TOPIC:

Hello,

I'd like to know how the volume control is handled with the spotify connect feature.

What is the expected behavior?
Change volume in spotify app (connected to the shd) should change the master volume of the shd?
Change master volume in shd should change the volume in the spotify app?
Change volume in spotify app shouldn't so anything on the shd?
There is a setting in the spotify connect plug-in that allows to setup a startup volume. How this factor w.r.t the thing mentioned previously?

Best,
oursmagenta

I am not using spotify myself, but my children do. The were annoyed that they could not control the volume via the spotify app. The reason was that in the "Volumio Spotify Connect2" plugin the volume was set to fixed. After setting it to "linear" they now can control the volume.

But this does not control the SHD's main volume. So the music stream is reduced in volume in the spotify plugin, then delivered to the SHD's digital board and there again is volume reduced by the main volume. This means there are two places were the digital stream is processed to reduce the volume (at least in my understanding). This is sub optimal for the sound, but we do not really hear a difference. The best would be to keep the pugin volume at 100% (fixed) and only control the main volume via remote control or volumio's web frontend.

We did set the initial spotify volume to 75% to have a chance to turn the volume up a little bit in the spotify app. If you set it to 100% it would be better for the quality, but you only can reduce the volume this way. To turn it up you would need the remote control again.

Greetings
Gert

The SHD is a great product but volume control needs more thought. I use the squeezebox app and although it changes the main volume control of the SHD (just like using the remote would) it’s not in 0.5db increments. Instead nudging the volume in the app changes the SHD’s volume by anywhere between 1 and 4 dBs at a time. Quite frustrating. I can disable volume control in LMS and just use the remote but it’s a real shame I can’t control Volume from the squeezebox duet controller or the squeezebox app which obviously control all the main playback functions.

OK, I start to understand the rationale.
I guess, keeping the fixed volume on the connect plug-in (disabling the ability to turn down the volume in an upstream fashion, instead of downstream at the dac level) is fine with me.
Of course being able to modify the spotify volume in-app and see that it modify the master volume of the shd (in the internal dac's stage) would be pretty nice.

As above, although I have the capability to adjust volume using the control within the Volumio app (which I use for Qobuz and Radio Paradise) in practice I use the remote control instead as it works better.

As an aside, if audio quality is a primary concern I'd suggest switching away from using Spotify to an alternative streaming service that is at least CD quality (lossless). I appreciate there are upsides to using Spotify instead though, including the Spotify Connect option.