Chromecast bitrate solution verified

[rscheck92]

There have been quite a few topics with people concerned about the bitrate that Google Chromecast Audio is streamed at. Here’s a couple of those posts that I’m referring to:

• Chromecast Bitrate
• Poor Sound Quality with Spotify Premium on Chromecast Audio

I was also curious about this, but it seemed as if there wasn’t a solid, verified answer out there. After an unsuccessful live chat with a rep who didn’t quite understand what I was asking, I emailed them with the transcript of my chat, asking to please further investigate the answer I was looking for. I finally received a reply two days later, and here it is copied and pasted:

Hi Reid,

Thanks for getting in touch. Your case has been escalated to the Executive Team, which is the highest level of Customer Support. We'll be handling your case from now on.

We understand you'd like to know the encoding process for files streamed in AAC 256kbps format. We'll be glad to provide you the information you need.

We accept audio files in either FLAC or WAVE format. When we receive audio files, we apply the following processes:

1. Check they aren’t corrupt and that their format and container is known.
2. Convert to WAV 44.1 kHz (keeping bit depth).
3. Transcode the file into the following delivery formats for the quality options available to listeners:

• Ogg/Vorbis [96, 160, 320 kbps]
• AAC [128, 256 kbps]
• HE-AACv2 [24 kbps]

We hope this helps. If you have other questions, please don't hesitate to let us know.

All the best,

Kristel
Executive Team - Spotify Customer Support

"Music is the strongest form of magic" - Marilyn Manson

Did you know we have an extensive help section on our website?

My main concern was that they were transcoding the files from an already lossy source (Ogg Vorbis to AAC) instead of properly converting them from lossless. It turns out that they are properly processing the music files without lossy to lossy transcoding. I hope this helps anyone who was as curious as I was about it.

[Broesen]

Hi.

All above 256kbits will be scaled down to 256kbits on Chrome Cast audio. I hope that it's not the case with amplifier built with a chromecast.

Peter

[rscheck92 · Accepted solution]

Not exactly. This is just confirming that they’re not improperly transcoding the files, which is a good thing. All music has a lossless source that it starts out in, and Spotify transcodes each file 6 times (3 times for Ogg Vorbis, 2 times for AAC, and once for HE-AACv2) from the lossless source. This is good news, considering many people, including myself, were worried that they were improperly transcoding their files from an already transcoded (lossy) file. So we now know that the Chromecast is streaming quality, properly encoded music.

[kelzer]

So what bitrate is pushed to Chromecast Audio - 256k AAC or 320k Ogg/Vorbis?

[rscheck92]

256kbps AAC is pushed to the Chromecast.

[wolfman2022]

So what is the best devices to stream music to to get the highest sound quality in a room? Is it specfic to only using teh spotify app?