Wiim Ultra not showing bitrate info anymore?

[Kevnizzle]

Owner of the Wiim Ultra here since July. Since I've had this, the screen always displayed the bitrate information, as seen in the picture below taken on September 14th, even showing an 'actual' 24-bit song after Spotify added losless playback.

All of a sudden, since last week, the screen on my ultra does not display any bitrate data anymore . The picture taken below has been taken today. When this exact EP released on September 26th, I also played it and the screen definitely showed the bitrate info then. No matter what content I now play through Spotify connect, the bitrate information is never shown.

My ultra and Spotify have the following versions;


Has anyone else experienced the same problem within the last week after updating Spotify or the Ultra itself?
Thank you in advance for informing and hopefully helping out.

 

[SKApretto71]

I never saw bitrate on Spotify in my Ultra. I cannot anymore see bitrate on Qobuz either, only Radio Paradise and Qobuz via WiiM app (not Connect) has it

Qobuz Connect


Spotify Connect


Radio Paradise or
Qibuz via WiiM App

 

[slartibartfast]

Owner of the Wiim Ultra here since July. Since I've had this, the screen always displayed the bitrate information, as seen in the picture below taken on September 14th, even showing an 'actual' 24-bit song after Spotify added losless playback.
View attachment 27804
All of a sudden, since last week, the screen on my ultra does not display any bitrate data anymore . The picture taken below has been taken today. When this exact EP released on September 26th, I also played it and the screen definitely showed the bitrate info then. No matter what content I now play through Spotify connect, the bitrate information is never shown.
View attachment 27800
My ultra and Spotify have the following versions;
View attachment 27801View attachment 27803

Has anyone else experienced the same problem within the last week after updating Spotify or the Ultra itself?
Thank you in advance for informing and hopefully helping out.

Blame Spotify. They don't want the technical info displayed.

 

[Kevnizzle]

Blame Spotify. They don't want the technical info displayed.

Is this really it? I mean, before last week, this bitrate info was always displayed with Spotify content.
So you're telling me that something changed in the past week with Spotifys' 'rules' and therefore our Wiim devices are not showing bitrate info anymore?

 

[slartibartfast]

Is this really it? I mean, before last week, this bitrate info was always displayed with Spotify content.
So you're telling me that something changed in the past week with Spotifys' 'rules' and therefore our Wiim devices are not showing bitrate info anymore?

I am not sure the info displayed before was accurate. It was requested recently on the Spotify Forum

Display the individual bit rate for each song while streaming.

Display the individual bit rate for each song while streaming. With the new lossless update audiophiles want to see this appear on their screen. I would like to make sure that I get the best streaming quality audio out of music, perhaps see where the bottlenecks are and perhaps the need to...

community.spotify.com

 

[Burnside]

Is this really it? I mean, before last week, this bitrate info was always displayed with Spotify content.
So you're telling me that something changed in the past week with Spotifys' 'rules' and therefore our Wiim devices are not showing bitrate info anymore?

Yeah, it’s really it. To conform to Spotify’s eSDK UI guidelines, the bitrate etc for a Spotify Connect session isn’t shown and has/will be replaced by a “lossless” badge where appropriate. The 700kbps figure was fixed anyway, so was incorrect. It’s been that way for lossy Spotify for a while too, the display just hadn’t been revised for the lossless service. WiiM have said they could have estimated it from the track size and duration, but that would contravene Spotify’s recommendations. The other streaming services don’t have the same restrictions.

 

[SKApretto71]

Blame Spotify. They don't want the technical info displayed.

If this is... Why Qobuz Connect as well does not display it either, when using Qibuz Connect, and only does when using WiiM Home app?

 

[HakanC]

Since I've had this, the screen always displayed the bitrate information, as seen in the picture below taken on September 14th, even showing an 'actual' 24-bit song after Spotify added losless playback.

All of a sudden, since last week, the screen on my ultra does not display any bitrate data anymore . The picture taken below has been taken today. When this exact EP released on September 26th, I also played it and the screen definitely showed the bitrate info then. No matter what content I now play through Spotify connect, the bitrate information is never shown.

My ultra and Spotify have the following versions;


Has anyone else experienced the same problem within the last week after updating Spotify or the Ultra itself?

Exactly the same problem for me with my WiiM Ultra
Both Tidal and Quobuz still shows sampling and bitrate data
(But I have no pictures)

 

[Burnside]

If this is... Why Qobuz Connect as well does not display it either, when using Qibuz Connect, and only does when using WiiM Home app?

Qobuz Connect shows the bit depth and sample rate, as well as a hires badge.

 

[Kevnizzle]

Yeah, it’s really it. To conform to Spotify’s eSDK UI guidelines, the bitrate etc for a Spotify Connect session isn’t shown and has/will be replaced by a “lossless” badge where appropriate. The 700kbps figure was fixed anyway, so was incorrect. It’s been that way for lossy Spotify for a while too, the display just hadn’t been revised for the lossless service. WiiM have said they could have estimated it from the track size and duration, but that would contravene Spotify’s recommendations. The other streaming services don’t have the same restrictions.

Aah that sucks that Spotify has such restrictions when using Spotify connect (really wonder what their 'benefit' would be for restricting displaying this info -_-"), but thank you very much for this detailed answer! Do you perhaps know if Wiim devices with a screen will start incorporating this 'losless badge' and if so, when that will happen? So far, none of my content has shown such a badge yet (since the introduction of Spotify losless) so I take it that Wiim has not yet updated their devices to start showing this.
Really a shame of Spotify as I quite liked seeing this type of information on the Wiim screen instead of having to take a look at my phone to see the playback quality.

 

[Burnside]

Cheers. I don’t know when WiiM will rationalise this tbh but the sooner they’re consistent across the board with Spotify, the better. Given that the bit depth is shown in the Spotify app, it does seem a strange constraint

 

[SKApretto71]

Qobuz Connect shows the bit depth and sample rate, as well as a hires badge.

Correct, but not the bitrate. The bitrate appears only when using WiiM Home app to stream. If you use Qibuz App via Connect, it shows no bitrate.
Subject of the thread is about bitrate, nit bit depth not sample rate.

 

[Burnside]

Correct, but not the bitrate. The bitrate appears only when using WiiM Home app to stream. If you use Qibuz App via Connect, it shows no bitrate.
Subject of the thread is about bitrate, nit bit depth not sample rate.

I would argue that bitrate really tells you nothing about the “quality” of a lossless track. If a track is compressed losslessly, decompressing it results in the original being restored. All a bitrate tells you is how much data (not audio) compression has taken place and that’s purely a factor of the track content and FLAC compression level - it has no bearing at all on the audio quality. I therefore see the loss of a pointless statistic as no loss at all.

Bitrate is perhaps of more relevance with a lossy track where the lower the bitrate, the more information has been discarded and the poorer the quality of the audio.

 

[SKApretto71]

I would argue that bitrate really tells you nothing about the “quality” of a lossless track. If a track is compressed losslessly, decompressing it results in the original being restored. All a bitrate tells you is how much data (not audio) compression has taken place and that’s purely a factor of the track content and FLAC compression level - it has no bearing at all on the audio quality. I therefore see the loss of a pointless statistic as no loss at all.

Bitrate is perhaps of more relevance with a lossy track where the lower the bitrate, the more information has been discarded and the poorer the quality of the audio.

Agreed. Just wanted to stick to the thread subject. From an and user perspective, just adding the badge for Lossless would be relevant - even if I find the Spotify approach of categorizing the same both 24bit and 16bit as Lossless annoying. I'll love to distinguish 16bit/44.1kHz as CD and 24bit/44.1kHz as HiRes; both Lossless, but with a flag do distinguish.
Qobuz does it that way and I find it great.

 

[Wiimer]

Agreed. Just wanted to stick to the thread subject. From an and user perspective, just adding the badge for Lossless would be relevant - even if I find the Spotify approach of categorizing the same both 24bit and 16bit as Lossless annoying. I'll love to distinguish 16bit/44.1kHz as CD and 24bit/44.1kHz as HiRes; both Lossless, but with a flag do distinguish.
Qobuz does it that way and I find it great.

Unless Spotify defines high-resolution audio, it will be difficult to display the HiRes indicator on WiiM devices..

 

[SKApretto71]

Unless Spotify defines high-resolution audio, it will be difficult to display the HiRes indicator on WiiM devices..

Agreed. Feels like the felt pressured to have Lossless streaming, not really caring for the split 16-bit vs 24-bit as the average audience would not care (probably). Hopefully once the service is well established, some fine tuning will occur.
I'm surprised by finding even very limited / old releases available in CD quality since day 1 in Italy - and I really mean "small", like artists with less than 1500 streams per month - far better transition that Tidal when they dropped MQA but took them several months after announcement to really complete.

 

[harkpabst]

Technically (and trivially), the difference between an audio file being transferred with lossless or lossy compression is the deciding factor to call it lossless or not, of course.

Hi-Res and lossless are totally different topics.

 

[HakanC]

Agreed. Just wanted to stick to the thread subject. From an and user perspective, just adding the badge for Lossless would be relevant - even if I find the Spotify approach of categorizing the same both 24bit and 16bit as Lossless annoying. I'll love to distinguish 16bit/44.1kHz as CD and 24bit/44.1kHz as HiRes; both Lossless, but with a flag do distinguish.
Qobuz does it that way and I find it great.

If i play using Spotify Connect in my Ultra the Spotify app opens up and in that I can find the bit info

 

[SKApretto71]

If i play using Spotify Connect in my Ultra the Spotify app opens up and in that I can find the bit info

This is correct. What we were debating is if there is a reason why data is not displayed in the Ultra screen.
Namely, not just bit depth (16bit / 24bit) or sampling rate (44.1kHz only in Spotify, but other platforms have it variable up to 192 kHz) but as well bitrate (how many bit of data are transferred per second, like 1000kbit/sec or any other figure). This is a measure of how much a track is compressed, that for FLAC is a measure of 'complexity' of the data as there is no data loss anyhow, while for OggVirbis/MP3 (non Lossless) is a measure of quality of the Stream itself. In both scenarios, usually the higher bitrate the better, assuming compression algorithm same setup.

 

[Burnside]

I raised a ticket asking WiiM if they could include the bit depth (/not/ bitrate) in the display and wiim apps for lossless tracks given the Spotify app has that info and they replied “We’re currently developing this feature and plan to include it in a future update”.