Sound is clipping / distorted (Marina and the diamonds)

[flemmingdjensen]

Hi All,

Just bought Spotify Premium to try out the better quality to get from spotify by subscribing.

By listening to "Marina and the Diamonds" i hear several numbers where the Bass tracks are clipping, distorted.

Listen fx to this number : "Walley of the dolls" approx 47 seconds into the song....

Has several tracks been sampled in overloaded - distorted???

BR Flemming

[Taylor]

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@flemmingdjensen wrote:

Hi All,

Just bought Spotify Premium to try out the better quality to get from spotify by subscribing.

By listening to "Marina and the Diamonds" i hear several numbers where the Bass tracks are clipping, distorted.

Listen fx to this number : "Walley of the dolls" approx 47 seconds into the song....

Has several tracks been sampled in overloaded - distorted???

BR Flemming

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Hi, and welcome to the Spotify community!

Have you tried a clean reinstall of Spotify?

What sound range does your headset/speaker have? It would cause issues if the range on them is less than the range that Spotify sends.

Does the same thing happen on the Default Quality?

Anthony 🙂

[David]

Hello.

Just to add a little more to this -

When you subscribe to the Premium service, on order to get the highest quality audio, you'd need to turn on "High Quality Streaming" in your Preferences menu, under the Playback tab.

You might also want to try turning off "Set the same volume for all tracks" and "Enable Hardware Acceleration".

If it still sounds a little odd, please right click on the track and select "Copy HTTP Link" and pop it below - We'll take a listen.

[flemmingdjensen]

The http link for the song is:

I have turned on High Quality mode and listening through nice a nice JBL headset.

I will test the sound quality later on a bigger stereo 🙂

/Flemming

[David]

Hey!

Okay, just listened. It sounds just fine to me! What device are you listening on? Your computer, or a mobile device?

[Taylor]

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@David wrote:
Hey!

Okay, just listened. It sounds just fine to me! What device are you listening on? Your computer, or a mobile device?

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Agreed. Sounds fine on my Computer (Sony VAIO Z), and just tried it on my phone, works fine on that too (iPhone 5).

BR Flemming: Is your computer running slowly? As I had an issue a while back when I had a much slower computer of the songs playing in a distorted way.

Anthony 🙂

[flemmingdjensen]

Hmmm very strange indeed.

Just tried a different headset on both my Laptop (Lenovo T530 Win7 x32) and my Samsung galaxy S III phone.

In my ears I hear distortion / clipping in the bass drum combined with the bass track. (And also in my colleges ears :))

Hmm - maybe its just me.

BR

[David]

Just listened again through some different headphones. I can't hear anything out of place - bass drum certainly sounds like it's been played around with but that would have probably been the producers choice. There's a number of other versions of the same album on Spotify, and that track seems to be very similar on all of them. 

Does everything else sound fine? 

[Niljam]

It's not just you. It's definitely distorted in the bass. Could be a case of poor mastering, but I doubt it.

However I tried the same song at iTunes, and it also sounded distorted there, at all levels of listening. Would be interesting to get the CD, for reference. 

Many other commercial tracks on Spotify (and iTunes) sound distorted too. 

/ Niljam, mastering engineer.

Apogee audio interface, Dynaudio monitors, AKG headphones

[Peter__]

Hey! 🙂

If you like, you can report any content errors/issues such as these directly to the Spotify content team using the instructions outlined in this topic. Once you have submitted a query, the content team will investigate and then pass any needed details over to the record label to request a correction/change if needed (so it can take some time unfortunately!).

Peter

[webst]

Daughter - Youth has enormous clipping in louder parts. You (Spotify) should replaygain everything in your database and implement replaygain support in your clients. I don't know the reasons behind that but every CD I rip since I remember was clipping and needed to be replaygained. There are some digital implementations of volume control that seems to alter waveform directly thus removing overdrive effect. Proper way to check it is make your software (i.e. spotify) to loudest level, make your system to the loudest level and use your amplifier to set proper output gain. You'll hear clipping and that is not high quality audio.

[Peter__]

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@webst wrote:

Daughter - Youth has enormous clipping in louder parts. You (Spotify) should replaygain everything in your database and implement replaygain support in your clients. I don't know the reasons behind that but every CD I rip since I remember was clipping and needed to be replaygained. There are some digital implementations of volume control that seems to alter waveform directly thus removing overdrive effect. Proper way to check it is make your software (i.e. spotify) to loudest level, make your system to the loudest level and use your amplifier to set proper output gain. You'll hear clipping and that is not high quality audio.

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It would definitely have to be client side (Feature Request Topic) since Spotify don't (and aren't allowed to) edit any of the content they get from the record labels. In that sense, content Spotify provide to us "as is" they get it from the labels, hency why any requests for broken tracks to be fixed need to go labels. 

Peter

[nickrock12]

Hi , I confirm the issue.
the sound have distortion in it just listen carefully, This occurs in my beyerdynamic  DT770 pro headphone, Adam x7 monitor.

With external audio interface (line6 ux8)

[Bon-Bon]

I am a premium customer with the sound quality set to extreme. I am running a DAC which is connected to my PC with 192k 24 bit sampling, the DAC is connected to the power amp using XLR cables. I have spent over £8000 on my sound system, use B&W speakers, the best cables you can get etc. I'm a software developer with a super fast PC and know there are no software or hardware issues, yet when I listen to tracks like the following:

The sound is distorted, this isn't a case of clipping as I can monitor the sound waves.

I hooked up my PC to an average household hifi and the sound quality drops to the point that you can't hear the crackling caused by the distortion so I think it is only us stereophiles who are suffering from this issue.

[parker_ackley]

I have had the same problem with Teacher Teacher by Rockpile, except the entire song is severely clipped. There is only one file available on Spotify of this song. 

It makes sense that the label supplies Spotify (and other streaming services) with less than ideal audio quality. That way they can sell physical CDs or other "Premium" quality audio files at a higher price if one wants truely high quality. Clipping a digital file is an easy degradation for them to do for the 'standard' product supplied to streaming services.

Spotify should insist, by contract with the label, that musical content be supplied without clipping. "Clipping" should be defined by some verifiable standard such as "no more than 5 sample bits in a row at the same level, within 1 dB of the maximum level for the file".

[webst]

Your claims have a little too much of conspiracy theory feeling to it. I think that it's loudness war going on and this is just collateral damage. Nevertheless problem lies in crossing digital zero during digital to analog conversion and is, by my ear, properly eliminated in any modern Spotify client. Just lower your Spotify volume to acceptable level and clipping disappears (80% seems to be good choice).

[1169773803]

I am currently listening to:  and it has an awful raw edge to the sound. I say compression distortion, but on a level that it can hardly come from the master media. It is more like some radio stations or commercial jingles. It seems related to bass heavy parts where treble information is really bad.

Also the album:  sounds awful.

I tried to remove and download the content anew, and sometimes the distortion goes up or down.

But the problem is so large that it reduces a lot of the joy to listen to Spotify.

I have used different devices (phone, computers), audio systems (headphones, high resolution hifi-system) and transport (DAC, Bluetooth).

I am a Premium user and always have highest possible bit rate.

It is not acceptable to be forced to listen to really low volume to be able to endure the poor sound quality!

I do not recognize this level of distortion from before, and I have had Spotify for several years.

Kenneth Jonsson

[Niljam]

Yes, the distorsion on the Titiyo album is awful.

You don't have to be a sound engineer to notice it. My kids do.

Ironically, the chorus of the second song "Taxi" says: "Could you please turn up the volume?"

But still, I just can't believe it was released that way from the mastering studio. 

Something must have gone very wrong in the file conversion at some point. Glad I'm not involved in this. . . 

[kennethjonsson]

Indeed, the artist must find it disappointing to have their music delivered like this. Compare this: where a less intense music is delivered with high precision and no traces of clipping.

[webst]

Nicole Sabouné - Right Track is only to be found on spotify and I cannot hear much difference between low volume setting on spotify and maximum. I am comparing the same overall sound level by adjusting amplifier output. Even not being able to compare it with other source I'm pretty sure that this is either made by purpose or by poor limiter use during mastering. I cannot access Titiyo track in Poland.

I checked Titiyo's album teaser on youtube and it's distorted as expected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBYFjIDB5hQ

I'm pretty sure it's just another badly mastered production.