I am playing Spotify on my Sonos hooked up to a Peachtree Audio Nova amplifier which in turn is using pretty high-end Paradigm book shelf speakers. I live in a 100 Mbps home and the Sonos is hardwired into the Ethernet switch, so bandwidth clearly isn’t an issue. The sound is absolutely horrendous, especially at lower volume levels. The iTunes music files, not exactly of audiophile quality. The preferences on the desktop client say that high-quality streaming is enabled, so I am a little confounded by this lack of quality. Is this just me, or others having the same issue as well?

Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. Read More

7 thoughts on “Spotify Streaming Quality Problems Anyone?”

  1. The problem is actually that you are using high-quality output devices (your amp and speakers) show all the flaws of digital audio.

    The signal-to-noise ratio for most of the technology being used is not great and your amp and speakers are exposing it.

    Also if the bit rate of the iTunes music files is fairly low that’s part of the problem as well.

    1. Yeah that is what I am beginning to realize that and am feeling awfully frsutrated with the quality. Oh well – not much I can do about the source codecs. Maybe start buying CDs again 😉

  2. It’s been fine for me — just last night for several hours I was streaming it from my Air via Airfoil to my AppleTV into my receiver/speakers, and I didn’t notice any problems… Maybe I was just lucky?

    1. It wasn’t a one time problem for me. The quality has been constantly bad for me for now more than two weeks.

  3. Yes, I’ve noticed the same thing and I also don’t have the expertise to test it. If Spotify and other music streaming services were honest, there would be an indicator within the app, like how you can see what resolution your youtube/vimeo/hulu video is playing at. Unfortunately, these companies know that most consumers’ hearing can not notice fidelity differences to the granular level that they can with sight (video).

    It would be really great if someone would do an independent study on this:

    http://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-independent-reports-comparing-the-sound-quality-of-streaming-services-Pandora-Spotify-Last-fm-Play-me-and-devices-Apple-TV-Roku-Sonos-Boxee

  4. Noticed something off for the last two days. Tracks dont start, stop for no reason and sound quality is horrible- and that’s jut playing it on my laptop like I always do. Very annoying!

  5. Just ran into Spotify and fell for the ad hype. Good selection, mostly, but the main problem is the quality of the streaming. I’m usually listening on my laptop, connected to a high speed network (IBM). Get ng gaps and skips i t e str m. Like istening o an old vinyl LP at’s be n scuf ed up and skps nd j mps ac oss th tracks. Annoying! Maybe a ploy to stop you from recording what you hear for offline use?

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