How To Get The Best Sound From Pandora & Rhapsody?

The first step to getting good quality is to lower the digital stream jitter. This can be accomplished with a Sonos, iPod docking station or computer with toslink output driving a Synchro-Mesh reclocker and then to the DAC.

Once you have a low jitter digital source, you can drive virtually any DAC, SS proc. or receiver with it and get good results.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

If you're fond of Pandora and Rhapsody give mog.com a try. The streaming from mog is at 320 kbps, compared to Pandora's maximum of 256 and there's an audible difference. I've almost completely abandoned Pandora and Spotify in favor of mog.com, both because of the audio quality and the ability to either play whatever I want or let mog offer options.

I agree with Sfar..... MOG.com streams music at a much higher quality than Pandora, Rhapsody, Spotify, iTunes radio, etc..... $4.95 a month for unlimited commercial free streaming at 320 kbps ....... almost every album and song you could ever imagine, and a very easy to navigate website.

For me, MacBook Pro (mid 2010 13") > Belkin Gold USB cable > Emotiva XDA-2 DAC > Rogue Audio Cronus integrated amp > Revel F-12 speakers. Awesome sound of music with sublime acoustic happiness ! Prior to my new Emotiva DAC, I used an HRT Music Streamer II, and MOG still sounded better than Spotify, Pandora, etc., etc.

Have fun and Happy Listening !

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Adam18 & Sfar, I've had Rhapsody for nearly ten years, and they have a ton of music. Do you find that MOG has more music than Rhapsody?
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A local dealer uses a Sonos system to conveniently access a vast library of music for equipment review purposes. The Sonos system is hooked up to MUCH higher quality DACs than that Sonos supplies. That Sonos server has access to the various download sites. Using this system, I like MOG for its pretty decent library of jazz and classical music, although Rhapsody is pretty good too. I haven't done much in the way of comparing the sound quality of the two services.

What is interesting is that even with the low bitrates of either MOG or Rhapsody, one can easily hear the difference between DACs used: better DACs mean better sound. It really pays to use better equipment even when the source is supposedly as limited as that of MOG and Rhapsody. At this dealership, we even shot out different DACs, including DACs that cost close to $60,000, and differences could be heard.