The 4 Spotify settings I use for the best desktop listening

Boosting audio quality to Lossless or Very High

Be mindful of your bandwidth

If you're listening to Spotify on a Mac or PC, chances are you have high-quality audio gear to go with it. By that I mean headphones or speakers with a wide frequency range, and support for wired or Wi-Fi connections, not just Bluetooth. There's nothing inherently wrong with Bluetooth -- but if you want to hear every little nuance in a song, that format doesn't necessarily have the bandwidth.

If you do have wired or Wi-Fi output, as well as a Premium subscription, you can take advantage of Spotify's Lossless option. This streams in 24-bit, 44.1kHz FLAC, ensuring that you hear the maximum fidelity your gear is capable of. It certainly sounds fantastic on my office setup, which consists of a first-gen Amazon Echo Studio paired with an Echo Sub.

It's often difficult or impossible to discern the difference between lossless and high-bitrate compressed audio, even on the most expensive audio systems.

There are a couple of caveats however, the first being the amount of bandwidth lossless consumes. Spotify warns that it can eat up as much as 1GB per hour -- which isn't a problem for me, but could be for you if you have a slow or capped connection. More importantly, it's often difficult or impossible to discern the difference between lossless and high-bitrate compressed audio, even on the most expensive audio systems. If you're concerned about bandwidth and/or you are using Bluetooth, you'll probably be fine with the Very High quality setting, which consumes a mere 0.14GB per hour.

To change quality levels, click on your profile icon, then Settings, and use the drop-down menus under Audio quality. Note that you can set separate levels for Spotify Connect sources, your computer's own streaming, and downloads. I recommend leaving downloads set to High or Very High, since caching just a few long playlists at Lossless quality could consume dozens of gigabytes. Saving your entire library might push that into the hundreds.

Experimenting with different Equalizer settings

Take your time to discover the best sound

On a decent sound system, even Spotify's default Flat audio profile may be fine, but many people are going to find that unsatisfying. Fans of genres like metal, rap, and industrial will naturally want heavier bass -- alternately, if you prefer folk music, you might want to emphasize the highs and mids for clearer vocals. In some cases, tweaking the EQ can compensate for the weak points of your speakers or headphones.

The Electronic preset seems to add a little extra punch to highs and lows without overwhelming anything.

In the Settings menu, make sure the Equalizer toggle is on, then use the Presets drop-down menu to pick a stock audio profile. Most of these are genre-based, but some are aimed at specific audio problems such as weak bass, excessive treble, or small speakers. If you're confident about what you need, you can also click and drag the dots on the EQ graph to create a custom profile. You can't save this, though -- if you click Reset or choose a Preset, you'll have to manually recreate any customizations later.

Personally, I almost always leave the EQ on Electronic, no matter what genre I'm listening to. On my Echo setup, this seems to add a little extra punch to highs and lows without overwhelming anything. Your own mileage is going to vary, so spend some time testing the various presets with different songs, and fiddling with custom levels only if they don't satisfy.

Experimenting with Normalization

You may not want it on at all if you're a purist

The Spotify app supports loudness normalization. That is, when you enable Normalize volume in Settings, it'll automatically bring up the volume of quieter tracks, and reduce the volume of louder ones, preventing any rude surprises. That can be important for playlists with a diverse range of genres -- it's a little jarring to go from ambient drone to classical to black metal. When normalization is active, you can additionally choose between Normal, Quiet, and Loud presets, whatever's best suited to your current listening environment. On your computer, however, you should almost always choose Normal or Quiet, since Loud reduces audio quality on top of potentially blowing out your eardrums.

Lately, I've been leaving normalization off. One of the risks of the feature, in theory, is undoing the creative intent of artists, since you're no longer experiencing the extremes. Metal is usually meant to be aggressive, for instance, and some ambient pieces may be meant to sit on the edge of consciousness. It's up to you whether you can put up with wild audio swings when you're working or playing.

Fixing Zoom levels for the interface

More items or easier reading, take your pick

For a while, one of my frustrations with Spotify's desktop app was the amount of wasted space. I couldn't see that much of my library, homepage, or active queue at any given time, and song and playlist titles would sometimes be so truncated that I was missing critical info. The software was usable -- but not that efficient considering my eyesight is fine, and I'm typically sitting two or three feet away from the screen. Apple Music feels like a masterclass in design, by comparison.

The normal view is 100%, but if you shrink it below that, you can fit more content to save yourself unnecessary scrolling and clicks.

The way to solve this is by using the Zoom level presets in Settings. The normal view is 100%, but if you shrink it below that, you can fit more content to save yourself unnecessary scrolling and clicks. Conversely, if you're having trouble reading things, you can push zoom above the 100% mark. On a Windows PC, use the Ctrl - or Ctrl + keyboard combos to adjust zoom on the fly when the Spotify window is selected.

I find that 80% zoom is the sweet spot on my 16-inch, 1440p laptop screen. You may want to scale down to 70% if you have a larger display, but in my situation, I find that it makes text so small that I have to squint.