Suddenly have poor audio quality on Spotify Desktop

[HorseOnVenus]

Plan

Premium

Country

Netherlands

Device

HP Pavilion G6 (Purchased in 2012; HDD replaced with SSD a few years back)

Intel(R) Core(TM) **bleep** GHz

6.00 GB RAM

Operating System

Windows 10 Home

My Question or Issue

Spotify Desktop has suddenly started working really bad for me: the sound quality was appalling. When I play it from my phone, there are no problems so it's definitely not my speaker that is broken. When I play music from YouTube on my desktop with the same speaker, there is no problem either. I've tried selecting audio quality to be 'high' or 'very high' in the settings, uninstalling and reinstalling Spotify; opening and closing it; rebooting my computer. Nothing has worked so far. 

[GuillaumeC1]

Same issue

[Yordan]

Hi @GuillaumeC1,

Could you confirm that you've tried all of the aforementioned troubleshooting steps in the thread?

You can try navigating to C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Users\ where you'll find a folder with your Spotify username. Open it, find a file called prefs, open it with Notepad and edit the following lines:

• audio.play_bitrate_non_metered_enumeration - Set the value to 4.
• audio.play_bitrate_non_metered_migrated - Set the value to true.
• audio.play_bitrate_enumeration - Set the value to 4.
• audio.sync_bitrate_enumeration - Set the value to 4.

Once this is done save your changes and restart the app.

It's also worth restarting your PC in Safe Mode with Networking and playing something on Spotify to check if the issue would persist there.

Let us know how it goes. Cheers!

[N-san]

I had the same issue. The problem was fixed after disabling exclusivity on sound output main source.

[synthvibe]

I had the same problem with Spotify on my Windows PC and my headphones (Apple's AirPods Max). I thought of giving up after reading this thread, but then i discovered that for some reason the output device has been set to AirPods Max hand-free, instead of AirPods Max stereo. Not sure what happened there, but after changing to right output device quality was back to perfect.

[SlapStick]

I do have exact same issue, tried multiple things but nothing seems to work.

Looks like issue with compression, although quality is at very high.

Got a USB dongle that connect to my Jabra headset, Apple music plays simply fine.

Spotify web and Windows app are both really bad quality

Youtube also fine

[SlapStick]

NVM found the issue, seems that another application was using the microphone or some process.

After killed that proces, it all sounds good again 😉

[rodentology]

How did you find out that was happening? I have the same issue with audio compression

[justheretohelp]

I had the same issue and this solved it for me. Just to be clear, this was not a setting in spotify but in the output in windows. Where I see the sound output it said handsfree instead of headphones and where I see my bluetooth units it should say connected mic, audio but it said only connected mic. I pressed disconnect and then connect, in the bluetooth settings in windows and then it was back to normal.

[Sebastienbo]

For me it was a bad usb connection, i had to pull out my usb speakers and put them back in, and all was fixed.

Maybe some driver update that went bad after my windows update (it started after my windows update), by replugging it, it seems to got fixed

[wtrvr]

same problem here on a mac 😞

[Sutti70]

I had the same problem on an mac.
I was able to solve it by switching off the equalizer.

[rudolmi]

I've had the same issue with connected headphones. It was not in spotify app but rather me using headphones as 'headset' output device. Once I switched it to 'headphones' the sound quality improved dramatically. 
Hope this helps someone. 🙂

[#14]

i have my headphones bluetooth connected and the music goes in and out and cant ere the lyrics it sounds like my headphones have water in them when they don't and the bass is louder then the music and lyrics

[cardinaluk]

Same with me. It DOES sound like a compression issue. I have poor audio on Spotify Windows app from the Store and also Spotify web app. I would think this is an issue with Spotify's service?
YouTube and all other audio is completely fine.

[cardinaluk]

Anyone with a fix that works?

[cardinaluk]

Plan

Premium

Country

UK

Device

Desktop PC with 5.1 wired speakers 3.5" into Creative Labs Strix

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

I have poor audio on Spotify Windows app from the Store and also Spotify web app. It sounds over compressed. Have tried deleting config folders, changing playback, uninstalling and reinstalling from Windows Store. Nothing works.
It only started happening today (22/11/2024)
YouTube and all other audio is completely fine.
Need help.

[TheBR]

I have the same issue on a mac and i have a fix that works here, this is in the app by the way.

I use the song "Chicane - Prologue" for reference, timestamp 1:27 to 1:35

If i have Normalise Volume OFF, or, ON and NORMAL i hear the distortion.

If i set Normalise Volume to ON and Quiet OR Loud the distortion is gone.

However Loud or Quiet dont sound right either to my ears - there's no distortion which is better but there is a kind of flatness or muffled aspect to the sound.

[MihailY]

Hey @cardinaluk and @TheBR,

Thanks for reaching out.

We've tested this on our end, however, we couldn't reproduce the issue. Have you tried any of the troubleshooting steps mentioned in this thread? Also, does this happen with different speakers/headphones?

@cardinaluk, can you send us a few examples of tracks where you've noticed the poor audio quality?

Keep us posted.

[TheBR]

Hi @MihailY,

  I've tried via USB connected speakers, bluetooth headphones and internal speakers and all of them have the same issue.

However, i have found the root cause i think, througout I had the equalizer set to the default "Dance" profile and THAT is the cause here.

If i set it back to "Flat" everything is fine at any setting for Normalization etc and the music plays without distortion.

However if set to Dance or Deep for example it distorts, however it does not on Electronic or Hip Hop as an example so something is weird with certain equalizer presets.

I also did this AFTER going to Troubleshooting - Rest app data and restart as i couldnt find the perfs file mentioned above on my mac.

[Yordan]

Thanks for the feedback @TheBR 👍 @cardinaluk, were you also using the same presets in the app? If possible, a short screen recording with audio which captures how things sound on your end would be greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, I'd recommend using one of the other presets that don't exhibit this behavior or creating your own by adjusting the sliders to your preference.

The Community is here if something else comes up.