Songs won't play with sound settings at 384000 Hz

[NoIDontWantto1]

Plan - Premium

United States

Device - Custom PC 

Sound Card - Creative Sound Blaster AE-5

Operating System - Windows 10 (1903)

Issue/bug (?)

More wanted to bring this up as not sure if anyone else has this issue or a work around. I noticed when I did 32bit 384000 Hz audio quality that the spotify application would not play anything. You could select a song and it would look like it was trying to start a song and it wouldnt play and skip to the next song, wait a second like it was trying to play and then skip to the next song, and simply repeat these steps. Lowering audio quality on my sound card to 32bit 192000 Hz resolves the issue. Then increasing back up to 384000 Hz breaks it again so it was repeatable. I'm no audiophile and loweirng to 192000 Hz would be fine a solution but maybe I'm being stubborn as I don't want to do that just for one application. I realize this is probably more a spotify limitation since the max output might be lower like 320000 Hz but would be nice if it was possible to add some logic that could be added to the application to fix this issue.

I noticed and tested all this about a month ago and already uninstall the spotify application so not sure what version this was on. I've just simply just been using the webplayer as an alternative to the desktop application. Just curious if this affected anyone else as a small inconvenience.

[Sebasty · Accepted solution]

Hey @NoIDontWantto1 

It has been confirmed by other users that any sample rate above 192kHz breaks Spotify's audio playback. Here you can see an Issue thread created by a Soundblaster user who can use similar output options, and Spotify's answer to it.

Spotify works with 16/24/32bit and up to 192kHz audio stream. My guess is pretty much all music brought to Spotify is definitely under 192kHz. I'm not sure why higher sample rates break Spotify itself though.

I also read about having huge sample rates, apparently there is no much reason to set your sample rate much higher than 192 (or even less), since ad/da converters already operate at elevated sample rates and almost no-one (in commercial music at least) makes use of making music at such high sample rates. Creating, yes, but it's very likely down to 44.1 or 48 after mastering.
Classical music could be an exception (in some cases), when it comes to recording it.

I also found this Tonestack article that's quite an interesting read. It's about why 16bit 44.1 / 48kHz is more than enough for audio playback.
(...still buying 24bit music, lol)

Have a nice day 🙂

[zuperlemonhazze]

Hi, it's been a while since you pointed out this issue but Spotify's answer to it in the linked thread ("we don't support it so it's a non-issue", okay den) not being very helpful I raise you a solution that I found, maybe It'll help some other users as well.

I run on Windows 10 w/ a ProJect S2 DAC.

After having openend Spotify I start playing a song at a low sample rate (any lower than 192k, eg 88k). While it is playing I go in the sound settings of my DAC through the Windows control panel and change the sampling rate up to 384k. For me, it doesn't crash and I get the expected result but ymmv.

Anyway, I have to do this every time I start Spotify (not a big deal since it's virtually always running on my PC). But more annoying, If I start playing a song towards another device and then I switch back to the PC it crashes and I have to do the 'trick' all over again. It doesn't take time but it's not convenient..

Hope this helps

[Skorrn_]

Hello - Following up later in 2020 here. Still a massive issue that doesn't look like Spotify is going to fix (3 years later and still considered a "non-issue"). I use a Khadas Tone Board DAC and ran into the same problems as apparently everyone else.

[Jeremy]

Hey there folks,

Thank you for your posts and feedback in this thread.

We're always testing things by adding or removing features to make Spotify better overall and constantly aiming to improve our features. We’re sorry that this means you’re not able to use Spotify like you wish to do at the moment.

We suggest that you have a look at this idea. You can leave a +VOTE and Subscribe to the thread for any updates.

Once again - thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. Let us know if we can help with anything else. We're always one reply away.
 

[Skorrn_]

Hi, Jeremy.

While I appreciate you reaching out with an option to upvote an old request for lossless music, I would like to say that this is more of a functional issue for Spotify rather than a feature request. The heart of this issue lies within how Spotify handles devices that can handle higher sampling rates. While I would love lossless audio from Spotify, I originally chose Spotify because of the convenience (family plan), easy-to-use UI, plethora of podcasts, etc. However, I had to cancel services because it just will not work with my setup and it is an absolute pain to have to constantly go into my device settings prior to starting Spotify up. I'm certain I could just automate a workaround that could adjust the settings automatically each time I start up Spotify, but why wouldn't Spotify just fix the issue itself? We're not asking for higher sampling rate here, we're just asking to let us use what we have.

Thanks - hope to hear back from you soon,

Skorrn_

[karandeshmukh]

FiiO K5 Pro user here. It's unbelievable that this issue was diagnosed by NoIDontWantto1 in 2019 and it still hasn't been fixed, in 2021.

I came here from another community post which flagged this issue as "Solved". After reading the aforementioned posts, it could hardly be defined as "Solved". The two solutions that worked for me are:
(1) The one that zuperlemonhazze cited.

(2) Using Spotify's Web Player.

I'd classify both of them as "Hacks" and not actual "Solutions", as Team Spotify dubs it.

Question for Team Spotify: What's taking you this long to fix this issue? I mean it has been 3 years since it was diagnosed, for God's sake!

[Fredipedia]

SoundblasterX G6 user here. Issue is still not fixed. Spotify still won't play at 384kHz except when changing the bitrate during playback.

[tmrxddd]

Issue is still not fixed. Spotify still won't play at 384kHz except when changing the bitrate during playback. #unacceptable #notsolved

[JellyJasper]

Just got my Fiio K3 and spent over an hour trying to find out why won't Spotify work. So yeah 384kHz still not supported. I wonder if they will ever do anything about this issue, especially when or if they ever release the Spotify HiFi...

[Zacharot]

2023 is upon us. Still not fixed. Fiio BTR7, unable to use hardware I paid good money for properly because Spotify chooses to be obstinate. 

Let me reiterate. Your solved solution is incorrect. The problem: Spotify will not play when DAC set to 384khz. That's it. Spotify does not work properly with certain Completely Valid hardware settings. Since I can't change the setting for just Spotify, and Spotify wants to be the contrarian, it's a bug, and it's not fixed. This is not solved. Please escalate. This isn't a feature request, it's a bug report.

It also highlights the absolutely abhorrent way you treat your customers. You should be ashamed.

[izebag]

Yes noticed that today. Used my FiiO K3 on maximum bit and sample rates and spotify app went absolutely n*ts. Interesting tho is that audio playback went on after switching between outputs (laptop speakers) and back to DAC in windows without changing any sample rates (above 192khz). But as soon as you close spotify app or restart computer, issue returns. Found the solution by trying back and forth and 192kHz is indeed the limit.  Now I at least know that nothing is wrong with my hardware. Well, 32bit 192khz should be more than enought for Spotify. At least until they release Hifi.  Thanks for your informative post.

[dduff21]

Another FiiO K5 Pro user here, 12/07/23 Issue still going

[jdbs87]

@Spotify this is still a thing @ 14-08-2023.

Please update your Windows application to handle this properly in-application in stead of breaking with a generic and wrong error message.

[Zygosaur]

2024 and this is still an issue.