The only problem is the lousy sound quality

[mintymiller]

Don't get me wrong, I really like Spotify. Good choice of material and generally good service; but to be honest, the only reason I bought into the Premium service is to ensure that I can listen offline and stream music through my Apple TV. To my 'audiophile' ears, there is no difference in sound quality between the two paid subscription models and therefore nothing to separate the 160 from the 320kbps stream rates.  I have a top grade bespoke system that lets me stream the Apple TV output into a DAC and then onwards to a decent Linn/Avreavox/Mission system. Compared with even standard Apple AAC 128kbps, the Spotify streams sound dull and compressed. The main problem is lack of dynamic range and musicality that Spotify streams seem to strip out! I'm sure it's not the Ogg Vorbis encoding that's the problem as I have used that with far better results. And it's not just me! I have yet to find anyone who I sit down in front of my system who cannot immediately identify a Spotify stream from an identical CD rip (at 160kbps). Both go through the same DAC, both use the same (or a very similar) Ogg Vorbis encoder and both are easily distinguishable to even the untrained ear. So what's Spotify doing wrong? Probably nothing that matters to most people but I find myself only listening to the service when I want to hear something new, not as an alternative to my existing music collection.  For what it's worth, I don't think the 160/320 difference is detectable because they don't reflect a real difference in the compression used at both stream rates. The original source is probably over compressed anyway and no amount of transcoding at different bit rates will make any difference to that. As Linn used to say, 'garbage in means garbage out' and to my ears, that's definitely the problem with Spotify streams. So OK for occasional listening but unless you need the offline capability and Apple TV compatibility,  don't pay the premium sub.

[David]

Hello,

I'm a little confused here. Was this supposed to be placed in the iOS section? Or are you using a Mac here?

[mintymiller]

iOS. I'm using my iPad to control Spotify streaming through my Apple TV connected to a Cambridge DAC.

[David]

Righto - Could I ask you to try something at all? It's possible that the track you streamed at High Quality (q5) may have cached to your device at that quality. So, if you were to change the quality to Extreme (q9), it might still have played the other version.

I would recommend trying a clean installation, and automatically setting both your sync and stream settings to Extreme. This will ensure that you are playing the highest quality right away.