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Ideas: Higher Audio Quality

Ideas: Higher Audio Quality

pboser
Underground
Status: Open Ideas

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

Labels (1)
284 Comments
Irishrock456
Local Performer

Would be great and keep my monet

Isabelck
Local Performer

This is definitely needed, at least on the home device streaming. I use the app on my tv and it’s capped at 128kbs? My speaker system is going to waste. 
I will switch streaming services to anyone who supports the full capabilities of my equipment.

Michael3
Underground

I don't understand why Pandora doesn't offer decent audio quality.  Pandora is behind every other streaming service in this regard!!!  With high quality headphones and home speaker systems such as Sonos, Pandora's best available of 192kbps is very subpar and unacceptable

That is very poor when every other streaming service offers at least 320 kbps.  Pandora should offer to pay a higher subscription that allows HD/high fidelity audio such as is available through Tidal and Amazon Music.  It makes no sense that Pandora is so behind on this point.  
I will very likely be cancelling Pandora and switching to another service with high quality audio if this does not change very soon.

miniskunk
Local Performer

I would give up my grandfathered priced premium subscription just to get higher quality sound. No other streaming music service I have tried is as easy to create custom stations that play what I want to hear. Pandora is perfect with the exception of HD music since you rarely need to interact with it to hear music you like once your station(s) are dialed in unlike the other music services. If Pandora offered this I believe it will become serious competition to higher streaming quality services like Tidal, Spotify, and Amazon HD music increasing their subscriber base.

Termich
Opening Act

For me, for an ordinary smartphone 190kb is enough and no more is required, in fact, if you compare the Spotify and Pandora, they are identical in sound on smartphones. Spotify uses outdated ogg codec and it does not sound expressive even at 320kb. Pandora sounds livelier.

At home I have Creative AE-5 sound card at my PC, the software from this card allows me to pull the quality of mp3 or its subtypes to a good sound level, it sounds very cool after such processing, so for me the sound quality in Pandora is good for daily tasks. It feels good as any other service, don't look at the numbers, Spotify has completely different psychoacoustics and as it uses old-fashioned codec, it sounds really crappy on my PC without any sound processing.

By the way, modern receivers can pull low bitrate stream.

If you enter it into Pandora, you'll get flac at once. Then I'll cancel Qobuz subscription at once, xD.

But don't forget, no other streaming service will give you such a rich experience in listening to music, appreciate it, Spotify is the bottom in terms of recommendation system and in general, as a service if you use it for a long time in it so many gaps that you'll develop a strong phobia and fear of listening to music. Pandora gives you freedom without locking you into narrow genres and you should give it a huge bow for that. Thank you Pandora for having you with us.

MarkMusic
Local Performer

I disagree as I can clearly hear the difference in sound quality and Pandora needs to up their game.  Qobuz is superior in sound but inferior in the way they serve up the music I want to hear.  There is a caveat however... SOME stations on Pandora sound better than others.. not sure why or how that is but I'm sure they know.

Termich
Opening Act

Well you compared Qobuz de benchmark sound and standard sound, I was comparing among regular services, Pandora sounds as good as Spotify.
That's why I say that if you introduce something radically new, only Flac.
But if Pandora introduces Flac, it will be the best service among all the existing ones, with its system of recommendations, Pandora has no competitors and will never have.

MarkMusic
Local Performer

I agree in part... the whole purpose of my posting this in the first place (months ago) was that I'd love the Qobuz quality but on Pandora because their platform is the best, just not the best sound.  With bandwidth the way it is today low quality MP3s are not necessary.   Just as Netflix charges more for 4k, Pandora could charge a little more for high quality.  I even tried to tell management... they could CRUSH the competition... it makes no sense.   as I said before... I guess when you have $Billions in stock market $ you don't give a sh*t anymore.. who knows.   They've gotta be careful they don't end up a Blockbuster Video in a Netflix world.   I have a passion for high quality music and the world is missing out...  we listened to better quality 35 years ago!   This thread has been around a couple of years and Pandora doesn't care. 

chulohock
Underground

Is there some technical reason this can't be done? If so, can you at least communicate that.

Someone mentioned Opus as a lossy codec alternative. I agree that it sounds comparatively better than AAC. 

You really get the sense of just how good it is when you listen to it via Amazon Music standard audio setting (opus) and compare it to their lossless FLAC tracks.

rickm1970
Local Performer

Higher-quality audio would be a good reason for me to come back to a paid version. I have a nice car stereo so I would like this to be available on my Andriod to play via Bluetooth or Andriod auto via USB 3 if Bluetooth is limited. Seems like at least 320 is market minimal for a high audio rate.