Sound quality vs Google Play is terrible. Why??

[Xaxas]

I know there's plenty of threads out there regarding sound quality, but nothing has solved my issues.

If it matters I have the 2014 Moto X.

Problem: I can pick any song, doesn't matter - songs I've never listened to and songs I have, play them in Spotify and they sound "meh"... pause it, open Google Play Music, find the same song, play, without changing anything at all it sounds way WAY more full, and like I just turned my stereo up about 10 notches.

YES - Spotify is set to stream in Extreme quality. (What's worse, Google Play is only set to stream as "Normal" quality, not even their "Highest" setting.)

YES - I have cleared the cache.

YES - I have the equalizer enabled on both apps, and it shares the same EQ so they should sound the same in that regard.

So what is the deal? The disparity between the two is just unbelievable. Honestly, it's bad enough that I've canceled my subscription and switched because of the sound quality alone. You'd have to be near deaf to not hear the difference.

Is there anyone that can offer some legitimate, factual insight here?

[user-removed]

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[Joe]

Enough already! Read the community guidelines and calm down.

[user-removed]

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[thedolc]

I can guarantee you is not a bluetooth problem of your phone man, I'm 100% sure cause I have a perfect working galaxy s6 and I just came in to this post cause I didn't believe my ears... I was adding some shazam music to spotify, when I discovered that playing the preview (which uses google play source) on spotify was like open soundstage clear defined wow effect sound, not only louder than spotify but much cleaner, I produce music and I have krk monitor speakers and klipsch speaker for home theather and jazz music, I know something about audio.... instead once I add the song from shazam to a spotify playlist and listen to it, embarassing .... such a close muffled sound, embarassing really... so don't loose time changing your phone is defenitely a spotify problem, now I will try the same on my ipad, to discover if the problem is only with the android spotify app or with spotify in general (ps I have spotify premium and the audio on maximum quality of course)

[TheMonarch86]

I agree with you on the Spotify inferior sound quality! I'm a sound enthusiast and a heavy listener of both Rock and Chilling Bass tunes and what I most criticize about Spotify is the amount of compression they apply, even on Extreme sound quality! As an example, when listening Dark Is The Soul by Korn you feel VBR instead of CBR on bassy/ heavy vocals moments. On Bassy Jazz like Beep Box by Snarky Puppy, the deep deep bass is often opaque instead of translucid, active sub instead of passive sub. IMO, this is optimized to play loud as you can, but still!...... a superior audio setting is missing! I understand FLAC it's too much but, if they (Spotify Team) could get a way to stabilize the stressfull frequencies we (dedicated listeners) would be darn delighted! Thank you for your time! 

[Jimster480]

I think I am starting to believe this thread.

I have Google Music because of Youtube red (just found out about this) and I listen to Spotify all day every day.

I have to say that when I listen to Amazon music (the free version with prime) or with google Music both of them sound much louder with a wider soundstage.
Now in some tracks Spotify sounds just fine, but it seems that there is some clear quality problems with Spotify.
On my Topping DX7 DAC I literally turned it down 10DB when listening to Google music for the same level of volume (to my ears).
And the details still seem to be better.

I also noticed that the Spotify Web player is louder than the desktop client.

^
Just spoke to a friend while writing this, there is an option in spotify desktop (and likely on the App aswell) which says "Set the same volume for all tracks".
Disable that **bleep** and instantly it goes away and the desktop client really sounds nice now.

[Joe]

Just to show how subjective this debate is, there's an identical thread in Google Product Forums where folk are complaining that spotify is better quality than GPM 🙂

[Jimster480]

Well after turning the setting off, spotify does indeed sound better than
GPM.

So I can understand that. It also makes sense as it is the highest bit Rate
of all services, other than tidal master hi-fi.

[VooodoooChild]

If you're talking about the "Normalize volume" set up, I absolutely agree. Spotify sounds really greater since I've disabled this option. I've even re-downloaded all my albums to be sure this option is not set up anywhere else. My last issue with Spotify is now the randomly loss of my downloaded albums (which occurs to me one or two times per month, but it is another debate, in another post 🙂

[Jimster480]

Yes that is for another topic. But it does happen to me on my iPod around once a month. Its not everything I've downloaded but just some of it.

[JasonLNoel]

👇

[JasonLNoel · Accepted solution]

Holy **bleep** YES turn Normalize Volume Off in settings! 

HUGE difference, not only in Volume but range!!

Can hardly tell the difference now 😀👊💪

[JasonLNoel]

Turn Off👇😀👊💪

[JasonLNoel · Accepted solution]

Turn this off 👇😀👊💪

[JasonLNoel]

Turn off 👇😀👊💪🔥

[JasonLNoel]

Tunr off 👇😀👊💪🔥

[JasonLNoel]

100% felt the same brother 👊 till I...

Turned off 👇😀👊💪🔥 

[Joe]

What a plonker!

[TheMonarch86]

It's always off, it's from common sense that "pitch normalizers" ruins sound definition, but thanks anyway! 

[Jimster480]

Except that its on by default and most people don't know about it.