I bought a Google ChromecastAudio for my budgetaudiophile system, due to problems with Apple’sAirPlay. I like the Chromecast, but as I listened to my favorite music onSpotify Premium, I was disappointed. The audio quality was noticeably worse thancasting Spotify to AirPlay. I decided to figure out what was going on and see ifI could fix the audio quality issues. I think I’ve learned what’s wrong, andunfortunately I don’t think it’s fixable. Read on to learn more.
A while ago I did an experiment to determine the all-around best lossy musiccompression format. There’s a lot of“it depends,” but my takeaways were:
- For Mac: Click (AirPlay Video) in the menu bar, then select Turn AirPlay Off. Stream content from your Apple device to the TV: If AirPlay has not been configured, press the (Input select) button on the TV remote control and select (AirPlay), then select AirPlay & HomeKit settings and turn on AirPlay. Make sure your Apple device is connected to.
- Mar 13, 2021 Ensure AirPlay is enabled on Apple TV. If you're trying to use an Apple TV with AirPlay but the AirPlay icon is missing from your phone or computer, you need to ensure that AirPlay is enabled on the Apple TV. To do that, on the Apple TV go to Settings AirPlay and make sure it's turned on.
- High-quality variable-bitrate MP3 produced with the LAME encoder is the mostcompatible choice if you want broad compatibility, but has low sound quality.
- If you want the best sound quality, AAC (Apple’s native format) or Ogg Vorbisare much better than MP3 but aren’t as universally supported.
At that time I was actively using both Apple Music and Spotify. Ultimately, Istopped using Apple Music because I didn’t need two services, and I likeSpotify’s UI and recommendations better. I stopped my trial of Google Play Musicand haven’t thought about it since then, because of the terrible sound itproduces by transcoding everything to MP3 files.
Since then, I’ve been listening to a lot of music by playing it on SpotifyPremium and using AirPlay to cast it to an Apple Airport Express hooked up to mystereo system. I have generally been very happy with the audio quality. Despitewhat many people claim, even though I’m growing older and I’ve suffered somehearing damage, audio compression artifacts are very obvious when listening on adecent system. But Apple Music and Spotify both use high-enough-qualitycompression that it’s still pleasant.
AirPlay became frustrating, though. There were so many reliability issues withit! I needed to reboot the Airport Express on a pretty regular basis to getaudio to stream to it. It was so annoying that I eventually gave up and bought aSonosin the kitchen. This has been much more enjoyable than trying to stream to theboombox I had previously. In my listening room, though, I still used AirPlay.
Apple's AirPlay technology makes it easy to stream music, podcasts, and video from one device to another, turning your home or office into a wireless entertainment system. Using AirPlay is usually a simple matter of a few taps on the iPhone or a few clicks on Mac. But what do you do when you find your AirPlay icon missing?
After a while I decided to try a Chromecast Audio. If you haven’t heard aboutthese, they’re a super small, convenient little puck that plugs into power,connects to WiFi, and streams music. It’s brilliant, much better designed thanAirPlay or similar.
But the sound quality was immediately disappointing! One example is thetriangles in the chorus to Jann Arden’s Sleepless. They don’t even sound liketriangles; they sound like someone spitting while whistling. It’s not subtle:it’s horrible.
So I decided to repeat my experiment to evaluate audio quality in Audacity, andsee what’s going on with Spotify. Did I just not notice this before when I wasusing AirPlay? Or is something wrong with the Chromecast? I decided to compareSpotify’s audio quality to iTunes’s AAC and to the original music.
You may know that Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis. According to the documentation,
The desktop app’s standard quality is Ogg Vorbis 160kbit/s. Premium subscribers can choose to switch on High quality streaming, which uses 320kbit/s
I own the Blood Red Cherry CD that has that song, so I ripped it to WAV andused iTunes to encode it to AAC. Then I used Soundflower to record Spotify, setto high-quality 320kbps audio. I tried to see if I could hook the Chromecast upto my computer and record the audio from its output, but I wasn’t successfulwith that.
I compared these recordings against each other. What I found reassured me:Spotify’s audio quality is not terrible. If you have Spotify Premium, you shouldbe getting very good quality audio, even though it’s not perfect.
For those who are curious, it’s not as good as Apple Music’s, though. AppleMusic encodes everything in 256kbps AAC files, which are nearly transparent tomost listeners even on audiophile systems. For the records, here’s an excerpt ofthe chorus to Sleepless in several formats. Notice the triangles, mostly lostin the dense layers of instruments and vocals:
- WAV ripped directly from CD.
Your browser does not support the audio element. - 256kbps AAC encoded with iTunes.
Your browser does not support the audio element. - Spotify’s 320kbps Ogg Vorbis high-quality streaming.
Your browser does not support the audio element.
The triangles in this chorus make a good test case because of the complexity ofthe music and clarity of the triangles; if they’re badly compressed, it’s easilyaudible.
To put Spotify’s audio quality into a different perspective and compare versusAAC, here’s the residual/noise after subtracting the encoded versions from theoriginal bit-for-bit copy ripped from the CD.
- AAC’s noise due to lossy encoding.
Your browser does not support the audio element. - Spotify’s noise due to lossy encoding.
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Less noise is “better,” from a purist’s point of view, because it means lessmusical information was discarded while encoding. But remember the point oflossy encoding is to throw away as much signal as possible, inaudibly. So thisis not necessarily a good measure of how good quality the compression is,because a perfect algorithm would discard lots of inadible information!
I was a bit stumped. Spotify’s audio quality is excellent for lossy-compressedstreaming. What on earth could make Spotify sound so bad throughthe Chromecast Audio? I checked the Spotify documentation again, and found thefollowing:
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.
Suddenly it made sense. I think the Chromecast is playing Ogg Vorbis transcoded toAAC. That would absolutely explain the degraded sound quality I noticed.
Transcoding is a terrible idea. This is the very reason that I ran screamingin terror from Google Play Music. Transcoding a lossy-compressed format toanother lossy-compressed format sounds like garbage. If this is what’s happeningwith Spotify Connect and Chromecast, I think I’ll reconnect my AirPort Express.
I’m spending enough time and effort on this that I’m seriously considering amusic server with all of my CDs in FLAC or ALAC lossless format. My CDcollection is decades old and I can’t imagine those CDs will last foreveranyway. I’m starting to learn about Roon, which seemspretty amazing and integrates with Tidal, a losslessstreaming service. There’s also Deezer,Murfie, andSubsonic.
To conclude, I have two wishes for Spotify:
- Let me upload my own music to the service, the way I can with Google, Apple,and Amazon; but use a really high-quality encoding and don’t transcode. Ihave hundreds of CDs that aren’t available on any streaming or downloadservice. I want all my music available in one place.
- Offer a lossless streaming subscription. (About a year ago they tested thisout, but there’s no word if they’ll actually do more than test). I’m highlylikely to become a Tidal subscriber at some point if Spotify doesn’t offerlossless.
I want these things because I’m convinced that at some point, perhaps soon, I’mgoing to be able to find my wished-for service that combines lossless streamingof music via subscription, with a subscription to store the music I own andisn’t available through the service itself. It just feels like an absolutecertainty that this will come to pass. Whoever gets there first will likely earnmy business.
A couple of footnotes I didn’t want to mention above, to avoid distractingreaders:
- I connected my Chromecast Audio to my stereo through a headphone-to-RCAadapter, not digitally.
- When I recorded Spotify’s output on my Mac, I found that the volume wasslightly lowered (perhaps normalized). I used an Amplify transform inAudacity to raise the peaks to the same level as the raw audio extracted fromthe CD. I suspect the “noise” file for Spotify is noisier than the real audioI streamed from them, due to that.
- Why would Google Chromecast Audio support AAC, when Google Play Musicsupports only lower-quality MP3?
Hi marcelczubak,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We understand that you're having some issues getting your Spotify music to AirPlay to your HomePod mini.
Let's first isolate this to a particular component. Are you able to AirPlay other content from your iPhone to your HomePod without any issues? Is there another network you can join and try AirPlay again? That will let us know if this is related to the network, your iPhone, HomePod or the Spotify app.
Spotify
If it only happens with Spotify, use the steps from If an app on your iPhone or iPad stops responding, closes unexpectedly, or won’t open to troubleshoot the app specifically.
Spotify On Mac
Mac Spotify Airplay 2
Take care.
Spotify Mac Airplay Mehrere Lautsprecher
Feb 19, 2021 2:16 PM