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Possibly yes. Some research I made showed that lower resolution to reduce streaming bandwidth (e.g. AAC128) increases the chance of intersample peaks, which can translate into saturated analog sound (crackles). This also explains why lowering the digital volume slightly avoids this: the maximum...

Well, more mysteries: I used an offer for free Spotify Premium for a period. Guess: same setup, volume normalisation to ON, WiiM to full digital volume on optical and no crackle at all. Maybe crackles are ...reserved for those who don't pay? Puzzling.

Unfortunately I cannot test this. On trying to link my Alexa account to Spotify I get the message: not available due to geo-restrictions. Something warped goes on with Alexa accounts. My original account is UK but the Echo Studio under the same account is under another country and remains...

Just verified via the Spotify forums: Normalisation only works when playing on the local device, not when casting via a network.

Well, easy to say but... I am using Amazon's Echo Studio and the DAC is integrated. Should this be the case, would it not behave similarly when I play music via my NAS? No crackles there at all, and neither when playing diectly via Amazon music. The problem is specific to Spotify.

Well, things have changed! Via an extended playlist session in Spotify, with the volume normalisation to OFF, I started hearing crackles again after some 10-12 songs. I also saw that it is not possible to turn on/off normalisation while casting - button greyed out. Still, it is possible to do so...

I am not a fan of Spotify myself; I think their applications are badly done, even different from device to device, and frequently unstable. Probably you are a victim of one of these "variants", but I assume that a grayed out button means no normalisation, so you should be OK.

I used the standard applications in Android and Windows. Both incorporate Spotify Connect for casting. The settings menu showed a sliding button on volume normalisation, which could be turned to off.

I think that the Spotify crackles problem has been solved. All Spotify applications (mobile or Windows) have a setting on volume normalisation, which is turned on by default. Once this was turned to off, all crackles disappeared. Here is an explanation I propose, along the lines of what I wrote...

This is an interesting idea. Assuming that Spotify applies normalisation based on loudness, their algorithm may rely on RMS power measurements: this could create peaks outside the upper limits, which could result in successive (16 bits at value 1) peaks (saturation/clipping) translated by the...

The specs of the Echo Studio SPDIF input are for up to 48KHz/24bits and this is what I have set in the Wiim. It is a serious omission by Amazon that the speaker cannot accept a higher frequency SPDIF input and downsample the signal itself, although it does this what playing directly 96/24...

I have noticed a similar problem. When I cast from Spotify (Windows computer or Android tablet) to my Wiim mini with optical output connected to an Amazon Echo Studio, and fixed volume chosen, the sound frequently (not always) is crackly - sounds as if it saturates at the peaks. When I play...