Renewed Spotify Premium after waiting long for HiFi

[MaSh]

I was able to sort out all issues last night and the system played beautifully all night and then the ladies took over till evening and now I am back on it. Not a hiccup and super reliable connection. This chain is a million miles more reliable than the Airplay chain which used to start coughing after about 3-4 hours of non stop playing.

Are you using dhcp or static IP address in Moode? If it's static, make sure you configure dns servers also... a public dns server like 8.8.8.8 will be better. This is because the connection works purely between your rpi and Spotify servers, so local name resolution is mandatory.

I am on 100% out of the box stock settings. IP assignment is via DHCP at the default interval. I would be setting a static IP for the Pi in my router,which I do for most of my components.

@MaSh We have to figure out where the issue is. It has to be either

1. The driver
2. raspotify

One question. Does airplay on this moode setup run continuously? If both airplay and raspotify are exhibiting the same issue, it could point to a driver issue.

Fist step after powering on your device run the two commands below
$ ps -ef |grep spot
$ sudo systemctl status raspotify.service

You should get something like this
View attachment 70545

After that play music. You say it disconnects after few seconds. When it disconnects, run the command

$ sudo systemctl status raspotify.service

Another useful troubleshooting is to look at the logs when playing music. So before you play music run the following command on another terminal and press the ENTER key twice. If there is any issue with the driver it will get printed here. e.g. screenshot

View attachment 70546

We will continue after you do this. Most probably we will install the official version of raspotify from github rather than the one supplied by moode.
Regarding that, what is the listing in /etc/apt/sources.list.d ?

View attachment 70547

Thank You so much for the detailed steps. I did most of them during troubleshooting and found that Airplay also disconnects, however slightly more resilient than spotify. After the service stops, no device can connect to it as there is no spotify renderer running anymore. Even restarting it from the configuration section did not start it. Only solution was to restart Pi.

Now to the solution:

The issue was with Caching. Apparently each change that needs a restart, cannot be followed by another change which needs a restart too. A restart needs to be performed after Every change which needs a restart. So for example when I set the network which needs a restart, I cannot set the i2s device which also needs a restart. I need to restart the device after setting the network, then do the i2s setting and so on. If this is not done then it makes the system kind of unstable leading to crashing of services.

Got this from one of the forums where a lot of guys are having the same issue. Following the restart process after each change resolved the issue and made Spotify super reliable.

Coming to the sound quality, Spotify + Moode sounds slightly more neutral than Airplay + Volumio. The bass is slightly tighter which has cleaned up the rest of the frequencies. Apple music is known to have slightly boosted low end.

Will run this chain for the rest of the month and give a more detailed feedback.

MaSh

 

[mbhangui]

I was able to sort out all issues last night and the system played beautifully all night and then the ladies took over till evening and now I am back on it. Not a hiccup and super reliable connection. This chain is a million miles more reliable than the Airplay chain which used to start coughing after about 3-4 hours of non stop playing.

I am on 100% out of the box stock settings. IP assignment is via DHCP at the default interval. I would be setting a static IP for the Pi in my router,which I do for most of my components.

Glad to know it worked for you. By now you must have learned signicant amount of linux. In future I would urge you to get another SD card and put raspbian and install shairport-sync and librespot yourself. These music centric distributions complicate things a lot leading to slightly degraded performance compared to bare-bones Raspbian installation. Also they are always behind many versions from the official Raspbian distribution written for these raspberry pi devices. So if there is a bug discovered, it gets solved many months later on moode and volumio.

 

[MaSh]

Glad to know it worked for you. By now you must have learned signicant amount of linux. In future I would urge you to get another SD card and put raspbian and install shairport-sync and librespot yourself. These music centric distributions complicate things a lot leading to slightly degraded performance compared to bare-bones Raspbian installation. Also they are always behind many versions from the official Raspbian distribution written for these raspberry pi devices.

yes I did pick up a few distro related commands. At work I do get to flirt with Linux a bit, so not a total stranger to it. Yes I did flash Raspbian Lite last night but then came across this cache thing and reflashed Moode for the millionth time and it worked. I do have multiple SD cards which were used years ago when I had multiple Pis running in the house for Stereo with a Hifiberry Digi HAT and another Pi running Kodi. So yes, will have Moode, Volumio and Raspbian flashed on multiple cards for a comparison.

MaSh

 

[mbhangui]

yes I did pick up a few distro related commands. At work I do get to flirt with Linux a bit, so not a total stranger to it. Yes I did flash Raspbian Lite last night but then came across this cache thing and reflashed Moode for the millionth time and it worked. I do have multiple SD cards which were used years ago when I had multiple Pis running in the house for Stereo with a Hifiberry Digi HAT and another Pi running Kodi. So yes, will have Moode, Volumio and Raspbian flashed on multiple cards for a comparison.

MaSh

BTW the latest moode is almost upto date with the latest kernel 5.15.32-v8+. If you have downloaded that then good.

 

[mbhangui]

One of these days try using the librespot to use your allo digione audio device directly rather than going through the plughw device that moode has created to use the equalizer. So all audio in your device is getting intercepted before it goes to the allo digione soundcard. You cannot get bitperfect output even with mpd. I find that too has the configuration modified to use _audioout ALSA plughw device instead of the ALSA hw device. Today I downloaded the latest moode image and mounted the same on my fedora laptop using losetup. I find all audio gets routed to _audioout ALSA plughw device. This will result in some degradation of sound quality and extra latency compared to the stock raspbian or volumio. What I'm not sure if there is a way to disable the equalizer in the web interface and by disabling, will moode remove the entries from /etc/alsa/conf.d directory?

 

[efernand1]

Hi.

Off topic but want to chekc - how d you subscribe for a year ?

I am on the Premium Family plan, and Spotify debits my card every month.
I would prefer to make a 1 time annual payment, but cant find any option to do that.

Btw - I agree Spotify sounds fine. I use it extensively.
I find the Spotify Connect feature a huge differentiator.

My Marantz amps all have Spotify Connect built in.

I was using a free version last year then subscribed for 1/3 months then an Annual discount plan came in Nov 2021 which was really at a good rate, grabbed the same. It came as an alert to me and I checked under listed plans under profile.

 

[aurobindosaha]

I am already on Premium Family.

It shows me an option to select a lower tier plan.

Does not show any option to stay with PRemium Family, but switch from monthly to annual billing.

Not sure if annual subscription is possible with Family plan. I use individual plan and get choice to select annual payment that gives about Rs 345 discount on regular late

Apple lossless >>iPhone / ipad >> dragonfly black >> rest of your setup.

Thanks for the suggestions. At the moment I am not Apple user. The only Apple product I use is air pods, which was a gift from my company and I use it for office meetings in MS Teams or Zoom

 

[heliumflight]

Not sure if annual subscription is possible with Family plan. I use individual plan and get choice to select annual payment that gives about Rs 345 discount on regular late

do we get lossless quality like Tidal?

 

[argho]

do we get lossless quality like Tidal?

Nope.

They stream 256 kbps Ogg Vorbis (a better compression codec than mp3).

To my 50+ year old years, I cant tell the difference.

 

[Sean de Silva]

do we get lossless quality like Tidal?

I assume you're referring to Spotify Premium.

Audio quality - Spotify

support.spotify.com

 

[heliumflight]

I assume you're referring to Spotify Premium.

Audio quality - Spotify

support.spotify.com

Premium I have, was looking at higher quality

 

[himadri]

My experience is Spotify is fine as long as the music is not very busy tonally and rythmically.Its only when lots of information is to be processed very fast that Tidal pulls ahead and the Spotify stream sounds smeared in comparision.

 

[shibashis]

My experience is Spotify is fine as long as the music is not very busy tonally and rythmically.Its only when lots of information is to be processed very fast that Tidal pulls ahead and the Spotify stream sounds smeared in comparision.

I echo that, pretty much exactly what I have felt as well.

 

[MaSh]

Well after that long night of sorting out issues with Moode and Spotify connect, I hated it. I hated the way Spotify sounded. There were no connection issues or such, but it just sounded bad. I thought I had gone dumb, so I took my pi and the digital cable to fellow FM @Kumar442244 place who has an amazing setup to cross check whether its my ears or my setup sounding terrible. We turned the Pi off in less than a minute. it sounded bad.

Came back home and got down to it again. Tried Raspbian OS with spotify which was slightly better than Moode. However, I came across news that Volumio has a brand new Spotify plugin which seems to be less buggy. I liked the idea and flashed the card for the millionth time with Volumio. Installing the plugin was just a click away from its setup page itself. So much better. Spotify with Volumio sounds so much better, its musical, its non fatiguing, so much so that my setup ran non stop for 2 full days without a break. Folks at home liked it too which was a blessing.

Would urge someone to try it out and let me know whether its just me finding it better after all the hassle or it actually is good.

MaSh

 

[argho]

I use Spotify Connect directly on my Marantz and Denon amps. Have never faced any issue. Sounds good to my ears.

Recently bought a Wiim Mini as an experiment.
Tried Spotify Connect on the Wiim with the optical out to my Denon amp.

Sounds excellent.

Maybe I am not as discerning a listener.

 

[premoddev]

Well after that long night of sorting out issues with Moode and Spotify connect, I hated it. I hated the way Spotify sounded. There were no connection issues or such, but it just sounded bad. I thought I had gone dumb, so I took my pi and the digital cable to fellow FM @Kumar442244 place who has an amazing setup to cross check whether its my ears or my setup sounding terrible. We turned the Pi off in less than a minute. it sounded bad.

Came back home and got down to it again. Tried Raspbian OS with spotify which was slightly better than Moode. However, I came across news that Volumio has a brand new Spotify plugin which seems to be less buggy. I liked the idea and flashed the card for the millionth time with Volumio. Installing the plugin was just a click away from its setup page itself. So much better. Spotify with Volumio sounds so much better, its musical, its non fatiguing, so much so that my setup ran non stop for 2 full days without a break. Folks at home liked it too which was a blessing.

Would urge someone to try it out and let me know whether its just me finding it better after all the hassle or it actually is good.

MaSh

Is it the Spotify connect on Volumio or native Spotify client of Volumio?

 

[MaSh]

Is it the Spotify connect on Volumio or native Spotify client of Volumio?

It's a plugin they have provided which can be installed from the plugin menu within volumio UI. Internally i an not sure what it is.

MaSh

 

[premoddev]

Okay, so its no spotify connect.. its the volumio's native spotify client.

 

[MaSh]

Okay, so its no spotify connect.. its the volumio's native spotify client.

You could get more information here

https://community.volumio.org/t/new-volumio-spotify-plugin-open-beta-testing/56406

MaSh

 

[premoddev]

You could get more information here

https://community.volumio.org/t/new-volumio-spotify-plugin-open-beta-testing/56406

MaSh

I think you are right.. I too feel there is something happened (in a good way) in the new Spotify plugin on Volumio. Its too good... feels like Spotify became "Hifi" .. Good recordings are playing very beautifully..

After very long time trying Volumio, it seems they have disabled access to Plugins without My Volumio login. So I had to install the plugin through Cli as mentioned in the above link.