Spotify + Google Nav == Much too quite text to speech

[Eradicatore]

Hi,

    So many people have complained to Google about their new design for audio focus.  They removed the option to set navigation text to speech volume seperately from "media" volume.  But what I've noticed is that after years of complaints, only some apps have issues still.  Unfortunately, spotify is one of those.  

   See this message thread:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/qYhKWUz7SdY%5B226-250-false%5D

One person there summed up the issue very accurately:

Android 4.4.2
Maps version 7.7.0

When listening to spotify and utilizing Google navigation, navigation volume is about 50% lower than current music volume.  Rendering voice navigation guidance useless.

When voice navigation announces next instruction / step, I've been able to turn up the volume mid-instruction; however navigation volume returns to 50% lower.  Increased volume does not stay to where I set it.

Now, I would add to that description that this does NOT happen with Google Play Music, or Pandora.  Those are the other apps I've tried so far.  The text to speech does cause all of these, even spotify, to lower their playback volume.  But I believe somehow Spotify is doing it wrong.  Spotify lowers, or fails to set some audio level for the interrupting stream of text to speech from google maps.  

Should I move this post to the bug section?  I was unable to find any posts that discussed google navigation volumes.  

[Peter__ · Accepted solution]

Have a feeling this may be related to this discussed issue:
http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Android/1-0-0-70-82-0-7-9-Inaudible-volume-levels-after-notific...

[Eradicatore]

Yes, thanks!  That looks like the thread I wanted to find.  I have also updated some findings over on this thread on Google Nav (see below), but as I said there, this issue is Spotify specific.  Pandora and Google Play music are both keeping the "media" volume level the SAME when audio focus is taken over by TTS.  But Spotify's recent update to do the overlay of interruptions rather than a complete pause seems to set the "media" volume to a fixed 35% or so during the overlay.  

I really hope the developers at Spotify figure out how to update their audio focus solution to keep media at the same volume.  If they do that, I think you don't need a separate volume control like most people are arguing for on the Google Nav thread.

One way to easily test this.  Navigate with google maps to some wrong location.  Then you get constant reroute audio updates and you can easily see what I'm talking about by playing music with Spotify versus different apps like Pandora.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/qYhKWUz7SdY%5B1-25-false%5D

[Eradicatore]

Ok, M25 (Scott) has nailed it I think, 3 weeks ago.  His post #23 on that thread is perfect.  I'm still reading the rest of the pages though to see if anyone else dispusted that.  I'm surprised there are 175 more posts AFTER his but maybe he missed something.  🙂

I want to reach out to him and see if he's talked to the tech support yet.