Spotify's volume doesn't react to external changes (anymore) and this is a grave problem for me

[EcruHazelnutW]

Plan

Premium

Country

Hungary

Device

desktop computer

Operating System

Ubuntu latest LTS, pipewire

My Question or Issue

The latest Spotify update to version 1.2.63.394.g126b0d89 changed how Spotify handles the volume. It no longer updates its internal concept of volume when I change the volume in the system mixer (pavucontrol) or via scripts (the pactl command). I am in in serious need of the volume being able to be controlled from the outside because I have big tinnitus and hyperacusis (oversensitive hearing) and it's important for me to listen to sound all day but the volume needs to be controlled finely and be consistent and easy to set. Clicking on the volume slider unfortunately doesn't do that as it's very coarse and tedious to change the volume this way every 10 minutes. I have separate EQ presets that I can switch to depending on what I am doing (eating, exercising, etc) and corresponding volumes. The sound level in the room can not be greater than a certain level and needs to be very consistent between days since it's a load on my ears, but it also can't be too low because of my health issues. I have everything measured and set with a hand-held decibel meter and it worked very well until now.

Setting the volume externally works but Spotify changes the volume where it thinks it should be when reaching the next track.
As additional information, pausing playback causes Spotify to update the volume (read from the mixer).

I am among the bottom 0,5% or 0,1% unluckiest people I have ever met or heard of in real life and am the lowest still alive.

Please please please make this fix happen. I would be eternally grateful.

Thank you very much.

[EcruHazelnutW]

I suspect this may be the side-effect of a fix to another issue. I think I noticed the audio stream is recreated on the new Spotify version (see above) if pipewire/pulseaudio is restarted (but not Spotify) and I hit play, but on older versions, Spotify wasn't able to do this (it went mute and didn't have a real audio stream anymore).

[Mixel626537]

Now i got the same. Fedora linux.

[EcruHazelnutW]

I still haven't found a workaround despite my best efforts.

Can we add each other on discord? I enabled my DMs.

[EcruHazelnutW]

Unfortunately, Spotify version 1.2.77.358.g4339a634 (latest at the time of writing) displays the same issue. I haven't found a solution yet.

[mastamic]

Spotify in chromium based browsers(firefox has the same issue) works more like on windows. The volume on the webpage is separate from the os app volume. What i suggest for now is you install a chromium based browser with drm support that u don't use for anything else(I use brave), max out the volume on the page and re-calibrate scripts if needed. You can also "install" Spotify as a browser based application by pressing the box in the search bar right of the url. screenshot is an example of brave(can look different on other browsers but position should be the same).

I would also love to see this fixed in the native app. A lot of media played within Firefox has the same behavior as current spotify app (youtube, spotify, plex and probably many more). This probably means it is a shared issue between applications and pipewire so I don't expect this to be resolved any time soon. Hope this helps some people.

[no4b]

This limits you to a lossy 256 kbps stream and resampling everything to 48 kHz. Far from ideal. It's a workaround with a really bad tradeoff.