Poor sound quality

[robfrye]

Playing via USB on a Raspberry Pi 4b - the sound quality is always significantly worse using Spotify Connect compared with using the Volumio Spotify plugin.

[illtrick]

Bitrate (320kbs), Bitdepth (16bit) and Samplerate (44.1khz) are all unique values.

[robfrye]

Fair enough, updated the question. Any idea why sound quality is so much worse using Connect than using the regular Spotify plugin?

[illtrick]

Interesting, can you describe the difference? Volume level is certainly different for me when switching back and forth but I don’t notice any sonic difference after volume matching.

[robfrye]

sound is very muted and lacks dynamic range. Not much volume difference for me.
If it's helpful, I am running USB out to an external DAC and then into a pretty decent amp/speaker setup.

[illtrick]

volume normalization could be the culprit, that squashes dynamic range. is it set to on in either the plugin or globally?

[robfrye]

Off in both places. Happy to send you logs or whatever if you can tell me how to do it.

[illtrick]

I can help you part of the way, I'm no dev but I can at least help you get logs. I actually came here to post my own issue but got distracted by yours. Best of luck!

1. Make sure you have debug mode enabled in the plugin
2. SSH to your device (if you don't know how to do that there's links in the instructions on the main page )
3. copy paste and this command: sudo journalctl -f -o cat -u volspotconnect2.service
4. It should print events as they occur. I'd go through a standard startup process (spotify app closed, open app, connect to device, play track) and copy paste them here.

[ashthespy]

Interesting, can you describe the difference? Volume level is certainly different for me when switching back and forth but I don’t notice any sonic difference after volume matching.

That shouldn't be the case - can you describe your setup?

@robfrye Try turning off the volume control as well, if your using a software mixer.

[robfrye]

I wasn't using the volume control, however now it won't even connect so I can't help more at the moment. I'll pile on to the Cannot Connect thread with my logs

[illtrick]

Interesting, can you describe the difference? Volume level is certainly different for me when switching back and forth but I don’t notice any sonic difference after volume matching.

That shouldn't be the case - can you describe your setup?

@ashthespy I’ll take another go at it tomorrow. You’re making me think I’m crazy now. I swear the volume levels were different...

[ashthespy]

@illtrick
The volume level depends on the setup. For a hardware mixer, spop - the dameon used in the spotify plugin uses sox and 'alsa' for the output. Thus the volume level is as defined by the "system volume" set by Volumio through alsa (some esoteric cases use a septate I2C device, but most is done with alsa).
The daemon we use, vollibrespot by comparison, ties directly to alsa for both the output and hardware mixer. Thus, changing volume from your client, should result in a direct change of the "system" volume for Volumio. Software mixers on the other hand, map the 0-100 of the client volume, to the current "system volume" of Volumio.

[gorgias0]

Hi,
I have the same problem with poor sound quality.
I tried the above command to see the log from volspotconnect 2 and everything looks ok except for this line:
[Vollibrespot] : Reducing normalisation factor to prevent clipping. Please add negative pregain to avoid.

edit:
I have normalisation off in spotify and mixer disabled in volumio.

Tried to start alsamixer via ssh in volumio and pcm volume was set to 100, can this be the problem?