Why does the Spotify Client use a worse bitrate than the web player?

[RH47]

Plan

Premium

Country

Czech Republic

Device

PC

Operating System

Debian Sid/Experimental, amd64, PulseAudio, 192kHz/24b

My Question or Issue

Good day,
since the Spotify client for Linux (hereafter SCL) is buggy since the last update, I now listen to Spotify via the web player. Unfortunately, it is not full-featured, for example it does not have a playlist sorting function, but, and this is very strange, it provides better sound quality even though I have SCL set to the highest possible quality.
Analyzing a few recordings, I found that the stream for SCL, although it should be at the highest quality, is noticeably lower quality than the stream for the web player, for example, frequencies above 11 kHz are attenuated, as if the streamed audio for SCL has a noticeably lower bitrate.
I should point out that there is no reason for this on my side, the connection is fast enough (50Mb/s) and very stable, I also have the auto quality option turned off in the settings.

Thanks.

Roman Horník

[Sebasty · Accepted solution]

Hey @RH47 

I have a feeling that audio settings for Linux desktop app version of Spotify do not work right. At least I didn't get them to change when toggling audio settings, mainly the quality. Looking at the log files, it became rather clear that it was always at 320kbps even when the client itself is set to "Low".

I converted one of my own songs to 96kbps to compare, and yes it should've been laced with artifacts, but it wasn't.

Another user has found a way to inforce the highest audio settings in their Spotify app. I'll repeat their findings here:

You'll need to edit the prefs file, which can be found in Spotify folder, and add these lines in it.

audio.play_bitrate_non_metered_migrated=true
audio.sync_bitrate_enumeration=4
audio.play_bitrate_enumeration=4
audio.play_bitrate_non_metered_enumeration=4

This should make Spotify stream at 320kbps.

If you wish to look into Spotify's log output, run this in Terminal:

spotify --log-file=spotify.log --trace-file=spotify.trace

Hope this offers any insight, have a lovely day!