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Deezer HiFi icon disappears when I stream to Chromecast Audio

H
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Hi ,

The HiFi icon is visible otherwise, but it disappears all of a sudden when I start casting to my chromecast audio.

Does this mean the audio isn't HiFi anymore while casting?

I'm on deezer beta btw  

Rudi 3 years ago

Hey @semektet 

So I've got a reply from our developers. It's normal and intended behaviour. Once you start casting, the logo "leaves" the app and shows up on the album cover in your TV, for example. Because your device isn't a TV, you don't see that. But your actually still streaming FLAC :relaxed: thank you for your patience and for your understanding!

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S
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@dteezle 

 

It's definitely not a hardware limitation. Chromecast can receive ATMOS tracks which are way bigger. Additionally, as mentioned, my AVR was what tipped me off to the low-quality. If it can't cast tomthat properly, it means something is broken with Deezer. 

 

I doubt this will ever get fixed (other than if they are reading this to contradict me) since they erroneously said its fine and haven't addressed it since. 

D
Rank

@SyCoREAPER just tested this too and definitely get the same results.

I have a second router with nothing connected to it so I can isolate traffic to playing from Deezer, I setup bandwidth monitoring and tested HIFI through the phone connected to this network.

The songs played at HIFI around 50 MB a song (not Mb)

Phone HIFI data usage,  each block represents the song buffering

I then sent to chromecast on my google TV connected to this network. The HIFI labelled disappeared from phone but crucially it does show it on the TV. However it was not playing HIFI, playing 320Kbps I believe

Chromecast in Google TV data usage,  each block represents the song buffering

You can see on the second chart it’s just one or two lines, approx 10 MB a song which is what you would expect from 320Kbps.

It’s a bit of a shame because I listen to majority of my music via chromecasts and wanted HIFI for that. Specifically I have a chromecast audio connected to a HIFI where I wanted to benefit from the superior sound. 

I then thought it might just be a limitation of chromecast for certain devices as the chromecast audio offers a setting for “Full Dynamic Range”. I guess this compression happens device side rather than requesting a lower quality version but to check I tested playing  HIFI on chromecast audio but the result was the same.

Chromecast audio with full dynamic ranged enabled

Tbh because of the google compression I think it doesn’t matter for most CC devices if HIFI works or it gets the high quality but for people who are using devices that offer Full Dynamic Range, it would be good to have this feature working.

I might see if I can debug the chromecast device and get the actually audio link and see if there is anything evident in there for what is being sent. Feels like deezer is just passing the wrong file URLs to chromecast

S
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Update to above. 

I further validated this. Discovered my AVR (same device used for casting) has Deezer built in.

 

Started a song. Plays FLAC at full 44.1kHz/16bit per the interface. 

Went into router again to monitor and data amount is inbound again for a full FLAC quality file. It's transferring to my AVR at an average of 1Mb per second.

The track is 4:11 minutes long. 4:11 minutes in second is 251 seconds. As mentioned above it was at a rate of 1Mb per second so my AVR received 251Mb of data.

251Megabits is 31.37 Megabytes. A FULL FLAC FILE.

 

This settles it for me. Casting is not FLAC. 

S
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3 years later, an app redesign, and still haven't fixed this. 

 

 

For those landing here in 2024, I saw @Barendrecht post and went into my router as well.

 

I looked at the real-time traffic and when a new track starts, inbound WAN (Internet) Traffic shows around 15-30MB depending on the the song. 

I'm not satisfied with that. 

 

Next I look at real-time bandwidth monitor for individual devices. The device that's receiving the castig is getting around a 30-50Mb blip. Great right? NO IT'S NOT.

 

Mb is Megabit and MB is Megabyte. 30Mb is 3MB. A lossless file is the 15MB-30MB just like the incoming traffic at the beginning. This means it's either compressed and/or not HiFi. 

 

To validate this, I set quality to basic everywhere just to be sure. Download was 3-7MB in Router data. Going back to traffic monitor, the casting receiver is only pulling a blip of 13Mb now. That is now a 1.6MB file! 

 

What does this mean?

It means is Deezer is requesting a HiFi track but only casting a Standard file and probably compressing it. 

 

CASTING IS NOT LOSSLESS.

​​​​

T
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Explanation is also sounds logical to me that chromecast audio does dowloading within it self independant from mobile phone.it seems correct, when i close my wireless on the phone, album keeps playing, data transfer is done between router and chromecast, not from the phone.we need to check what the router transfers on that time.not the phone transfer.

Yes. I checked my Chromecast-data traffic itself on my wifi and it gives me the similar results. Uses minimal data, doesn't seem to be FLAC ....  ??? (All my settings are in HiFi for sure)

Did you check data between chromecast-phone or chromecast-router? You have to check router one.

With the app I have I check the connection between Chromecast and Acces Point, so it's the same as Chromecast-Router.

Explanation could be there's compression and de-compression going on? Is that possible with Flac?

Now im hopeless, its definitely lossy if you monitored correctly :(((

Okay, I just tried to monitor data traffic directly from the router. But I am not a real technical person. I cannot make a definitive conclusion.there are better results now,  Like 75 megabytes for 3 songs. So that really seems like FLAC quality to me. reading this from the router doesn't allow me to completely rule out other devices at home. But other connected devices should not consume much data.

Now thats good news!!!

Barendrecht
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Explanation is also sounds logical to me that chromecast audio does dowloading within it self independant from mobile phone.it seems correct, when i close my wireless on the phone, album keeps playing, data transfer is done between router and chromecast, not from the phone.we need to check what the router transfers on that time.not the phone transfer.

Yes. I checked my Chromecast-data traffic itself on my wifi and it gives me the similar results. Uses minimal data, doesn't seem to be FLAC ....  ??? (All my settings are in HiFi for sure)

Did you check data between chromecast-phone or chromecast-router? You have to check router one.

With the app I have I check the connection between Chromecast and Acces Point, so it's the same as Chromecast-Router.

Explanation could be there's compression and de-compression going on? Is that possible with Flac?

Now im hopeless, its definitely lossy if you monitored correctly :(((

Okay, I just tried to monitor data traffic directly from the router. But I am not a real technical person. I cannot make a definitive conclusion.there are better results now,  Like 75 megabytes for 3 songs. So that really seems like FLAC quality to me. reading this from the router doesn't allow me to completely rule out other devices at home. But other connected devices should not consume much data.
M
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Ce serait grave quand même !!! 😅

M
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Bonsoir ,

en effet je n'ai pas fais le test.

Je prendrai le temps de faire un test de comparaison avec Tidal , car je trouve que le son de Tidal me semble bien meilleur ...

T
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Explanation is also sounds logical to me that chromecast audio does dowloading within it self independant from mobile phone.it seems correct, when i close my wireless on the phone, album keeps playing, data transfer is done between router and chromecast, not from the phone.we need to check what the router transfers on that time.not the phone transfer.

Yes. I checked my Chromecast-data traffic itself on my wifi and it gives me the similar results. Uses minimal data, doesn't seem to be FLAC ....  ??? (All my settings are in HiFi for sure)

Did you check data between chromecast-phone or chromecast-router? You have to check router one.

With the app I have I check the connection between Chromecast and Acces Point, so it's the same as Chromecast-Router.

Explanation could be there's compression and de-compression going on? Is that possible with Flac?

Now im hopeless, its definitely lossy if you monitored correctly :(((

Barendrecht
Rank

Explanation is also sounds logical to me that chromecast audio does dowloading within it self independant from mobile phone.it seems correct, when i close my wireless on the phone, album keeps playing, data transfer is done between router and chromecast, not from the phone.we need to check what the router transfers on that time.not the phone transfer.

Yes. I checked my Chromecast-data traffic itself on my wifi and it gives me the similar results. Uses minimal data, doesn't seem to be FLAC ....  ??? (All my settings are in HiFi for sure)

Did you check data between chromecast-phone or chromecast-router? You have to check router one.

With the app I have I check the connection between Chromecast and Acces Point, so it's the same as Chromecast-Router.

Explanation could be there's compression and de-compression going on? Is that possible with Flac?

T
Rank

Explanation is also sounds logical to me that chromecast audio does dowloading within it self independant from mobile phone.it seems correct, when i close my wireless on the phone, album keeps playing, data transfer is done between router and chromecast, not from the phone.we need to check what the router transfers on that time.not the phone transfer.

Yes. I checked my Chromecast-data traffic itself on my wifi and it gives me the similar results. Uses minimal data, doesn't seem to be FLAC ....  ??? (All my settings are in HiFi for sure)

Did you check data between chromecast-phone or chromecast-router? You have to check router one.

Barendrecht
Rank

Explanation is also sounds logical to me that chromecast audio does dowloading within it self independant from mobile phone.it seems correct, when i close my wireless on the phone, album keeps playing, data transfer is done between router and chromecast, not from the phone.we need to check what the router transfers on that time.not the phone transfer.

Yes. I checked my Chromecast-data traffic itself on my wifi and it gives me the similar results. Uses minimal data, doesn't seem to be FLAC ....  ??? (All my settings are in HiFi for sure)

T
Rank

Explanation is also sounds logical to me that chromecast audio does dowloading within it self independant from mobile phone.it seems correct, when i close my wireless on the phone, album keeps playing, data transfer is done between router and chromecast, not from the phone.we need to check what the router transfers on that time.not the phone transfer.

Barendrecht
Rank

Deezer is not streaming flac data over chromecast audio.first i heard the tiny sound without body coming from tidal. Theb installed network data app on my android and started listening to music over my phone, not streamed, on data traffic im always reading 7-12mb/s data download, whatever the song i jump , initially i always see +5mb/s data but when i start streaming over Chromecast audio, i could never see mb/s transfer rates, its always around 300-400kb/s then drops to 10kb/s levels...this is mp3 guys not flac data.deezer is lossy on chromecast...unfortunately tidal is better option.

Yes this is weird, right? I have similar results in data traffic... Would like some explanation

M
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Bonjour ,

Je suis juste utilisateur mais je sais pourquoi vous voyez ces taux de transfert .

La Chromecast (audio ou classique) prend le relais .

Elle embarque l'application et c'est elle qui télécharge le flux et le diffuse.

D'ailleurs, vous pouvez éteindre votre téléphone, vous verrez que la Chromecast continuera à diffuser .

Bien cordialement,

Michaël 

T
Rank

Deezer is not streaming flac data over chromecast audio.first i heard the tiny sound without body coming from tidal. Theb installed network data app on my android and started listening to music over my phone, not streamed, on data traffic im always reading 7-12mb/s data download, whatever the song i jump , initially i always see +5mb/s data but when i start streaming over Chromecast audio, i could never see mb/s transfer rates, its always around 300-400kb/s then drops to 10kb/s levels...this is mp3 guys not flac data.deezer is lossy on chromecast...unfortunately tidal is better option.

M
Rank

Regardez , tout le monde le fait ! 

Ici : QoBuz (stream sur Chromecast Audio)

M
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Why not ask your developers to keep the HI-FI icon displayed on the phone while streaming to Chromecast audio?

I'm a developer, I know it's from a simplicityine child.

If you don't, everyone will always have doubts,because since the time this topic has been discussed, the only reason that seems to justify you not displaying the icon is that you cannot legally afford it. …

I offer you a very simple choice to reassure the whole world: display the icon on the control device (phone, tablet, etc.) while streaming to Chromecast audio.

Cheers,

Michael

M
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@Deezer 

 

Pourquoi ne pas demander à vos developpeurs de conserver l'icône HI-FI affichée sur le téléphone pendant la diffusion vers la Chromecast audio ?

Je suis développeur, je sais que c'est d'une simplicité enfantine . 

Si vous ne le faites pas toute le monde aura toujours un doute , car depuis le temps que ce sujet est discuté, la seule raison qui semble justifier que vous n'afichiez pas l'icône est que vous ne pouvez pas vous le permettre légalement .…

 

Je vous propose une chose très simple pour rassurer le monde entier : affichez l'icône sur l'appareil de contrôle (téléphone , tablette.. ) pendant la diffusion vers la Chromecast audio .

 

Salutations,

 

Michaël 

L
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Userlevel 2

Yea, I know CC Audio is discontinued, but as I can see from other comments it’s the same with any other stand alone chromecast, or built in chromecast functionality in various devices. 

Maybe is streaming FLAC in some cromecast devices, but confusing with logo disappearing ..  

 

There are basically only two ways to get Deezer HIFI  from native Deezer app to real HIFI sistem. Computer with web player + usb DAC → audio system  (yes, stand alone app doesn't even have cast option)

or 

cast to chromecast compatible device - much more convenient, you can use phone, tablet or laptop .. 

 

Every other solution implemented in audio streamers from different brands doesn't use real Deezer app but it is inside streamer app, mostly with confusing interface, no flow etc..  

 

Z
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Userlevel 3
Badge +4

The Chromecast Audio was killed by Google in 2019 so it’s not supported anymore read the article: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/google-cans-the-chromecast-audio and btw it’s sending the audio in lossless .flac only it doesn’t show you that it does.

L
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Userlevel 2

Year later and still the same, HIFI logo is gone when casting to Chromecast Audio (not streaming from the phone, casting… phone is just a remote controller, you can turn it off when casting is started.. stream goes directly to CCA, it seems that many of you don’t understand this..).  

And according to data bandwidth it’s not just the logo, lossless stream doesn’t go to chromecast, only 320 kbps.. 

And CCA or any other chromecast is perfectly capable of streaming lossless (HIFI) .. 

 

But obviously developers don’t care, I guess 99% users just use their phones and cheap earphones.. so who cares for us who actually want to use it for what it is advertised ..

 

I just want to use native Deezer android or iOS app and control streamer with that, and every integration in different players suck (no real Deezer app), maybe only sonos is ok, but sonos is lifestile product, not HIFI, so pointless. 

 

CCA is perfect cheap little device with optical output so I can connect it to some serious DAC, and most important it works with original deezer apps.. but.. obviously no one cares ..  

roderickvd
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Yeah that then shows HiFi but even now my surround system is streaming at 1.3 Mbps. So I think it’s the UI that’s not very clear that it in fact is streaming HiFi.

Placido09
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Userlevel 7
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And if you choose Hifi over WiFi?

Crazy about music
roderickvd
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It’s not just the HiFi logo, this one is kind of confusing too when casting to my HiFi-capable H&K surround system.

Here you see I’ve got HiFi enabled for casting, but HQ over WiFi and on the road:

 

Now when casting the UI indicates it’s only HQ and not HiFi:

 

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