After years of rumors and false starts I thought this may deserve a new thread
Spotify Lossless is REALLY HERE and slowly rolling out now to Premium subscribers.
Does it mean anything for dCS owners ???
Well, we do have a family account as all other family members here use it (especially the children). So I guess I could try it again and compare to Qobuz.
Early reporting suggests that some devices that support Spotify Connect will be supported on launch, but others will come “later”. Anyone know whether dCS devices will work immediately or require an update?
With Lossless, you can now stream tracks in up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC , unlocking greater detail across nearly every song available on Spotify. So you can enjoy new releases and your favorite tracks, in the highest quality, while being immersed in the music.
A little underwhelming 
1 Like
As users enable lossless on their devices, it may take a moment for the track to play. But once it’s cached and loaded, you are ready to listen
Actually Rob, it’s exactly the same for Tidal and Qobuz, they all use external caching Service Providers - AWS CloudFront mostly and Fastly for Tidal and Qobuz, and Akamai for Spotify.
If the album you select has not been played in your particular geographic location, then it takes a split-second for the stream to begin caching first and then stream to you. It just happens so fast that you rarely notice it, but pick a totally obscure album and you just might notice the start delay compared to commonly played tracks.
3 Likes
Has the lossless option landed in anybodies App yet?
…checking regularly - nothing. I’m in the UK, so was expecting it during September. App updated to latest version a few days ago, maybe will get toggled on for me soon.
I’ve been keeping an eye on this: at some point over the weekend, the FLAC option appeared on my account. After enabling it in Spotify settings (Media Quality), it will play to your dCS device without any changes on our end. We expected this to be the case, but haven’t been in a position to check until now!
EDIT: It appears I posted too soon. Sorry, as I mentioned, I’ve only just got my hands (ears) on it. Basic playback is fine, but having exercised it somewhat we’ve found a couple of bugs already. We’ll give this a proper shakedown now on all our products and announce when things are all correctly working
6 Likes
Interesting video by goldensound (nice views of his dCS Lina stack).
Spotify Lossless has a problem
Is Spotify Lossless really lossless when using Spotify connect on dCS?
1 Like
Literally I didn’t know that before. that these delay isn’t the service itself but the CDN caching process. It really makes sense why popular tracks feel instant while obscure ones sometimes take a beat longer.
1 Like
Having worked in Digital technology for a long time, I’m seldom surprised. Akamai’s ability to exploit their dominant position with off the chain pricing never ceases to amaze. Right up there with SAP, Oracle and ServiceNow.
I could see lossless option on Spotify app, however, unable to confirm whether upsampler is getting lossless.
Once we cast to upsampler the lossless text besides the song played is gone and neither mosaic nor Spotify let’s verify. Also unable to find atleast one song in 24bit to verify lossless is really working with upsampler.
Played 2 dozen songs all show 16bit. On the Spotify community one guy posted album: Sentimental Journey by Nils Landgren. is available in 24bit, efforts invain, it’s still 16bit song only.
I always upsampled Spotify to DSDx2 so, couldn’t recollect differences then and now 
1 Like
They’re still #1 from a global CDN revenue perspective, but AWS CloudFront is fast catching up (which explains why AKAM is down nearly 40% over the last 12 months ).
1 Like
Hi John, any updates on this?
Is my assumption correct that Spotify connect needs to enable lossless to come through to the DAC?
For context: I tested qobuz against Spotify lossless yesterday and the difference was still big, like nothing had changed in Spotify.
Hi, welcome to the community!
I’m not able to give any timescales, but I have sent my findings to our software team to look into.
Yes, lossless needs to be enabled from Spotify’s side of things, our DACs have no control over what format is sent to them. As far as I’m aware, our investigation here still needs to determine to what extent the issues we’re getting are on our end or Spotify’s.
1 Like
Thank you John!
I would like to report a problem I’ve encountered with Spotify’s lossless playback on my Rossini Apex.
When playing 24-bit lossless tracks from Spotify using Spotify Connect, the audio consistently exhibits high distortion. However, 16-bit tracks play without any issue.
If I play the same 24-bit tracks directly via a USB connection instead of Spotify Connect, the playback is clean with no distortion. I have also tested the same 24-bit Spotify tracks on several other streamers, and they all play normally through Spotify Connect — the problem only occurs on the Rossini Apex.
Below is an example of one of the problematic 24-bit tracks:
1 Like
A few posts above in this thread, dCS has already mentioned about identifying an issue and currently working on resolving it.
1 Like
Good to know that dCS is already working on this particular problem. I just wanted to share my experience because the loud distortion really surprised me — I had to rush to turn down the volume, worried it might damage my speakers. Hopefully this serves as a caution for others to check their playlists and remove any rare 24-bit tracks for now.