Spotify through iPhone Vs Shield App

[bpranay]

Hi Folks,
One fine day I was playing music from Spotify app on my iPhone via airplay on my AVR (heos) Spotify has separate app in nvidia shield TV pro. I thought since nvidia is directly connected to my AVR through hdmi so music would be better. The music played through Nvidia’s spotify app was really poor as compared to the music played on iPhone’s spotify app. I have spotify’s subscription-ship.

I fell to understand why is that so. Am I missing somewhere or doing something wrong in some settings? The music played through iPhone sounded smooth, loseless with each instrument sounding separately contrary to what it sounds on Nvidia shield that’s too dull. Anyone tried this before and faced the same issue?

Also I can’t get to play with the equaliser settings in shield tv pro as there are none.

 

[jagadeeshwarank]

Hey, not a Spotify subscriber so I don't haven answers for any of your queries. Just adding in my queries, which might help others give better answer,
1. Have you tried spotify connect through the Android TV app? (This makes use of your HDMI)
2. Or Spotify connect through the AVR? (This makes use of HEOS)

It is generally said the Audio through Shield's hdmi would be decoded by Android OS which most have found inferior.
Personally I feel the Spotify connect through the AVR(HEOS) should sound better.

Additionally do check if the audio settings for both methods you tried are same. Some times we might have one in pure direct(2.0) and the other in Stereo ( engaging 2.1 with Multieq enabled) resulting in the differences. AVR tends to save the sound configurations for different inputs(HEOS or HDMI in your case).

 

[sud98]

I too find the sound quality better in heos(using my android phone) than spotify in nvidia although its not a huge difference. Play with your shield settings (passthrough) to see if it improves.

 

[bpranay]

Hey, not a Spotify subscriber so I don't haven answers for any of your queries. Just adding in my queries, which might help others give better answer,
1. Have you tried spotify connect through the Android TV app? (This makes use of your HDMI)
2. Or Spotify connect through the AVR? (This makes use of HEOS)

It is generally said the Audio through Shield's hdmi would be decoded by Android OS which most have found inferior.
Personally I feel the Spotify connect through the AVR(HEOS) should sound better.

Additionally do check if the audio settings for both methods you tried are same. Some times we might have one in pure direct(2.0) and the other in Stereo ( engaging 2.1 with Multieq enabled) resulting in the differences. AVR tends to save the sound configurations for different inputs(HEOS or HDMI in your case).

Hi,
Thanks for the response.

1) Nvidia shield as you know has an android tv interface. So I had downloaded spotify on Nvidia Shield TV Pro which is connected to my AVR via HDMI cable. The music through this channel is quite inferior.

2) whenever I play it through HEOS or airplay through my iPhone, it sounds good.

 

[jagadeeshwarank]

1) Nvidia shield as you know has an android tv interface. So I had downloaded spotify on Nvidia Shield TV Pro which is connected to my AVR via HDMI cable. The music through this channel is quite inferior.

2) whenever I play it through HEOS or airplay through my iPhone, it sounds good.

Then my guess is right.

Also did you try check the audio settings for each of the above mode? i.e Did you check by keeping both(Heos and HDMI) in Music(Stereo) mode or pure direct ? This could be the other reason.

 

[bpranay]

Then my guess is right.

Also did you try check the audio settings for each of the above mode? i.e Did you check by keeping both(Heos and HDMI) in Music(Stereo) mode or pure direct ? This could be the other reason.

Yeah. Everything checked. Perhaps android app on nvidia doesn’t support high res audio.

 

[bpranay]

I too find the sound quality better in heos(using my android phone) than spotify in nvidia although its not a huge difference. Play with your shield settings (passthrough) to see if it improves.

It’s already on passthrough settings. Tweaked it many times but no difference.

 

[bpranay]

Can i check which one do you use? Im using Spotify now and reason is because of the equaliser settings.

iPhone has only one app named Spotify.

 

[xewecan]

Hey, not a Spotify subscriber so I don't haven answers for any of your queries. Just adding in my queries, which might help others give better answer,
1. Have you tried spotify connect through the Android TV app? (This makes use of your HDMI)
2. Or Spotify connect through the AVR? (This makes use of HEOS)

It is generally said the Audio through Shield's hdmi would be decoded by Android OS which most have found inferior.
Personally I feel the Spotify connect through the AVR(HEOS) should sound better.

Additionally, do check if the audio settings for both methods you tried are the same. Sometimes we might have one in pure direct (2.0) and, according to https://yahoo-mobile.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html, the other in Stereo (engaging 2.1 with MultEQ enabled), resulting in the differences. AVR tends to save the sound configurations for different inputs (HEOS or HDMI in your case).

The drop in audio quality is likely due to how the Spotify app on the NVIDIA Shield handles audio output. It may be using compressed or resampled audio and lacks EQ or proper bit-perfect output. In contrast, your iPhone via AirPlay to the AVR likely streams higher-quality audio and allows the AVR to handle decoding more effectively. This is why the iPhone sounds smoother and more detailed. You're not doing anything wrong—it's just a limitation of the Shield's Spotify app and Android TV audio handling.

 

[mgdelhi]

Even I noticed that audio quality on my Samsung soundbar is poor if connected through fire TV stick or Nvidia shield's Spotify app but much better if played on chromecast audio and connected through optical input on soundbar.

 

[dvraghavan]

The drop in audio quality is likely due to how the Spotify app on the NVIDIA Shield handles audio output. It may be using compressed or resampled audio and lacks EQ or proper bit-perfect output. In contrast, your iPhone via AirPlay to the AVR likely streams higher-quality audio and allows the AVR to handle decoding more effectively. This is why the iPhone sounds smoother and more detailed. You're not doing anything wrong—it's just a limitation of the Shield's Spotify app and Android TV audio handling.

The AVR likely has an inbuilt Spotify endpoint. So when playing Spotify on phone and selecting the AVR from the Speaker list, the actual music is downloaded from Spotify servers to the AVR and played using the AVR's "client" for Spotify. This would be naturally better.