Poor audio quality on MacBook Pro

[Awara]

Hello, I'm on a 2017 MacBook Pro listening on my spotify desktop app. Settings are set to very high quality sound, but the sound quality is awful compared to listening from my phone. It is noticeably worse -- whether I'm listening through AirPods or the computer speakers. The phone quality is lightyears ahead of the desktop app...

Something must be wrong?

[Awara]

Quick update -- I tried regular 3.5mm apple headphones vs. my airpods, and the sound quality is great. So something is wrong with the AirPods/bluetooth connection but I'm not sure what. Have already tried re-pairing and that didn't help.

[DanifC]

Hi @Awara,

Hope you are doing well. I just addressed this issue in another thread. Try that out and see if it works! If not, we'll go from there. 

-Dani

[Awara]

Tried that -- didn't work =(

[DanifC]

Bummer. That's okay, though! We'll figure it out. Try going to the same sound menu > output, then select internal speakers, and then reselect your airpods. These are the steps outlined for troubleshooting this issue on the Apple website.

Edit: forgot to add that you should quit any apps that might use the Bluetooth mic, and close the sound panel before trying the above steps.

[pablodru · Accepted solution]

I had the same issue, I had to make sure in the Sound Preferences I'm listening from Sound Effects mode, not Input - that fixed it, very weird. 

[heda]

thank you so much, this worked perfectly fine!

[Ayush_71 · Accepted solution]

For anyone still facing this problem try switching the sound > input to your macbook's microphone, this seems to solve the audio quality for me.

[_2-iv6szhcmcr]

That helped (to select another input device just double click on it)

[filipe_figueiredo]

I noticed that my Sony XM3's were activating the microphone when listening to Spotify on my Macbook Pro, and that degraded sound quality. I changed the "Input" to the Macbook's microphone, and that seemed to fix the issue.

Now, this didn't use to be a problem, it only now started, so I hope it is just a glitch/bug of sorts that gets fixed soon, because I rely on my headphone's microphone for meetings and such.

[piranhaparty000]

I'm experiencing the same issue with my Macbook. I did the full re-install of the Spotify app to no avail. Having the same issue on web player as well. 

[alan-parsons]

I'll just add I'm having the same problem, with wired headphones. At first I thought it was some magic in the apple usb-c to 3.5" adapter, but I tried the adapter on the MacBook and it's the same quality as the built in headphone port, both inferior to iPhone. Sound is significantly better on iPhone, deeper bass, crisper details, better overall dynamic range. Using wired headphones. I have steam quality to lossless, normalization off. I just now installed the app on the Mac.

[nethead25]

Also experiencing this. Spotify streaming and download playback set to lossless on a MacBook Pro. Spotify cache cleared. Wired sounds worse than Bluetooth, which is a new one. Using Bose QC Headphones in all cases. 

Spotify Desktop to Wired Bose: Awful, narrow sound stage and low bass
Apple Music to Wired Bose: Same song sounds much better, full bass and soundstage

Spotify Desktop to Bluetooth Bose: Slightly better, still noticeably poor quality

Spotify iPhone to Bluetooth Bose: Sounds spectacular