Is Spotify as good of quality as the HD-Tracks?

Loomisjohnson,

I had MOG for years and kept it til the end. I immediately signed up with Spotify Premium and was surprised that it seemed to sound better than MOG. I don't know much about the different "codecs" but I like what I hear.

Do you have any experience with Beats...what codec they use and how it sounds in general?

I agree that Spotify seems to actually sound better than MOG. Spotify also seems to have much better selection of classical music and jazz than MOG which caused me to jump ship. Strange since MOG bills itself as being for audiophiles yet skimps on the two genres audiophiles most often listen to.

Taking the digital out of my iPhone into an external DAC makes Spotify sound fantastic on my home setup.

onemug, i did try beats for two weeks--like mog, beats streams "up to 320kb" mp3, although they use a different streaming protocol. alot of people complained that beats doesn't sound as good as mog did ("more compressed" and "artificial highs" being the common refrains). note that some of the criticism may have been during beats' beta testing, and may no longer be valid. personally , i didn't hear much difference between beats' and mogs' sq--beats sounded very good, and immeasurably better than, say, pandora. all that said, i am finding spotify's sq to be a little better on most genres (more detail, range), although the difference is subtle and one might easily prefer one over the other.

Loomisjohnson...Thanks. You are very fair in you in your observations.

Larrybou...Doing the same i.e.,iDevice>dock>dac and also streaming via Sonos>bridge>controller>dac. Sounds surprisingly good.

you're welcome, onemug. a few parting rants, then i'll leave this subject alone:
1. i still mourn mog's demise, but all good things must pass...
2. compared to mog, spotify may have a better library--it has some artists (led zep, aimee mann) who were conspicuously missing from mog, altho it also omits some of the alternative/obscuro stuff i found on mog.
3. spotify's "discover" feature, which recommends artists based on your previous selections, works very well and is updated more frequently than was mog's.
4. likewise, spotify seems to post new releases more quickly than mog.
5. spotify's customizable radio mode is ok, but not as cool or easy to use as mog's "mobius technology" (which let you select how much of a particular artist you want to hear by moving the contiuum slider, and thereby tailors the radio station much more precisely to what you want to hear).
5. spotify's offline mode is decidely inferior to mog's--it's easy to download music for offline listening but difficult to find specific artists or tracks you downloaded.
6. the big advantage of mog was its interface, which was extremely intuitive and easy on the eyes. even after a month or so i find spotify's interface difficult and confusing--it often requires scrolling through different menus, and most maddeningly, presents everything against an almost unreadable black background, which is difficult for me to see, let alone navigate.