Echoing this in that I would be more than happy if Pandora would give us 320/256 at least — especially on at home devices. Higher bitrates on mobile would be great to. How are we still streaming it at 128 mp3 over wifi like it’s 2005??? Pandora will always win for me hands down in terms of algorithm and the ability to play my stations on shuffle. But the sound quality is subpar at best — really lousy in the bigger picture.
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Pandora hasn’t answered or acknowledged any of this and probably don’t even read these anymore. Sad to say it’s just probably not going to happen, people. If they can’t even reach Apple Music / Spotify standards after all these years — don’t hold your breath for hi res.
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I think that is what they use now for mobile only and it’s capped at 64 kb HE AAC which is roughly equivalent to 128 mp3. HE Aac caps at 96 kb but even that would be better for mobile as it’s around a 192 mp3 equivalent. I have more of an issue with “at home devices” which play at 128 mp3. Bandwidth is not an issue at home via wifi so why are they not giving us the highest quality then can offer? It boggles me.
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It doesn’t even need to be lossless, but c’mon offer us 320 at least. So many songs sound like they were compressed using the first ever available encoder from 2001. Also the volume levels from song to song can be significant too, very frustrating. Even if you subscribe to premium you can’t get past 192mp3 which is same max bitrate they offered eons ago. Do they just not care? Is there a technical reason why they can’t simply re-encode the source files to a higher bitrate? Maybe they don’t have access to the source files anymore to do this? So many questions.
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Honestly I’d be happy with 96 he-aac plus (rather than the current 64kb he-aac plus they offer for mobile) as that would give pretty decent sound and not use too much data. He-aac usually caps at 96kb anyway and sounds roughly as good as 192 whereas 64kb aac plus sounds roughly as good as 128 based on listening tests. For anything streaming wifi where data isn’t an issue I see no reason why at least 256 aac like Apple Music or 320 like Spotify isn’t standard. So, again my preferred rates would be: mobile 96 he-aac or higher, and wifi/home devices at 256 or higher. Perhaps pandora doesn’t have the other bitrates encoded in their library to simply switch on? Without ever receiving any formal responses from then we just don’t know.
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Agreed 100%. The audio quality / low bitrate is really frustrating and has been my primary frustration with the service for many years. We need a hq stream quality offering for mobile and “home devices” such as amazon Alexa etc. I think mobile is still limited to 64 aac+ and home devices are 128? I think home devices should stream at 320 and mobile should offer at least something at 192 or higher?
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Yes to this as well. Also, if you don’t delete the stations made by alexa you don’t want — they add up and eventually start deleting the stations you intentionally made so they can make room due to station limits. please have a setting to allow disabling the creation of stations from non native apps.
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I have the same issue with Alexa and was told a while back that it may be due to reaching the station limit, but it’s not the case. Even when I have well under the station limit, playing the “shuffle” station will randomly delete other radio stations on its own, even though a new station isn’t being created. It only seems to happen with alexa.
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