Streaming - again - and finding a service

[neiltingley]

Dave, regarding the heat problem, have you talked with Mac support? They can do a scan of your computer remotely.
Also--does it happen on any other device, such as the phone, that has the Spotify app?
It is possible that you were in "Spotify connect" mode. The Spotify program may have have been looking for a machine to
Connect to, and generating heat because it can't find one.

open a shell and type 'top'. You don't need technical support to do that! There will be some process eating up CPU. Figure which one it is and kill it with (unix) 'kill'.

[Dave2002]

open a shell and type 'top'. You don't need technical support to do that! There will be some process
eating up CPU. Figure which one it is and kill it with (unix) 'kill'.

Thanks Neil. I only do that if all else faile - using "kill -9".

Doesn't Force Quit from the Apple menu usually do the same thing, or else quit from within Activity Monitor? Maybe using top is slightly more certain - worth a try.

For the time being I've unsubscribed to Spotify - mainly because of that problem. I could try again with the free versions on my laptop and also on another machine whcih I'm currently running, but I've been round the loop several times with that problem, and although it's possible that other programs/applications/processes are causing the issue, circumstantially it always seems to happen when Spotify is running. A clue was that several times recently I noticed that having started my machine up - after a reboot - the fan came one, and then I found that Spotify was running - even though I'd set it not to. Maybe users of desk top machines wouldn't notice this.

There are a few other programs which do cause significant heating and the fans to come on, but they are mostly I think well enough behaved. Some virus checkers do push the limits and then heat up a bit, but they don't need to run all the time.

Re Qobuz and the so-called 320 kbps streams - I've spent some time over the last few days listening to various pieces - but my enjoyment is somewhat marred by the rather coarse and rough sounds. Even 320 kbps mp3 sholdn't sound that bad. I have heard worse elsewhere, but I have also heard much better compressed audio at that, or even lower, biit rates. It might be that switching to higher quality level streams would fix the problem, but would cost about £5 more, and just because the delivery stream may be higher bit rate doesn't mean that the quality will go up if the problems are inherent in the source material - i.e poor rips of the masters.

At this rate I'll start going back to CDs, which will require me to get off my seat, and go and find the relevant discs - but maybe that'll improve my physique!

[Lento]

Tangentially, I suspect the Spotify app's default "autostart at login" might be causing my macbook battery to perform poorly, so have just disabled the feature.