a spare email address, but challenge.spotify.com kept saying "Something went wrong, try again later," so I wasn't able to get any further with that. Is it likely that signing on under a different ID would solve an audio glitch?

Thanks again.

Re: Sound keeps briefly dropping out

MihailY — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 14:43:32 GMT

Hey @MarkusLaker,

Thanks for your reply.

If there's no easy way to check with a different account, we can skip that step since it's indeed unlikely that this is the cause of the issue.

Since you've already exhausted all relevant troubleshooting, I'll go ahead and note your report, however, I can't give an ETA on when it will be addressed. In the meantime, just make sure to keep your app up to date.

We're here if there's anything else.

Cheers,