I tried to vote but it doesn’t register when I click it. Tried two different browsers. Oh well, it probably would never happen anyway as many people have stated.
You have to sign in to do it.
Spotify sounds terrible period. If I am sitting in front of a decent music system, Spotify’s just not even listenable. Especially after having my own files or Tidal playing. It might be fine for background music in a whole home system, but as the main focus, just yucK.
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I agree. I also use Roon as my “whole home system” so being able to tap into Spotify’s playlists for “background music” would actually be very useful to me.
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I did. Not sure what the problem was. Just tried it again and it worked this time!
Lol, very true! Spotify will inevitably be lossless though, so early support now means support for when it’s lossless (and annihilates tidal). Not that i believe there’s a greater chance of this than seeing a purple unicorn riding a winged boar.
Even now, it depends on the music. Some of the worst sounding tracks that sounds like 96kbps mp3s on Apple i tried in Spotify only to find it’s just as bad. Then i discovered the same track is on Tidal, shows as 44.1 flac, and still sounds like metallic rain. Darned labels passing off upscaled lossy again…
Spotify does have particularly awful sq though. It’s actually ok running from a pc in native software to a usb dac, but any of their Spotify connect and hardware integrations don’t use 320vorbis, it uses separate aac256, but unlike Apple, it’s been rumored they just transcode 320vorbis to aac256…i believe the rumor because Spotify connect sounds a special kind of awful. Lots of lossy even in the high end setup still sounds great. Spotify sounds like 2002.
How do you know for sure? Or are you guessing?
Just one example, Spotify Connect on the Bluesound Node 2 and 2i indeed uses 320 kbps Ogg/Vorbis. Confirmed by Bluesound and even Spotify on their forum…
Spotify Connect on Chromecast Audio uses 256 kbps AAC but it’s not entire clear if with 320k Ogg/Vorbis is being converted to 256k AAC, so I’m not sure if you can say for sure…
It may be being converted from FLAC/WAV…
From the Spotify website (easy to find this stuff…):
How does it seem clear that their radio is broken?
You may have bad experiences with Spotify Radio mode (like I have with Roon Radio) but I don’t see how it makes sense to generalise and claim it is broken… unless you meant just for you?
Personally, I’d never say Roon Radio is broken in the general sense, because I know people that are personally enjoying it everyday, even if I haven’t had the best experience myself… so I’d just limit my comments to my own experience… as an observation.
I would guess there would probably be millions of people that are very happy with Spotify Radio (over 200 million people using Spotify globally, combined free and paid…) - I think it’s the best radio mode experience to be honest… but that’s subjective of course.
I’m assuming you are saying that if Roon and Spotify were integrated that Roon’s Radio function would be able to pull from Spotify’s database. My opinion is this will never happen. Spotify only supports Spotify Connect which streams from their app to compatible endpoints. No database dump to Roon to merge into the Roon master database which drives Roon Radio.
Seems like Danny just answered this.
Again, something that won’t happen in my opinion. No deep database integration would mean the end of much of Roon’s functionality.
Tim
Spotifys own website states connect uses 256aac. If bluesound is different that’s unique and not listed on their faq, or at least not when i checked a month or two ago. Chromecast and sonos outputs i can confirm are 256aac. As for transcoding, as i said, it’s a rumour, but one i believe because simple a/b Spotify Android usb out (which includes 48khz resample, OS native) sounds dramatically superior to Sonos and Chromecast out. Sq is decent usb out. Pretty trashy Sonos or Chromecast out. Then i compared to Apples Music 256aac… Which sounds the same (more or less, different mastering) as Spotify Android at 320 vorbis. Basically Apple aac256 sounds par with Spotify 320 vorbis. (Both Android and pc, but pc isn’t fair since it’s a much better xmos usb bridge to my system) Spotify 256aac from Sonos or cast sounds very noticeably worse, including worse than Apple 256aac native Sonos. Whatever they’re doing with this aac encoding, they’re no doing it well… That all becomes mute if they go lossless eventually though.
As for radio, i can’t find any example of their radio that doesn’t just pull a few albums at a time and cycle through most tracks on them before choosing a new batch. It’s not “broken” but it’s more of an infinite reloading 8 disc carousel more than a radio. A hate 8 disc carousels. It’s a shame, it finds good stuff in between, but doesn’t keep a flow going. I renewed again based on your strong recommendation the other day… And even found albums from some artists that were more complete discographies than Apple has. I was going to keep both. But that radio … Oh my it’s so painful. Daily mixes are good, but the radio… I found quite a few threads on their forums about it too. Google “why is spotifys radio” and the autocomplete adds “so bad” :). Most forum recommendations are “radio is the wrong way to use Spotify”
It finds stuff, probably more often than roon radio, but the way it assembles the list isn’t really radio.
Your first point prior i of course agree with. This point though, eventually i imagine Roon with need to find a way to deal with that. If the majors go lossless, i can’t imagine Tidal and qobuz sticking around, and i can’t imagine Roon returning to being nothing more than a better itunes for local library management with no streaming ability. I imagine they have “nuclear options” for some form of streaming in a post deep integration world rather than just locking the doors and going home or it would remove features but it’s better than back to “use roon for ripped cds and something else for the rest”
I’m really not sure where you’re getting your information from?
Above I shared a screenshot from the Spotify Mastering information site… here’s another:
Can you share where you’re getting your information?
A screenshot? A link?
What bitrate is used when streaming Spotify with Chromecast? Standard quality for streaming Spotify with Chromecast is AAC 128kbit/s, and 256kbit/s for Premium.
“Support says Spotify transcodes from their native Vorbis codec to 256kbps AAC, which further reduces audio quality, especially since Chromecast Audio seems to natively support Vorbis.”
Let’s be brutally honest about this. Spotify sounds bad, or it certainly did when I was a customer via a SB Touch. Tidal outdid them in sound quality and I moved. Would I move back? Not really, because my issues with Spotify wasn’t bit rates or encoding formats. It was audible watermarking which I hated and could hear on great swathes of their output. I have no idea if that has changed, and no interest either. They had me, they lost me. I was prepared to pay double for a better service while they boosted their membership with that utterly pathetic ‘free’ tier. Bottom feeders. All in my opinion and experience of course!
You’re quoting this?
Is that anymore correct than this?
Nope! The second one sounds like it came from higher up the support 
To be honest I use Spotify for the 3rd party playlists and that I can cram loads of it offline on my phone. When I’m on the tube music coding quality is the last of my worries. #smellypeople #friedchickenat10am
Ya and that 2nd one is the same as the Mastering info section of the Spotify site that I screenshot earlier…
Yeh I use it for that too… and also for their two main personalised playlists (Release Radar and Discover Weekly) for discovery purposes…
I’ve been using Apple Music more lately though, to experience firsthand the differences in their recommendations and discovery features.
I’ve downloaded a humongous Glastonbury 2019 playlist to spot new acts to go listen to. A lot of the smaller acts aren’t on the Tidal version.
Even a bit of dubstep Sean. 
Hoping the dubstep tent has a muddy floor so my Dad rocking backwards and forwards is acceptable…
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Just being there will be cool enough… so good on you.
Plus if it’s anything like most festivals I go to, there’ll be plenty of ‘smoke’ in the air in the tent… and everyone’s having too good a time to judge anybody’s dance moves 
It’s a stellar lineup (as always) this year. I need to do it next year.
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Next year will be the 50th anniversary so will be humongous. Unlike many festivals you can take your own drink in so there are a LOT of happy people 24 hours a day.