I can add that upon investigation it looks like it's something to do with the way the downloaded cache is being delivered and read.
The audio from the PS4 sounds like it's trying to resample 100's of times per second and creating buffer underruns.
I initially thought it might be a corrupted download but deleting the app as others have suggested isn't effective as I don't think it is removing any "cache" per se.
No other apps or games are running on the PS4 and playback issues are experienced when using an iPhone using Spotify Connect and directly with the PS4 interface. All other devices using the same network experience zero playback issues.
Looking closer at the location of the connected Spotify server revealed a consistent 220-240ms duration. All other devices using the same network experience zero playback issues. I blocked that server and restarted the PS4 and checked the connection again. This time the PS4 connected to a different Spotify server at a 10ms destination! The data delivery was completely different bursting to approx. 100KB/s dropping down to as low as 5KB/s. The audio was flawless. Problem solved!
OR, so I thought... within a few minutes the PS4 Spotify app jumped to a new server connecting at 220ms and the stutter/jitter quickly returned.
When looking at the location of the servers the PS4 specifically is choosing to connect to, they are just too far away… aka not even in the same country (Australia -> Sweden)
So... Spotify, please look at your location services and tweak your latency algorithm for connection determination for the Sony App.
I can confirm that all other devices on the network connect to the ‘local’ 10ms Spotify location service based servers and maintain a persistent connection with no issues.
Regards
Jas
*Edit
I have since played with blocking Spotify server ranges to see how the various clients handle the server negotiation process and believe that the song needs to be considered 'present' and available to be sourced from the local location based service server. Songs I had played in my playlists were often being sourced from the local 10ms destination. New songs however that were not considered mainstream and possibly rarely; if at all, played in my local region were being sourced from the US (I am in Western Australia).
What I did notice was the Windows Desktop client handled the latency differently, posting a message in a blue bar "Can't play the current song." with a pause to allow re-buffering. Once the song had played in its entirety there were no future playback issues due to the way the Windows desktop client keeps a cache copy of the song to avoid re-downloading it the next time you want to listen to it... taking into consideration your cache settings.
The iPhone seemed to keep a cache copy also with the song being played a second time not involving a full re-download of the data, although… the iPhone had a 98% hit ratio for playing songs; even never before heard and as obscure as possible, from the local servers using the same network? I’ve seen the “can’t play current song" before but wasn’t able to get it to display.
I suspect the PS4 handles latency poorly and literally tries to play the stream regardless of fragmentation resulting in up to seconds of the stream at times being dumped and re-requested; hence the chronic jitter. Once the song completes on the PS4, it doesn't seem to be kept and the awful jitter will be present the next time you attempt the listen to the track.
Maybe the problem is as I suggested right at the start? The problem with the PlayStation Spotify App may be to do with the cache, lack there-of and buffer handling all thanks to the latency created by the absence of; or selection to play from, a local file repository server crippling it?
Sorry for the long winded post - I hope this helps in some way!
Staff / Moderator/ 2 years ago in Social & Random