You get what you pay for!

[Cricketbat70]

As I have mentioned on other posts I have at work an old Denon PMA250 MK2 with a Harmon Kardon Bluetooth receiver for streaming Spotify from either my phone or my son's phone. I have always been of the opinion it's compressed music going over Bluetooth which is going to compress it more so you won't hear much difference between the phones boy was I wrong.
I don't but expensive phones, for a while I used an Honor 10 lite £150, my son has an Asus ROG phone 3 £500.
Boy the difference, as my son said my phone sounded so flat. His ROG just sounded so much better across the board. I now have a Motorola can't remember the model but it's a budget 5G model that I got for £170 from Argos £30 off the original £200 it has Dolby Atmos which I find stupid in a phone when it was designed for AV but it sounds significantly better than my old Honor even with the atmos turned off. Although if Atmos is on I put it in auto as the "music" preset sounds really muffled, a poorly executed preset that one. My son's ROG is still the best sounding if our phones. But any way really surprised at the sound quality difference between the phones.

 

[DCarmi]

Your phone has Bluetooth 4.2 where the Asus has v5.0. This in itself should not make much difference to sound quality, though Bluetooth 5.0 has double the bandwidth.

I suspect the main difference is how the phone software/hardware is processing the audio. You can't really prove this easily because the Asus does not have a headphone socket.

However, you should be able to improve quality by using something like the Wiim mini and using Spotify Connect, rather than Bluetooth, even though the DAC in the Wiim is not that great but the device is pretty inexpensive.

The Denon does not have an onboard DAC, as far as I know, so a further improvement by getting a DAC would be possible.

 

[Messiah]

Also worth (and you may have already) checking the Spotify audio quality settings to make sure they are set to Very High etc.

 

[Cricketbat70]

Your phone has Bluetooth 4.2 where the Asus has v5.0. This in itself should not make much difference to sound quality, though Bluetooth 5.0 has double the bandwidth.

I suspect the main difference is how the phone software/hardware is processing the audio. You can't really prove this easily because the Asus does not have a headphone socket.

However, you should be able to improve quality by using something like the Wiim mini and using Spotify Connect, rather than Bluetooth, even though the DAC in the Wiim is not that great but the device is pretty inexpensive.

The Denon does not have an onboard DAC, as far as I know, so a further improvement by getting a DAC would be possible.

To be fair I've considered bringing in a spare Chromecast audio I have, still in its box unopened, (I bought a couple extra when they announced they were being discontinued) all. I know it can't handle the same bit rate as I wiim mini but it's got to better than Bluetooth .

 

[DCarmi]

CCAs will be much better than Bluetooth and will handle Spotify nicely.

 

[Cricketbat70]

CCAs will be much better than Bluetooth and will handle Spotify nicely.

Yeah I know they handle Spotify nicely I use two at home. One in my dining set up, an old Denon Mini Separates system and one plugged into my AV receiver in the front room. Front room CCA is connected using mini toslink to toslink and the dining room using 3.5mm to RCA as the old Denon doesn't have optical in.

 

[Winter]

To be fair I've considered bringing in a spare Chromecast audio I have, still in its box unopened, (I bought a couple extra when they announced they were being discontinued) all. I know it can't handle the same bit rate as I wiim mini but it's got to better than Bluetooth .

Hi. Done this my self .optical in on my audiolab 8300 cd balanced out into my senheizer hdvd 800 amp . It sounds superb with quobuz and to my ears betters my audiolab 6000 n . Incredible do it!