Ideas: Higher Audio Quality

[pboser]

How about higher audio quality?  Amazon has introduced this feature, and others have been ahead of Pandora as well.  It would be great to have the Genome Project advantage with higher audio quality.  Do others agree?

Moderator Edit: Edited title for clarity

[chulohock]

I agree with you! Even LiveOne, formally Slacker radio, streams at 320 kbps at their plus membership level.
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[Nurseman1]

Has anyone from Pandora explained here what the primary obstacle or reason for not improving available audio quality?  Greater than 128kbps. 

What would the bit rate have to be for it to be noticeably better than 128kbps?

Is bit rate the only thing or way to improve audio quality?

Thanks

[EmperorJJ1]

im not from pandora but if i had to guess the only obstacle is cost. seeing as much of this music is streamed not downloaded for offline listening the company has to be mindful of everyone's ability to continue using their service. thus an increase in quality would "require" an update to their software to change the current bitrate to medium and the new higher bitrate as high quality. or leave the current as high and make a very high or whatever. probably not super hard to do but that will have a cost. a secondary expense is going to be servers that house the music. If they have the data in house on a single server location in one spot in the world that is at 80% 80% whatever capacity going to a higher bit rate would require likely double if not more equipment to handle the new load. If they have multiple in house servers they would have to double the equipment in all of them to offer the increased bitrate worldwide. If they are instead in a cloud based setup they wouldn't have to buy physicals hardware but instead pay for additional capacity from their cloud based partner. 

Lastly regarding improving audio quality the answer is yes sort of.... Assuming the bit rate is the only limiting factor on audio quality. The main factor on sound in all reality is going to be speakers. if you are listening on your tiny smartphone speaker regardless of bit rate its going to sound bad because of the speaker. same with any sort of slim device such as TVs, low quality earbuds etc and while not as bad but somewhat any smaller speaker setups like amazon echo, midrange headphones or high end earbuds will have their limits as well. Assuming speakers aren't the problem you can also have compression on your source and or internet connection. Bluetooth for example has limits on how much data can be processed depending on the source unit as well as the bluetooth version of the audio device. so playing CD quality wont matter if the transmission source cant handle that data and thus compresses to a lower quality bitrate anyway.  in the US since net neutrality was abolished ISP's can and do put caps on data transmissions. i have none done research on if audio is impacted but for example im on an unlimited plan from verizon and have limits on video quality. so depending on if theres network congestion or if we have reached a threshold of data per month or if someone at verizon is having a bad day that quality can be limited by the ISP even if the source has higher quality available. again not sure if this comes into play but it legally could. 

[MarkMusic]

Yeah, but SiriusXM owns Pandora Music, and has a net worth of $1.213
Billion. They can afford to upgrade the quality as the others have
(Tidal, Apple, Amazon, Spotify, etc). I use Tidal and get far better
quality.. a real noticeable difference through any device I use.
As far as the abolition of net neutrality presenting an issue... that
hasn't caused any of the aforementioned companies to degrade quality
for that reason. I think it's a non-issue.
I agree that speakers and hardware matter, and always have.

[EmperorJJ1]

i totally agree they should. but money is the main reason they haven't done it yet i'd guess. i did forget the logistics of upgrading the entire library is probably a pain as well but idk how thats all setup on their end

[MarkMusic]

Totally.. I'm sure it would be a major project... but if they don't
get on it they will be a "Blockbuster video in a Netflix world"
They COULD offer "Pandora HD" as an option, and charge like $4.95
more (or something like that). Some people would complain that they
have to pay a little more if they want HD so they could just go with
a competitor but if they want the Genome technology they stay and
pay. Pandora's Genome tech is totally unmatched as far as I can
tell. it really knows what you want to hear.

[Nurseman1]

As much as I would like improved audio quality (higher bitrate than 128kbps), the price for Pandora Plus cannot be beat.  Plus, love the Genome project, user interface, and overall simplicity of the entire site.  

Frankly, realistically, for $5/mth, what should I expect. Audio quality is acceptable for that price.

Would be nice of someone with authority from Pandora would explain their perspective on improved audio and associated pricing etc.

[Pjd813]

In todays world “good enough” is not worth $4.95 a month.

[Nurseman1]

Obviously not for you but you do not speak for me.  

Do you know any other less expensive or equal cost streaming services that compare favorably to Pandora?

[Pjd813]

I’ve had Pandora for over a decade and it’s well pst time for $4.95 to mean more than no commercials. Wasn’t speaking for you. By paying ANYTHING better sound quality should be a guarantee. I feel like a captive because hours of streaming with the genome is the best I’ve seen.