Spotify bit perfect to external dac

[chrisS]

Apologies if this has been covered already, if so could someone give me a link to it, i have just bough a HRT headstreamer used, and some Kef headphones for a late night listening system, i have foobar 2000 on a win 7 pro laptop, i would like to stream spotify to dac bit perfect bypassing windows mixer, i stress i do not want to store tracks in foobar playlist, just pass the incoming stream to Headstreamer bypassing the windows mixer, is this possible

 

Thanks for replies in advance

 

Chris

[chrisS]

I should add i have spotify premium 320 kbs i believe the compression protoco used by spotify is vogg orbiss q9 ?

 

 

Chris

[chrisS]

hi wklie many thanks for your reply, spotify was already switched to high quality, i didn't know about about the normalization volume thing, needless to say that's now turned off, i guess bypassing the mixer would allow us to copy stuff ?, is their any value in using a later version of windows ( Win 10 ) i thought i had read somewhere than Win 10 mixer detracts less than earlier versions.

 

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Hi John many thanks for that, apologies for tardiness in reply, been a bit poorly for a couple of days,  not sure i know how to do what you have suggested, could you maybe talk me through it via pm , or possibly a more detailed explanation here, i am sure it would be of benefit to others as well

 

 

Thanks Chris

[chrisS]

Ok i now have LMS ver 9.1 the spotty plugin and upnp plugin, the upnp plugin for foobar 2000 which is the latest version the foobar plugin is brand new only written this month, i have no idea how to interface it all, Les if you have a simpler way i am all ears.

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Ok now have LMS 9.2 all the correct plugins for LMS and Foobar, just need a hint as to how they all interface with each other, is their some setting that when spotify is started that LMS starts etc how do i work it all.

 

Cheers Chris 

[chrisS]

Ok been playing with this for days i have everything configured as instructed, but no luck, the headstreamer hasn't arrived yet ( coming from the States by boat i should think ) so in the meantime using my J Kenny MK 3 USB-SPDiF converter and a Beresford Bushmaster, to have sometrhing for Foobar to output to, can get no sound, everything is running 

 

 

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Ok did that, maybe getting somewhere in LMS theirs a remote web control tab clicking on that gets spotify app. click on that an edited version of my spotify appears , click on artists only 5 appear, out of prob 40, in the top right hand corner Foobar 2000Upnp renderer is listed as player, but i can't play anything

[chrisS]

Ok i think this thing is just bloody minded, i have sound now out through |Foobar to USB to amp, i  started it and the foobar was shown as player, managed to start a track, the volume control was grayed out before at 0 prob why no sound, but suddenly came alive, anyway as i pressed play it flipped over to the other player listed my Sony TV and started playing, upset the mrs as she was watching it at the time, shut the machine down, restarted, this time the player stayed as Foobar, and hey presto sound in headphones, it does not interface with Spotify properly though, i only have a small part of my artist library listed, and can only play single tracks, and not the everything by the artist, as in Spotify proper, i have not changed a single setting on LMS or Foobar, this is just what is happening.

 

Edit ok figured out how to play all the tracks by any artist, but still only have 6 random artists listed

 

Second edit, also LMS says track being streamed at 705 kbs !!!!! converted to flac

 

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Ok have attempted to show some screenshots of how things are configured, the only thing i have changed is in LMS file setting i had disabled flac but forgot to click apply doh, now rectified, as i said it has a mind of its own, i re-booted the machine a couple of times, and on one occasion the Foobar renderer popped up in Spotify, and i had a green strip along the bottom saying it was working, but no sound output from Foo either to DS or to my connected USB-SPDiF converter, taking a WAV music file from hard drive  to Foo instantly gives output, i cannot get the machine to repeat loading the Renderer as a client in Spotify, despite several re-boots, so what have i done wrong.

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Ok believe it might be sorted, wasn't aware of the spotty spotify for squeezebox settitngs tab, went into that, just a picture of the spotify devices panel, had to enter my spotify acc details, to get the page you show, then was able to configure it, now i have situation shown by following 2 screenshots, so how on earth was the foobar renderer coming up on the spotify devices tab sometimes, without the spotty squeezebox settings being configured !!!!!, also couple of smaller points i didn't know about was the 20 secs startup, and the need to start a track in spotify, then click on foobar device to get sound.

 

Many many thanks John for your perseverance with me, and for the amount of time you have put in to help me out. i know it has been a trial, what is easy to you, isn't so easy for an old fart approaching 70 like myself

 

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Ok maybe spoke to soon, configured it all on the Lenovo mini laptop Win 7 that i actually will be using when the headstreamer turns up, have it working, have sound output, but in Artists on Spotify, when the first track ends and the next track starts playing the sound stops, the track is still playing but no sound,

 

Edit, if you open LMS remote web tab, when the track is changing, the next track loads at top of page, the progress bar jumps to the middle of the track, then sticks and moves backwards and forwards, see screenshot, not of the movement obviously

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Had high hopes for that one John, seemed very likely, went right up to 9000 ms no difference, it happens on both machines win 7 and 10

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Any more thoughts ?

 

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Hi John thanks for that, i have got the latest version of Foobar, considered rolling it back to to 1:3 to see if it made a difference, may do yet, anyway was playing with it and switched off gapless playback in Foobar, that seemed to work, track advancing fine, except it decides to track advance to a different artist after a couple of tracks !!! and on one occasion threw up the error in the screenshot shown.

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Ok it wasn't changing artists within Spotify as i briefly thought, Foobar had a playlist stored from when i last played some WAV files from my hard drive, it was playing a couple of tracks from Spotify then switching to the stored list !!!, cleared foobar stopped that issue, still failing to change tracks reliably, increased Buffer to 2990 ms again plays a few tracks now before sound fails on track advance. do you think its worth rolling Foobar back to 1:3

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Hi John, unchecking gapless playback in LMS fixed it, it now changes track, if anything a little to quickly, the only issue left was that it didn't go on to playing similar genre tracks when the playist by the selected artist ends, did a bit of playing, and in LMS under Performance ,set database memory config to Max, that seems to have cured that, see screenshot of where i unchecked Gapless playback in Foo, it isn't specific as to which part it works on, just looks like it is the Gapless playback function for whole programme.

 

Are you saying that i can run 2 copies of Foobar 2000 on the same machine, ? that might be very desirable, 1 set up for Spotty and another to play Wav files from a hard drive, how would you do that.

 

Cheers Chris

[chrisS]

Hi John been away for a few days, but back to playing with it today, have 2 copies of Foobar running now, see image, only snag with that was getting Wasapi loaded to components, if i clicked on get more components in the programme itself when you click install it brings up the first copy of Foobar, and puts it there, i had to take it from downloads and drag and drop it into components tray, on 2nd portable copy, that worked.

 

Its all  working now, except that the spotty system, will no longer play similar genre tracks when an artists playlist ends, can't figure out why, no settings have changed, it just doesn't do it anymore.

 

 

Cheers Chris