Sound is different when app is focused (Windows)

[jackkutilek]

This started a week or so ago. When Spotify is the active window, the sound is a bit more muted, like the treble is balanced lower or something. Then when I switch to another application, the sound will change to be less muted. I'm not sure which way sounds better exactly, but it is weird to me that it changes at all. I can't find any mention of behavior like this anywhere, so not sure what is happening. Any help is appreciated.

[thjorth74]

I don't have any solutions. I do have a bit more info:

Whenever Spotify is focused the sounds become more "scooped" where some of the mids are removed - like when applying the classic smiley face curve EQ. 

Funny thing is it happens no matter if Spotify is playing or not. If I am playing something off youtube in my browser and I focus Spotify (that is not playing), the sound changes until I change focus away from Spotify again.

I am on Windows 10 as well.

[sofajazz]

I had the same problem and realized I got the same behavior when switching between the "Recording" and the "Playback" tab in the windows "Sound" settings.

After turning off "Dolby Audio" in the settings of my primary output it was gone

Hope that helps

[jackkutilek]

interesting...I have changed my audio setup and am no longer experiencing the issue, but your suggestion sounds promising.

[kikinnaz]

Your suggestion works of course, but only because you disable the whole dolby software. 

So I decided to have a look at the dolby audio app and what it did was that when the Spotify window was focused, it showed "music" tab and when I clicked out of Spotify window, Dolby audio app showed "personalised". 

Funny enough, when I clicked from "personalised" to "music", it stayed on the "music" tab, no matter which window was focused and the sound stayed always the same. It seems as if the dolby audio had some, ehm, smart way to detect what type of program is focused and when it is audio/video software, it switches to different settings automatically.

[ericamitchelll]

sofajazz  this fixed it thank you so much!!!!!!!!