Spotify Xbox One App: SEVERE audio issues

[beggehorn]

I was excited to try out the latest update of the Spotify Xbox One app that now includes Cortana voice support (v 2.21.0) but I was mortified by the quality of the audio that is coming out of this new version.

As of this update, all music is being severely over-compressed/limited, sometimes distorted and overall sounds horrible. I've looked to see if there are any volume normalization "features" that can be disabled (as the desktop version has) but it doesn't look like any such options exist for this version of the app. (Playback quality is another option that is missing and by what I heard, I wouldn't be surprised if a low bit rate was being used based on what I am hearing.)

As another troubleshooting step, I tried adjusting the game/music balance controls for Spotify in the Xbox menu and while setting the slider to favor "game" ("music" set to around 40%) offers slight relief from the worst artifacts, it is nowhere near acceptable.

The prior version of the app, while missing the new features did not have this devastating effect on the music being played.

I'm sure that many people such as myself are using their Xbox as a primary home media playback device connected to a quality sound system. The audio experience of this "update" is simply unsatisfactory. Please fix!!

[user-removed]

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@beggehorn wrote:

I was excited to try out the latest update of the Spotify Xbox One app that now includes Cortana voice support (v 2.21.0) but I was mortified by the quality of the audio that is coming out of this new version.

As of this update, all music is being severely over-compressed/limited, sometimes distorted and overall sounds horrible. I've looked to see if there are any volume normalization "features" that can be disabled (as the desktop version has) but it doesn't look like any such options exist for this version of the app. (Playback quality is another option that is missing and by what I heard, I wouldn't be surprised if a low bit rate was being used based on what I am hearing.)

As another troubleshooting step, I tried adjusting the game/music balance controls for Spotify in the Xbox menu and while setting the slider to favor "game" ("music" set to around 40%) offers slight relief from the worst artifacts, it is nowhere near acceptable.

The prior version of the app, while missing the new features did not have this devastating effect on the music being played.

I'm sure that many people such as myself are using their Xbox as a primary home media playback device connected to a quality sound system. The audio experience of this "update" is simply unsatisfactory. Please fix!!

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I'm having the same issue I have a pair of Astro a50s, when I have the simulated surround sound button turned on Dolby digital sound I would get the distortion. So I would turn the the music slider down to 35% (40% did not work for me) to get rid of the distortion but, then I got frustrated having my music low so I decided to turn off the surround effect and go back to stereo sound and keep the volume at 100% which worked fine for two months but now the stereo sound is having a distortion as well so now I am completely frustrated. Spotify please fix this.

[user-removed]

I found the solution 😁. When using Spotify on the Xbox switch over to spotify on your phone and make sure your Spotify from phone is connected to the Xbox, next turn down the volume on the phone Spotify towards the left even past the half way point (your set up may differ from mines so you may not need to turn volume down so much via moving to the left). By doing so you can get  rid of the distortion in the music on Spotify Xbox when you have the music & game volume both at 100%. I hope this helps you😎.