Spotify Crackling noise on local files

[TokyoRailgun]

Plan

Premium

Country

UK

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

For about 3 weeks now, anytime i go to play local files. i get horrible cracking from spotify on playback, almost like the sounds been turned up too much. the song plays but there's no point in listening due to it. however its only on my PC because I've used these sames song on my note 9 daily without issue. I've played the files on windows media player and the crackling is not present. I'm assuming an update is what caused the issue. but it's a big problem for me.

[TokyoRailgun]

Alright, end of testing, here is the results:

First, yes it occurs on all my local files, not online streaming tracks.

I got the one FLAC file of certain track, and used foobar2000 to convert them into 5 types of file:

1. MP3, CBR 320kbps ------------ no crackling noise

2. Apple AAC, VBR 320kbps ---- crackling noise

3. Apple AAC, CVBR 512kbps --- crackling noise

4. Apple AAC, CBR 512kbps ----- crackling noise

5. Apple Lossless (ALAC) --------- no crackling noise

After testing I can tell it's the encoder issue of Apple AAC, maybe y'all can just upgrade the aac encoder of windows verison. BTW Android device doesn't have this issue, only desktop verison (both UWP and Win32 application).

[TokyoRailgun]

Hello again,

As i previously(albeit poorly) mentioned it appears to be for songs with more bass or higher noise. So more intense popish/edm, really anything that has bass/instrumentals/vocals above a certain(unknown) threshold seems to have this happen. It's not present on every local file however, it seems to be really specific noises that it tries to amplify almost.  

I did try converting between .m4a/.mp3/acc although it was the same results with the noise. 

[TokyoRailgun]

Thank You. 

Seriously!!!

(i realised i use itunes for converting. wont be doing that again)

[Peachi]

My files are all Nero AAC Q 1.00 VBR  (never had issues playing these on Spotify until recently), so it's not particularly apple. 

I guess I will temporarily covert them to 320 mp3, but this is very annoying. 

Spotify has so many issues these days. It's driving me nuts.

I constantly get the ''cant play current song' every few songs, so, spotify files, not local. But then it does play when you re-hit play.

Searching is agony, and makes it so slow. Sometimes I get a black screen and it takes ages to load. I have top notch computer and reinstalled everything several times. Nothing works.

Spotify step up your game. I'm about to leave after 7 years This has to stop, the issues that have been this past year are ridiculous. Haven't even named them all yet

[Jeremy]

Hey there folks,

Thank you for your replies.

We'll get this reported. In the meantime, we recommend to follow @co-sine instructions and convert the files you have issues with to a different format.

If you have any questions we're always one reply away 🙂

Cheers!

[Mihail]

Hey folks,

Thanks for reporting this issue to us.

We’ve passed your info on to the relevant team, who are currently looking into it.

If you’re experiencing this issue, make sure to click +VOTE and Subscribe to the thread to be notified of any developments.

Could you also make sure to provide us with the following info, if you haven’t already:

• device + OS version
• exact Spotify version

Thanks! We’ll keep you posted and let you know as soon as we have any updates on this.

[M0NIK4]

I had the same issue and I looked into files that have this problem and from what I've seen cracking happens in files that are too loud (audios which loudness exceeds 0 decibels below full scale). I hope it helps. 

[arcticmouse]

This is a game-breaking bad issue and there is no way I will convert all my files to mp3. Would have to seriously consider switching services after many years if they can't figure this out. 

[sleekdigital]

Same problem here. I'm on a Windows 10 PC, Spotify version 1.1.47.684.  Not all local files have the issue, and some are worse than others.  Super disappointing, really hope it can be fixed.  As others have noticed, it seems like AAC encoded files are the ones that suffer.

[SuperPotatoGod]

I just signed up to Spotify for the 3 months free and am having this issue.

This isn't a very good way to convince me to actually start paying for this service.

[LtHardlight]

I am also experiencing this problem. My local .mp3 files playback fine but all of my .m4a files have the crackling audio issue during playback. The same files play fine without any issues through any of the other music players I have installed. This started occurring around a month or so ago.

I'm running Spotify version 1.1.48.625.g1c87c7f7 on a Windows 10 PC with OS version 1909 and build 18363.1256 installed.