Bitrate 160kpbs even with High Quality setting

[MDL78]

Plan

Premium Family

Country

Italy

Device

HP laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

Running Spotify Win 10 app from CMD, and using the --show-console switch, I can see in the log that the quality is 160kbps, despite the Streaming Quality is set to "Very High" (so should be 320kbps) in the preferences, and Volume normalization is turned off. Tried with many different songs.

Also would like to know if there is a full list of command-line switches available for Spotify.exe, as I could not find any.

Thanks a lot!

--- See log excerpt below:

Opening driver (182EB540)
22:40:59.886 I [/f:743 ] sample rate: 44100 Hz
22:40:59.886 I [/f:744 ] channels: 2
22:40:59.887 I [/f:745 ] sample format: 32-bit-float-pcm
22:40:59.887 I [/f:746 ] stream type: default
22:40:59.887 I [/f:747 ] audio content type: music
22:40:59.888 I [/f:748 ] paused: false
22:40:59.888 I [/f:281 ] Opening sink for playback.
22:40:59.888 I [/f:282 ] codec: vorbis
22:40:59.888 I [/f:283 ] bitrate: 160000 bits/s
22:40:59.889 I [/f:284 ] sample rate: 44100 Hz
22:40:59.889 I [/f:285 ] channels: 2
22:40:59.889 I [/f:286 ] sample format: 32-bit-float-pcm
22:40:59.889 I [/f:289 ] duration: 408480 ms

[CarlosE]

Hi there @MDL78,

Thanks for reaching out about this and welcome to the Community.

Could you send us a screen recording while using the app where we can see the script you mentioned in real time? This would help us have a better understanding of what's going on.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

[MDL78]

Thanks Carlos,

short video rec in attachment. You will see:

- running spotify with console option from command line

- short playback

- going back to DOS window, the log and highlighted the part saying it's at 160kbps.

Thanks,

Marco

[MDL78]

Also I guess it might be handy for you to have the log, I'm attaching it here.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @MDL78,

Thank you for your reply and for the screen recording.

Can you perform a clean reinstall of the app? This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

Another useful step to do is to remove any hosts files. You can do that by following these steps:

1. Open Notepad as an administrator (right-click - Open as Administrator)
2. go to File - Open and navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
3. Choose "All Files" instead of "Text Documents" next to the File Name box. You'll see a handful of files. Pick hosts and click on Open
4. When the file is open, you will see a block of text with # in front of each line and might see entries like 0.0.0.0 website.com127.0.0.1 website2.com
5. Check for any entries with Spotify in the address. Examples may look like: 0.0.0.0 weblb-wg.gslb.spotify.com0.0.0.0
6. If you do find any lines with Spotify, please remove them
7. Save your changes and restart Spotify

Let us know how everything goes.

Take care 🙂

[MDL78]

Thanks a lot Jeremy, I tried both your suggestions unfortunately with no luck.

(Btw hosts file had no entry at all, except localhost).

Any other idea?

thanks,

Marco

[Jeremy]

Hi again @MDL78,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

Can you log in with another account - such as a friend's or a family member's to see if the issue persist? This will help us understand if it's account related or not.

Keep us posted 🙂

Take care!

[MDL78]

Thanks again Jeremy, unfortunately still same issue.

Sorry it took a bit because I did not want to use a login from one of my family account (in my mind this was not a fully reliable test), but instead I asked to a friend that has a totally unrelated account.

You can see result in the log I am attaching.

Btw let me mention something I did not write so far: normally I play either on PC (like the tests I'm doing here) or on a connected device (Marantz NR1504). Not sure if this can somehow influence the bitrate honestly - I guess it should not.

Thanks,

Marco

[Ver]

Hey @MDL78,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop 🙂

We've passed the info on to our tech teams. We'll let you know as soon as we have any updates on this.

We'll be right here if you have any questions.
 

[Ver]

Hey @MDL78

We are back with some news.

We'll need a screenshot of the audio settings in the app. Once we have it, we'll pass it on to our teams as well so the folks there can investigate this further.

Keep us in the loop. If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[MDL78]

Thanks a lot Ver, here you go.

Quality setting is Very high, that should be 320kbps.

Thanks,

Marco

[Ivan]

Hey @MDL78, 

Thanks for providing us with the requested details. 

We've forwarded your info to the right team and we'll get back to you here once they let us know how to proceed. 

Stay tuned! 

[MDL78]

Hi Ivan,

while we wait for the main question to be addressed, can you please share the answer to my second one - can you share the full list of command-line switches/parameters?

thanks a lot,

Marco 

[Novy]

Hey there @MDL78, 

Thanks for your patience and for trying everything we've suggested. 

We've taken a deeper look at this and seems like the issue is most likely isolated to your specific device or setup. However, we're unable to share any list of command-line switches/parameters from our end. 

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and will make sure to pass it on to the right folks.

Apologies for the inconvenience. Don't hesitate to let us know if anything else comes up. 

Cheers.

[MDL78]

Thanks Novy.

I'm sorry I'm not understanding precisely what would be the issue here, can you expand on why my setup would cause the bug? It's a plain HP laptop with Windows 10, up to date. I guess the bitrate for playback should not be depending on the device, especially when you force it by selecting a precise value in the config page.

Thanks,

Marco

[Ver]

Hey @MDL78,

Thanks for getting back to us 🙂

This could happen due to running it in a console state, in an emulated or VM environment or due to the audio driver. It seems like Spotify cannot detect the capacity of the device to play at 320kbps.

We tried on our end and it correctly played at the 320kbps quality.

 

We apologize that we're not able to identify the cause remotely.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us.
 

[AeroZ]

Tried it as well:

14:04:32.083 I [/f:300                          ] Opening sink for playback.
14:04:32.083 I [/f:301                          ]     codec: vorbis
14:04:32.083 I [/f:315                          ]         transition: none
14:04:32.084 I [/f:302                          ]     bitrate: 320000 bits/s