Spotify lossless and Sonos

Your Spotify account and subsequently the Spotify App has given you access to lossless.

You need Sonos to update with a firmware and possibly software (app) to enable Spotify lossless on Sonos hardware. 

I get the lossless message when using AirPlay, when using Spotify Connect or the Sonos app I do not.  What makes me think you’re truly getting lossless is that the Sonos device name precedes the lossless indicator.  When using AirPlay, the device name is replaced with AirPlay followed by lossless.

Interesting! What is your App Build # and Firmware Version #?

I never use the Sonos app but yesterday it said lossless was unavailable on my selected device - my Sonos and today it’s now an option 😵‍💫 I use AirPlay and it’s now there. 

I get the lossless message when using AirPlay, when using Spotify Connect or the Sonos app I do not.  What makes me think you’re truly getting lossless is that the Sonos device name precedes the lossless indicator.  When using AirPlay, the device name is replaced with AirPlay followed by lossless.

 

 

Spotify Connect is (simply worded) a small app running on the Sonos speaker itself, which is reporting the actual streaming quality back to the Spotify app on iOS, which in this scenario is just acting as a remote control. The Sonos speaker doesn't have lossless audio enabled yet in Spotify Connect, so this is why you don't see lossless there.

Why the Spotify iOS app says lossless in the case of AirPlay I don't know. It might really be lossless depending on what AirPlay version the app supports and the speaker you use.

Spotify used to support only AirPlay1 which was always lossless (i.e. just the connection from phone to speaker, not the source material), but Airplay2 (which allows streaming to multiple AirPlay speakers) *can be* lossy. Maybe they decided to keep the indicator for AirPlay simple (without 1/2) to avoid confusion for users who don't know the difference.

I think it's still confusing, because when I connect my bluetooth speaker or AirPods, Spotify displays the bluetooth device name preceding the Lossless indicator, just as with AirPlay in your screenshot, even though the connection is definitely not lossless.

Installed the new Sonos speaker update of today, was expecting losless but nothing changed in spotify settings for sonos

Since it wasn’t mentioned as a feature added in the release notes, I’m curious as to why you would expect it? 

Because they said October update

Ah, I see. There are likely many October updates, even if they happen every two weeks. I’d have thought adding such a large component would have been listed in the update notes. Perhaps I’m wrong, they do seem to do such a  poor job of providing update notes. 

Tom’s Guide has an evaluation of SPOTIFY lossless. Note the comment about data downloaded. If your data plan has limits, there could be a surprise after a few hours of listening.

Spotify already warns you about this when you select the quality, so it *should* not be a surprise, but I know most people don’t like to read annoying text ;-)