extreme distorded sound via Bluetooth

[acilakaylis]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Xiaomi Note 13 

Operating System

Xiaomi hyper OS Android Version 15AP3A.240905.015.A2

My Question or Issue:

I am using Spotify since 2022 via Spotify App on my mobilphones. I use IT on my current note 13 since may 2024.

I use two different kind of Bluetooth Headphones and a JBL Charge 4 Box nearly every day. But for the last week the sound on all Bluetooth Headphones and on the Bluetooth Box is extreme distorded.

It slows down and speeds up while there is a white noise kind of grizzling sound in a morse code scattato grinding into the music. But only when the screen of my mobil is off and this only the issue with Spotify. On other Apps like Audible or YouTube there is no problem using my Bluetooth devices.

What I have done trying top fix the issue:

I have a stable Internet connection via 5G or W-Lan

I re-installed Spotify.

I changed the battery setting for Spotify to be not be restricted.

I updated my OS/Android Version 

I restarted my mobile.

But the sound is still a mess, when my screen is off.

This is horrible. I can not use Spotify like this. Please help.

[Vasil]

Hey @acilakaylis,

Thanks for reaching out & sorry to see you've been experiencing this issue.

You've covered a lot of bases with your troubleshooting; what I'd normally think in such a situation is that some battery restrictions might be affecting the app but you've tried excluding Spotify already. With this in mind, what I'd suggest is going for a complete clean reinstall of the app as shown here. If the issue persists, I'd take a look at these additional device settings that might be affecting the app 🙂

Hope this helps! Keep us posted 🙌🏼

[ces00]

Plan

Premium

Country

France

Device

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 5G

Operating System

Android 15, Xiaomi HyperOS 2.0.8.0

Spotify Version

9.0.68.632

My Issue

Since around May/June 2025, the Spotify audio stutters heavily when the following conditions are met :

• Using the Android app
• Using a Bluetooth audio device
• Having my phone screen off

The stuttering also sometimes happens when the spotify app is not in the foreground, though it's less aggressive.

The issue doesn't happens when I don't use a bluetooth device

Playing audio from other sources doesn't have any problem, including using the Spotify web player on Firefox on my phone (which isn't a viable option since it keeps asking you to use the apk instead).

The issue happens whether I use wifi, cellular data, or offline mode.

This issue is not caused by my Bluetooth headset since it occurs with every device I was able to test.

Battery optimization are disabled for Spotify

To fix it I tried, without success to :

• Reinstall the app, including cache and android\data wipe
• Restart my phone
• Change the audio playback quality
• Unpair / repair the bluetooth device with/without contact sharing
• Change the bluetooth audio codec, sample, quality ... from android dev options (although I might have missed a working combination since I couldn't test them all)

I decided to use logcat to try guessing what's happening and found that for each stutter there is a similar error :

[WARNING:client_interface_aidl.cc(609)] ReadAudioData: 512/4096 no data 10 ms
btif_a2dp_source.cc:1186 btif_a2dp_source_read_callback: UNDERFLOW: ONLY READ 3584 BYTES OUT OF 4096

For full context I included a full log (for com.android.bluetooth) of me opening the Spotify app, playing a music and turning my screen off : https://pastebin.com/raw/881SJ5gC

I think the issue stared in a previous Spotify version. I'm willing to try old apks to see if the issue was already present in them. The only thing I'd prefer to avoid is a full reset of my phone

[Vasil]

Hey @ces00,

Thank you for the detailed info and for reaching out about this 🙂 You've covered some great troubleshooting so far!

The described behaviour seems like it's related to some battery optimization settings and, although you've mentioned that you've already disabled these for the Spotify app, there are a few more settings which might affect apps on your device. 

The specific settings for Xiaomi phones can be found here.

Hope this helps! Keep us posted on how things go 🙌🏼

[acilakaylis]

Hello! 😞Nothing helps. I tried everything which was suggest es here. It is quite frustrating and infuriating. And it only concernes the Spotify App. When i use Spotify via my browser on my mobile, i have no problem with sound on my bluetooth devices. All of my other Apps I use via Bluetooth on my mobile also work without problems. 

The most infuriating thing is, it worked before, without this mess. 😞 Any other ideas? Will there be an update, that maybe fix this?

[ces00]

Thanks for the quick response. Sadly none of the settings mentionned in the article seemed to help, even after restarting my phone.

[Dessi]

Hey folks,

Thanks for the replies!

@ces00, we've merged your post with this thread, since it's also reporting a similar issue and we wanted to keep everything in one place for better visibility. Hope you don't mind!

Something else worth trying is testing this out with your phone plugged in for charging, as well as checking if you have any 3rd-party-apps installed that could affect the sound, such as a custom equalizer, for example, and disabling those temporarily to see if the issue persists. You might also want to remove any apps connected to Spotify that you don't use from here. @acilakaylis, it'd be great if you could try this as well and let us know how it goes.

Keep us posted.

[Vasil]

Hey again @acilakaylis! 

Sorry to see you're in this situation!

Would you mind sharing with us your Spotify app version please?
We'd also like to ask if you can recall the date this behaviour first began 🙂

Much appreciated! We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[ces00]

I might be speaking too fast but it looks like disabling the Dolby Atmos equalizer (Sound & vibration > Sound effects > Sound effects = Original) fixed the issue mostly. The audio still isn't perfect but it's far less noticeable. Thanks a lot Dessi for the suggestion !