How to get the best Spotify sound quality on your favourite headphones?
Some time ago I noticed that getting the best sound quality from Spotify when I listen to it on my headphones requires more and more strange combinations in the settings. The topic covered by this short article might seem weird at first but I have not found a comprehensive solution and thus wanted to share mine with you.
I am no audiophile but music is a very significant part of my life and I spent a serious amount of time listening to it. I started using Spotify sometime in 2012 and I remember hooking up my then-new Sol Republic Tracks headphones to the iPad Mini. It did not take too much settings to get a good sound. Since that time, I was changing both the playing devices and headphones. It was to my huge surprise when I bought brand new Sennheiser headphones with noise-reduction last year and connected them to my iPhone. The sound was extremely flat and when I set the Spotify equalizer to my favorite settings, there was a nasty noise with each bass. I tried using some 3rd party apps that connect to Spotify but enhance sound themselves. This was a partial success, as they required a separate paid subscription and the integration was not perfect (for example, songs saved offline in Spotify did not show up.
Finally, after playing with all the possible settings, I believe I found a solution to get the best possible sound quality and listening experience. Here we go, there are just three steps.
1. Set the volume level to “Quiet”
In order to this, you need to go to settings and select “Playback > Volume level” and pick “Quiet”. This might seem strange if we are looking for some deep sounds but not selecting this particular option seemed to cause most of bass disruption.
2. Setting the equalizer
The next step is setting the equalizer. It can be accessed through “Settings > Playback > Equalizer”. While setting the balance of each sound frequency depends on your preferences and types of music you listen to, below you can find the example of my favourite settings (works nice for EDM, Rap, Pop, etc.). In general, left side of the equalizer represents the low sounds (bass) and the right side high sounds (trebles). If you do not feel like setting this yourself, there is a wide selection of predefined presets.
It is crucial to select both sliders, namely “Equalizer” and “Also apply to podcasts”. The latter one seems strange but for some reason some songs were not following the equalizer settings when this was not selected. I do not know if this is some bug in the Spotify release I am currently using of it it has to do with songs tagging (and being treated as podcasts). Anyway, selecting both those options guarantees that our equalizer settings will be applied to all the songs we are listening to.
3. Setting Audio Quality
Last but not least, the audio quality setting should be set. This can be found in “Settings > Audio Quality”. The quality should be set to “Very high” (of course as long as your bandwith allows). Please mind that there is a separate audio quality setting for WiFi and Cellular streaming.
The screenshots and menu sections come from Spotify 8.5.86.739 ran on iPhone 11 with software version 14.2. Please mind that there is a separate equalizer in the iPhone settings but it does not apply to music streamed from Spotify (it works only for Apple Music).
If you managed to get to the very end of this article, there is an EXTRA feature waiting for you — all the steps described herein not only work for your headphones listening experience but also for you car audio (both using CarPlay and regular USB/Bluetooth connection). You can thank me later…;)
I hope that the three easy steps described here will allow you to get the most of your favourite headphones and make you enjoy the music as much as possible. Thanks!
