Weird distortion on The Smashing Pumpkins Oceania.

[nwimpney]

This album has some weird distortion all the way through it, It's most obvious over guitar chords, and painfully obvious in the intro to "The Chimera". (and at various points throughout the song)

I'm not sure if these are some terrible compression artifacts or some audible watermarking, but It's really annoying.  I would like it on my playlist, but it sounds terrible.

[Sebasty]

Hey @nwimpney

I tried listening to The Chimera, didn't hear any distortions.

I suggest you try listening to the album on open.spotify.com, and if there it sounds normal, you should reinstall your Spotify apps. Here's how to reinstall.
If it doesn't sound good there either, let me know. 🙂

[nwimpney]

No, It's audible on open.spotify.com as well, and I hear it on 3 different machines.  One windows, one linux, and on android. 

When I listen to the original CD I don't hear it.

I was also curious if there was something weird about the music that the encoder has a problem with, so I did my own "q4" (128kbit nominal) ogg encoding of it, and it's fine.

I also compared to the first few copies on youtube, and while they sound obviously worse than the original cd, they don't exhibit this warble that I hear on the spotify version.

[Sebasty]

Hm, odd...

Do the devices have anything in common too, like an audio interface?

Did it start to happen recently?

[nwimpney]

No, and playing the original on flac I sourced from CD on the same computer sounds fine.  It's definitely a problem with the album on spotify.

It's a warble at a few Hz, audible most obviously over sustained distorted (intentionally) guitar chords.

Another place it's obvious is the sustain at the end of https://open.spotify.com/track/0AqjpqKf57S9arN9E4cnmC around 3:33.  It has a slight vibrato/chorus sort of effect which is not supposed to be there.  In that context it doesn't sound out of place, but it is definitely not supposed to be there, and when you listen to the whole album and hear that effect continuously throughout, it's very annoying.

I don't want to post youtube URLs here, but if you search for that song and play the end of it you'll notice that even with youtube's (usually much lower quality) encoding, the warble isn't present.

Edit: I forgot to answer your other question.   It's been there since the first time I listened to the album on spotify, I just never got around to posting about it until yesterday when I listened again.

[Sebasty]

Alright, that's quite weird, because I don't get any warble on my end, and I do have reference class headphones, I should be able to hear such things, but

I suggest seeking contact with Spotify either on Twitter (@SpotifyCares) or using the contact form here.

If using the contact form, a no-reply answer telling to check this board or Support may be sent, so you just reply to that and you'll be contacted soon. 🙂

[nwimpney]

Have you compared it carefully with a youtube version, etc?

It may not be super obvious to you until you recognize what you're listening for, but you should be able to hear it easily with any decent headphones.

The sustain of the last note of The Celestials is an easy place to compare.

Like I said before, It doesn't actually sound out of place there, but it is an easy place to compare with another source and hear the effect.  Once you know the sound, you'll see that it's across the whole album, and isn't present on youtube (or the original album, if you have access to that)