Spotify Premium - why so bassy?

[Mr Nad]

I have a 30 day trial of Spotify, and so far I am pretty chuffed with it. Virtually all the music I want to listen to is available, even the obscure stuff. Of course, a few pieces are missing, but that's no great deal.

I was playing the music from the PC into a low end Rotel amp and Tannoy Mercury MX1 book shelf speakers. The quality sounded good - exceptionally good - much better than I remember some of the tracks sounding when played back from CD/MD.

I recorded a couple of tracks to CD to listen to through the main system. Again, the sound was very pleasing indeed. But then I realised there was something amiss. The bass. Spotify has boosted it. It still sounds natural, but it's definitely boosted. A lot.

I compared a recording of Passengers by Elton John recorded from iTunes to the same from Spotify, and the evidence is clear to hear. Spotify boosts the bass.

Has anyone else notices this? It's spoiling an otherwise great service.

[Stratmangler]

It is not a high fidelity service, and never has been.
The compression they use is lossy, and they possibly work on a lowest common denominator basis to enhance the music provided by the service.

It's still a great way to hear new (to the listener) artists.

[hifinutt]

mmm, never noticed the bass but i do enjoy listening it, pretty good sound

[nat8808]

Bum. Why do they have to meddle and appeal to the lowest common denominator?

Next they'll add a super premium service where they promise not to spoil things.

[jonnyd]

This isn't something I've noticed with spotify and most of my listening is done on there now. I do have duplicates of a lot things on iTunes in mp3 and alac, and comparing them, i can sometimes hear differences between spotify and alac if I listen for the differences but not with spotify enhancing the bass.

On one track I compared again after reaading this last night, Prelude by The Decemberists from The Hazards of Love, the bass levels were incredibly similar, maybe the spotify version even lacked a bit of depth/fullness of bass to my ears (compared to alac) but the spread of sound across high to low was the same apart from that. Maybe they've got differently mastered versions of some songs. My guess is that the Elton John track could have had a number of masters or different releases by now?

[Mr Nad]

I think I may have found part of the problem. By default spotify normalises all the tracks, but this can be turned off.

I realised something was amiss, not just because of the bass level, but because at the star of every track there was a moment when it was quiet, but rapidly increased to the normalised level. It sounded a bit like the the days when I recorded my favourite hits from the Top 40 every Sunday, and I'd discovered the record level control on the Amstrad tower system.

Anyway, I'm giving it another go. All in all I'm pretty chuffed with being able to listen to all these hard to find tracks. And I've rediscovered The Who. Last heard in 1981, on the motorway to Wales, listening on a mono cassette player.