How To Correct Your Hearing With Spotify And ARIA ONE

What This Does

This guide shows how to route Spotify through ARIA ONE on Mac or Windows. Spotify sends audio to a virtual audio device, ARIA ONE reads that signal, applies your hearing correction, and sends it to your headphones or speakers.

The setup is straightforward once the pieces are in place. Install the virtual audio device once, point Spotify at it, set ARIA ONE to read from it, and verify the correction is active.

Before You Start

You need Spotify and ARIA ONE installed on a Mac or Windows computer, plus an Altitude Audio account. If you do not have one yet, ARIA ONE can create it the first time you open the app.

Open ARIA ONE and sign in. On first launch, choose Cloud Mode so your profiles and presets stay in sync across devices.

Use the INSTANT Onboarding Pathway

On first launch, ARIA ONE opens onboarding automatically. To get listening quickly, choose the Instant pathway and continue. Available pathways include:

• Instant — no test. ARIA ONE uses your age to load an age-matched hearing profile so you can complete onboarding and start listening immediately.
• Quick Results — the full hearing test without the setup and calibration steps. About ten minutes.
• Full Accuracy — the complete test with setup and calibration. About fifteen to twenty minutes, and the best result.

Use Instant to finish onboarding now with an age-matched profile. When you have more time, come back to SETUP and take the full test so ARIA ONE can replace it with a profile built from your own results. At the end, choose Simple View for music listening.

Set Up The Audio Routing In ARIA ONE

ARIA ONE needs to sit between Spotify and your physical output. Spotify plays into a virtual audio device, ARIA ONE reads from that device, applies correction, and then sends the result to your headphones or speakers.

If you have not installed a virtual audio device yet, start here: what is a virtual audio device and which one should I install? That page covers the setup on Mac and Windows.

Then open Audio Settings from the gear in ARIA ONE. Set INPUT to the virtual audio device. Set OUTPUT to your headphones or speakers. Make sure the sample rate matches across the chain; 44.1 kHz is a safe choice for Spotify.

Point Spotify At ARIA ONE

Spotify now needs to send its audio to the same virtual audio device. The step differs on Mac and Windows because the desktop app behaves differently on each.

On a Mac, Spotify follows the system output. Open System Settings, go to Sound, and choose the virtual audio device under Output. Spotify will follow that device, and so will the rest of the system audio.

On Windows, Spotify has its own output selector. Open Spotify Settings, find the audio output option under Playback, and choose the virtual audio device. Spotify goes through ARIA ONE while the rest of Windows can stay on its normal output. This requires Spotify Premium and a recent desktop app.

Spotify Settings To Check

Before the signal leaves Spotify, the app can process it in ways that make setup harder to judge. Open Spotify Settings and check these first.

Normalize volume. Turn it off. ARIA ONE works best when Spotify is not pulling tracks down before output, so 0 dB into ARIA ONE is actually 0 dB. ARIA ONE can already manage track-to-track level changes, and Adaptive Drive can seek the right drive for each song.

Equalizer. Turn it off. If you want additional EQ, use the Corrective EQ module in ARIA ONE after the hearing correction stage for better arbitrary EQ results.

Audio quality. Set streaming quality as high as your plan allows. The correction can only work with the information in the stream.

Crossfade and Automix. Turn them off while you are evaluating the correction. You can turn them back on later if you prefer them.

Check That It Is Working

Start a track in Spotify. In ARIA ONE, the input meter along the bottom should move with the music. If it does, Spotify is reaching ARIA ONE and the routing is correct.

Now toggle the correction off and on. In Simple View, open Sound and tap PERSONAL AUDIO / ORIGINAL AUDIO. In Advanced View, use Bypass in the top bar. Listen for clarity, detail, and changes in the sound image.

If the meter does not move, the problem is still in the routing. Confirm that ARIA ONE’s INPUT is the virtual audio device, and that your Mac’s system output or Spotify’s Windows output is pointed at that same device.

Spotify Connect Bypasses The Chain

Spotify Connect lets the desktop app control playback on another device. When that happens, the music goes straight to that speaker, TV, or phone instead of through your computer, so ARIA ONE never receives the signal.

Click the speaker icon in the bottom right of Spotify and confirm playback is set to this computer. If ARIA ONE’s input meter is still, this is the first thing to check.

Using It Day To Day

Once the routing is set, daily use is simple: open ARIA ONE, open Spotify, and listen. ARIA ONE can read your computer’s Now Playing data, so Adaptive Drive can respond as tracks change and keep the input to the correction stage in a sensible range.

If you switch between headphones and speakers, save a preset for each. The correction that works best for one output usually is not the right setting for the other.

When you are ready, rerun SETUP and take the full hearing test. ARIA ONE will replace the Instant profile with one built from your own measurements.

What About Your Phone

This routing setup is for Mac and Windows. On iPhone and Android, the operating system does not let one app capture another app’s audio output, so Spotify cannot be routed through ARIA ONE there.

On mobile, ARIA ONE can still play music files you own with your correction applied using its built-in player. Your hearing profile stays synced across devices.

Common Problems

Known-Good Details

Spotify changes menu names and placement on its own schedule. Everything in this list was accurate when this page was last updated. If a setting has moved, look for it by name; the routing logic above is unchanged.

• Spotify audio output setting — Settings, under Playback. Windows desktop app only, Spotify Premium required.
• Exclusive Mode — appears next to the output setting on Windows once a device is chosen. Leave it off for this setup.
• Normalize volume — Settings, under Playback. Options are Loud, Normal, and Quiet.
• Equalizer, Crossfade, Automix — Settings, under Playback.
• Spotify sample rate — Spotify content is delivered at 44.1 kHz, so 44.1 kHz is a stable choice for the whole chain.
• Mac sound output — System Settings, Sound, Output.
• ARIA ONE Audio Settings — the gear in the top bar. INPUT, OUTPUT, and sample rate are all set here.

Summary

Spotify can be corrected through ARIA ONE once the routing chain is in place: Spotify outputs to a virtual audio device, ARIA ONE reads from that device, applies your hearing profile, and sends the result to your headphones or speakers. Load a hearing profile, set INPUT and OUTPUT in ARIA ONE, point your Mac’s sound output or Spotify’s Windows output at the virtual device, turn off Spotify’s volume normalization and equalizer, and make sure Spotify Connect is not bypassing the computer.