Chromecast audio drops out

[kittenmcnugget]

New chromecast audio with firmware 1.22.78337. I'd guess this was an issue with the device except that it is temporarily resolved with actions from Spotify app.

When casting, the sound will suddenly stop every minute or so. Sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes. The song counter continues to tick, and the cast shows that it continues to be connected but the CCA at my recieved no longer outputs sound via the optical cable. A simple flick to the next song, or a pause and play always kick-start the sound and it begins playing again.

I don't think this is a Wi-Fi issue, I have tried on 2.4 and 5ghz networks, in multiple physical locations, and have done several reboots... I'm on an Android axon 7, and have the latest Spotify app from Play store... Trying to work this from Google as well, but no help there so far... Haven't been able to get through a single full song yet.... Please tell me someone here has some ideas

Not having this issue with Pandora or local music casting

[kittenmcnugget]

ok, this is obviously a spotify via chromecast audio issue. i have had multiple multi hour sessions casting pandora to my chromecast audio, and multiple multi hour sessions casting spotify(3 month free premium trial) to my echo. both work without a hitch. spotify to my CCA will not result in a single finished song. i have tried all of these scenarios on 2.4, 5ghz, toslink, analog, and to different speakers. 

i have seen some people reporting that broken accounts resulted in the skip fwd and other "controls" not working with Spotify to CCA, but not this audio drop, without actually dropping the cast connection... is easy to try? 

if not whoever handles/is familiar with the protocol for spotify => CCA needs to offer up some help. i'm out of ideas.

[kittenmcnugget]

one fundamental thing i see that's different, is that if i cast to chromecast audio, i always get the phones system notification that "spotify is casting to CCA". when i cast to echo, i never get that notification... i'm not sure what the protocol difference is...

[kittenmcnugget · Accepted solution]

Well, since there is apparently no support on this forum, I'll post my solution. I emailed Spotify support and requested a test account. This account was immediately effective. Here is a more descriptive solution on Google products...

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!topic/chromecast/DnaxBXj8h_M;context-place=to...

[malloree]

Hi !

I have the same problem with a brand new CCA....

My sound drop for several minutes before resuming the song. I guess I need to contact the support for a test account like you.

Thanks.

[Anatol1986]

I also got the same problem. How can i contact the support?

[kittenmcnugget]

It's hard to find. You'd think this was support, but they don't seem to actually reply here. There is a contact page, but if I recall I had to go through a few pages to get there. I think that message did get me a reply the next day though...

[user-removed]

Same thing worked for me. Contacted Spotify and had a new account created releasing my old email. They said that this appeared to be an issue with the accounts. New account had no issues immediately.

[slipstream422]

ugh i have the same problem, random audio drop outs.  i went 2 years w/o any audio drop outs. the problem started in mid sept 2017.  I worked with spotify tech support and had my account transferred to a new account/username, including playlists.  but this did not fix the drop outs. btw spotify tech support was really fast and helpful. so now i have uninstalled google home to see if this will fix the issue.  it appears you only need google home to setup a CCA device and it can be uninstalled CCA setup is complete.  i will update the post with the results of this test.

before doing the above i did the following

- deleted/cleared the spotify cache

- uninstalled reinstalled spotify app on android and windows 10 devices

- rebooted the router

- factory reset 3 CCA devices

- none of the above helped so i decided to try a new account as described above

Notes on transferring to a new account/username:

- you can keep your playlists

- you have to go thru all the settings again and set them to the they you like

- you lose your community badges

- any client ids/secrets for spotify apps you created, via the spotify dev console, are lost and have to be recreated via the spotify dev console

1 week later

---------------------------

these two steps has greatly improved/eliminated the audio drop issue and the volume control loss issue

- uninstalled google home 

- disabled spotify battery optimization in battery settings

[sayersdan]

• My you guys are patient. I received 2 new CCAs yesterday having read how great they are and how they work so well with Spotify. Except they don’t. Fiddled around with Spotify support loading test accounts for a bit. Dropouts were reduced but then thought this is unacceptable. Google sent me out prepaid return labels and they’ll be gone today. All very irritating but not prepared to put up with or fiddle with long term. Cheap yes. Robust absolutely not. 

[JUNTAMBIS]

I'm still having the same problem with Spotify until now. It seems that spotify dont have any plans to resolve this Chromecast audio issue. Hopefully since its already 2018, they should do something about it. Happy New Year Spotify team!!!

[PAPPL]

My Chromecast Audio devices had major problems when streaming (not visible cast devices, suddenly stopping stream or stuttering, casting only to one speaker in a group,...)

Disabled "Airtime fairness" in my wireless routers WLAN settings, and now my chromecast problems are gone. 

Be sure to have these wireless router settings enabled:

Multicast, Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), IGMP snooping

Optional enabled: Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)

Be sure to have these router settings disabled::

AP/client isolation, proxy servers, IGMP Proxy, virtual private networks (VPNs)

Hope it helps.

[KeithHanlan]

I have had exactly the same behaviour with my ChromeCast Audio (CCA) and Spotify and a test account was not a viable option because I have a Premium for Family account.

So, I have been lumping this CCA problem in with my other Spotify problems until now. (by which I primarily mean the fact that I have to turn off shuffle everytime I start to play something - grrr!!!)

Over the weekend, I installed the new VLC 3.0 client which reverse engineered the CCA APIs. It has exactly the same behaviour as the Spotify client!

I began to wonder if perhaps the problem was due to the fact that I have two ChromeCast Audio devices and a video ChromeCast. So I unplugged two, leaving myself with just the one CCA. No change. I also wondered if there was something about having multiple users but after my wife went to work the problem remained.

So, in other words, the CCA seems to be a piece of unreliable **bleep**.

Does anybody have any other ideas?

[dpearce33]

After months of trying to solve this very same issue with local based files I gave up.

Now use Asus Clique R100.  Fantastic alternative that is 100% supported by Spotify.  Obit more expensive but far better quality and, most importantly, it works.

[sampersand]

I'm having frequent hickups again of this issue. It's not a wifi-problem. It does however happen more frequent when managing audio on several devices (for instance macbook + phone). You may have even more difficulties when doing so, like loosing control over volume-options.

Looking forward to another patch.

[dpearce33]

Get an Asus Clique R100. Problem solved