Upgraded to Premium-not hearing sound quality difference

[eldavoloco]

Hi,

 I upgraded to the Spotify Premium Account in large part for the improved audio quality. When I go to the preferences panel and toggle the "High quality streaming" button on and off, I can't hear any difference at all in the sound quality.

 Should there be an immediate change in the streaming quality, or do I have to wait for a minute or restart the program to effect the change?

 I am listening on a custom built PC, less than one year old, with a nice soundcard, running Windows 7, and listening thru some Sennheiser HD 202 headphones.

Thanks in advance!

Dave

[David]

If you started to play a track in the lower quality, and then toggle the higher quality setting on, it would continue playing the lower quality track - As it would have allocated this version of the track first.

What you could do is delete the files located in the Spotify cache, toggle the High Quality streaming on, and then it should stream the higher quality tracks right away.

You can find out where the cache is located by going to the Preferences menu (Edit > Preferences), and it's under the "Cache" tab.

[B_B_J]

Does that mean that you have to delete your playlists when upgrading to premium in order for the songs to be played with improved sound quality? Or will this happen automatically?

[user-removed]

No need to delete anything. Just clear Spotify's cache.

You can see Cache folder in Edit - Preferences, also enable here High Quality sound. Then just go to this folder, shut off Spotify and just delete the whole folder. Now start Spotify.

[licenced]

Yeah, what the others said. No need to delete playlists, but you do need to delete the currently cache songs as these have been downloaded/sync'd at the old quality setting.

So even if you stream a track, it is cached for a while, depending on your cache size settings in the options - if you play it back again it will be using that version rather than having to re-stream it, even if you have changed the quality setting in between

[asgilbert]

I gotta concur with the OP. I am taking advantage of the 1 month free trial of premium access, but so far I'm not at all impressed with the quality. It doesn't sound anywhere close to 320kbps. I've tried comparing some tracks to local files I have encoded at 320kps, the local ones sound a lot better. Like, significantly better, which isn't good at all because I often have a hard time hearing the difference between even 192kbps and lossless.

I've definitely got the high quality option on in the preferences menu and they aren't cached because I haven't listened to them before through spotify.

So I've concluded that either:

I don't really have access to 320kbps streams.

The files offered aren't really 320kbps

Or, there is something wrong with the way Spotify encodes.

Not trying to cause trouble here, I just want to know where I stand before I pay for a subscription.

[exiledone1]

I just wanted to chime in and say I'm noticing the same thing too. I have a killer sound system hooked up to my Windows PC and have cleared cache and have high quality streaming clicked and I don't hear the difference. Is this a bug or error. I am on free trial but want to join for $10.00 a month, but need to know about the sound issue? Thanks

Josh

[GamerFoeLife]

You guys need to understand that the sound quality also depends on your internet connection. 

[mikeru22]

Noticed this:

https://www.spotify.com/us/help/faq/tech/codec-quality/

"Note: not all tracks are currently available in high bitrate."

-Mike

[Sam]

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@mikeru22 wrote:

Noticed this:

https://www.spotify.com/us/help/faq/tech/codec-quality/

"Note: not all tracks are currently available in high bitrate."

-Mike

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Nearly all our catalogue should be, actually. We're talking an incredibly small percentage that isn't.

[Jude · Accepted solution]

https://www.spotify.com/us/help/faq/tech/codec-quality/

Note: not all tracks are currently available in high bitrate.

I have removed that statement now. The information that I have is this:

1. All existing content is available at high bitrate (It seems like there were a few thousand tracks knocking about that hadn't been converted, but I don't know if these are even in available catalogue).
2. All newly added content is transcoded (from CD quality originals) to all three bitrates and sent to the production servers at the same time. In other words, there is now no risk of high bitrate falling behind.

If you find that what you hear is no improvement, and excluding external sound output issues, or not having high bitrate turned on in Preferences, there are then two possible causes that I can think of:

Music previously cached low bitrate

If you are moving up to Premium, you won't have any offline cache, but your existing streaming cache might be quite large. I can only assume that, when you play those tracks, the cached files continue to be used. It may even be that the cached files are used when you offline sync a playlist including those tracks.

You might think it optimal for the cache to be wiped completely when HB is turned on, or at least all normal bitrate tracks could be removed. Remember that an existing Premium subscriber could decide at a later date to turn on HB. Should this mean that all offline playlists should be resynced ?

Finding out how Spotify actually behaves is on my to do list. In the meantime, if you really want to make sure, delete the cache. The location can be found in Preferences.

Music has been supplied that is lower quality at source

Generally, music is submitted to Spotify in CD quality, losslessly compressed as flac I think. That's fine. However, we now have the input (via aggregators) of over 300,000 labels. I think what may be happening is that some catalogues are simply being "upconverted" from old low bitrate stock from the days when music was sold online like that. Of course, this isn't going to sound good at all, although - ironically - any bitrate inspection you could perform will tell you that it's high bitrate, because it is, and that's why there isn't really any way for aggregators to detect this kind of thing when it is submitted.

Having said that, I cannot see any reputable label doing this, and I don't hear signs of it either. I largely only hear possible signs of this in recordings that are "public domain", and now being repackaged by a number of labels that distribute this kind of content.

[SteveBrammer]

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@Jude wrote:

You might think it optimal for the cache to be wiped completely when HB is turned on, or at least all normal bitrate tracks could be removed. Remember that an existing Premium subscriber could decide at a later date to turn on HB. Should this mean that all offline playlists should be resynced ?

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Clearing out all of the cache might be a bit extreme. Using the old cached versions wouldn't be so much of an issue if the "Undownload" function actually worked as expected and cleared the tracks in the undownloaded playlist from the cache. Then if you changed to extreme quality and re-downloaded the same playlist you could be sure that it was re-downloaded in the quality that you asked for. As it stands right now when you undownload a playlist, all the tracks remain in the cache for an unspecified amount of time (variously described as a few hours or a few days depending on who you ask. ie. nobody in support seems to know for sure). You can witness this by undownloading a playlist and then asking for it to be downloaded again. It comes back magically in just a couple of seconds and transfers hardly any network data. I would much rather that the undownload function did what it said (maybe after a couple of severe warning dialogs so that even morons can understand that they will lose data if they proceed). Also if "Undownload" did what it said, it would also be possible to move down in bitrate quality as well as up.

[despoiler]

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@Jude wrote:

https://www.spotify.com/us/help/faq/tech/codec-quality/

Note: not all tracks are currently available in high bitrate.

1. All newly added content is transcoded (from CD quality originals) to all three bitrates and sent to the production servers at the same time. In other words, there is now no risk of high bitrate falling behind.

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Wait what?  If you are using CD quality you are getting 128kbps.  Transcoding a CD into any higher bitrate will still result in the same quality as the CD.  ie it doesn't make it sound better.  

[SteveBrammer]

@despoiler That's incorrect. The linear PCM audio format on a CD is the equivalent of 1411.2kbps. Look it up.

[despoiler]

Except the quote is "cd quality originals".  The word quality is generally used when you have ripped something down.  If you are using the actual CDs as source you would just say "CD originals".  

[Saaa]

Why isn't this written anywhere?

If you pay for premium you shouldn't need to do anything too get better quality except enabling "high quality streaming".

How many people do you think deleted the cache folder in order to get high quality? Not very many.

So, if you don't delete your whole cache-folder, which in my case is like 15 GB,, you wont get better quality?

That's wrong and deceiving!

[Saaa]

Noone?!

[Saaa]

Please answer! This is important

[Stupify]

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@Saaa wrote:
Why isn't this written anywhere?

If you pay for premium you shouldn't need to do anything too get better quality except enabling "high quality streaming".

How many people do you think deleted the cache folder in order to get high quality? Not very many.

So, if you don't delete your whole cache-folder, which in my case is like 15 GB,, you wont get better quality?

That's wrong and deceiving!

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If you change quality, your cache folder becomes completely useless anyway because the files in it are in lower quality. It's safe to delete the files in it.

The problem here is that Spotify should delete your cache on its own but it doesn't.

[doctacosmos]

I think the biggest problem here is that people don't have the proper equipment to truly get the most out of the upgraded sound.  320Kbps isn't all that high in the first place but if you have a stand alone DAC you will notice a major difference in sound quality between the three different settings.