How To Get The Best Sound From Pandora & Rhapsody?

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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.

Here are some specs I received from Pandora regarding audio quality on Pandora:

Free Pandora is 64k AAC+ on the web.

Pandora One subscribers get the option of 192k MP3 on the Web and when using the AIR Desktop App.

Most Home-listening devices get 128k MP3 – whether the account is free or paid.

Cell phones get anywhere from 24k to 64k in mono or stereo, depending on the phone, carrier, connection type, and in some cases the user setting.

I recently switched my source to a MAC Book Pro computer connected to my Oppo 105 Blu-Ray player (DAC only) using the USB cable. The Oppo is temporary until my Ayre QB-9 DSD DAC arrives. This front end change enables me to upgrade to Pandora One ($36 per year) with 192k streaming (done today).

I also agree with Sfar above that MOG streams at 320k with excellent results. Pandora and MOG are great options to have for listening to music streaming.

Mitch4t - Sorry, I've never used Rhapsody and can't compare their catalog to Mog.com's.

None of the online streaming sites have everything you might want to hear. Fortunately, you don't have to choose just one. It's exploring the music that's important to me, not the bit rate.

I use Mog.com almost exclusively because it lets me control my listening experience more than the other sites but if I really want to sample something they don't have I look elsewhere. And when I find something I really like I buy the CD.

Hi Mitch .... I never compared the content of MOG vs. Rhapsody. All I know is that to my ears, with my system, in my room ..... Music streaming through MOG sounds considerably better than streaming through Rhapsody, Pandora, and Spotify.