Pandora

halo71

I know I am "late" to the game of streaming music. But I recently got my 13 year old a 32gig iPod Touch. She sorta forgot about the Kindle Fire from last Christmas. So I hooked it up to the AVR. Although some songs sound kinda crappy....no bass. I am really liking it so far. I am lovin' the Steely Dan/Donald Fagan station!

So what can I do to make this better. Cheaply....:redface:

chandler9a

subscribe to Pandora One, I think it streams a better quality... I put a Dac in the mix and although its not as good as playing a CD, its not that bad either. I stream Pandora from my Blueray player.

Have fun!

chandler9a

I just realized you are using a Touch to stream so the Dac idea prob won't work so well

EndersShadow

halo71 wrote: »

I know I am "late" to the game of streaming music. But I recently got my 13 year old a 32gig iPod Touch. She sorta forgot about the Kindle Fire from last Christmas. So I hooked it up to the AVR. Although some songs sound kinda crappy....no bass. I am really liking it so far. I am lovin' the Steely Dan/Donald Fagan station!

So what can I do to make this better. Cheaply....:redface:

Not really much you can do besides go into the Pandora settings and under "Advanced" and turn "higher quality audio" on from a free perspective. IIRC signing up for Pandora One lets you get access to higher bitrate songs, but still nothing "super high rez" for 4 bucks a month. It also turns off ads that play every x songs...

halo71

Ahhh...think I will go for Pandora One then. I just on a whim hooked things up. I am streaming from a Kindle Fire not a Touch. Other than the annoying ads I think I can deal with the sound quality.

Thanks for the tips!


And some of the damn ads are much higher in volume....THAT is more annoying than anything.

soundfreak1

Halo check out groove shark better sound and u can pick spicific artists and play only them and play whole albems.much better streaming quality.

codyc1ark

I use MOG and *LOVE* it. They only artist that I haven't been able to stream all their albums are Zep, but that has been the only drawback. Of course, I'm streaming from my Squeezebox, and even with Pandora the SQ is better through the SB. Take a look, I like it a lot better than Pandora and so do my friends when they are over and have a song or album they want to play.

EndersShadow

codyc1ark wrote: »

I use MOG and *LOVE* it. They only artist that I haven't been able to stream all their albums are Zep, but that has been the only drawback. Of course, I'm streaming from my Squeezebox, and even with Pandora the SQ is better through the SB. Take a look, I like it a lot better than Pandora and so do my friends when they are over and have a song or album they want to play.

Cody I assume you can log into MOG on different devices (though not at the same time) correct? I ask because I am debating if it might be something nice to add to my portable computer (as well as at home) and on my iPhone if you can even do that.....

wayne3burk

dont forget to check out spotify - if it has an app for the iPod touch....

halo71

Keep in mind...I got the iPod Touch for my daughter. I am using her Kindle Fire from last year. I will check out those other apps suggested though...on the Kindle. But damn, I have been listening to Pandora for about 2 hours now. Picked the Steely Dan/Donald Fagan station. I've been hearing those dudes, Van Morrison, Doobie Bros, Sting, Hall & Oates, Toto.....Ima liking it!

Frying up some venison and drinking a beer and don't have to work for the next week. Ohhh yeah....:cheesygrin:

EndersShadow

halo71 wrote: »

Keep in mind...I got the iPod Touch for my daughter. I am using her Kindle Fire from last year. I will check out those other apps suggested though...on the Kindle. But damn, I have been listening to Pandora for about 2 hours now. Picked the Steely Dan/Donald Fagan station. I've been hearing those dudes, Van Morrison, Doobie Bros, Sting, Hall & Oates, Toto.....Ima liking it!

Frying up some venison and drinking a beer and don't have to work for the next week. Ohhh yeah....:cheesygrin:

As an FYI MOG is availible on iTouch but its gonna cost ya 10 bucks a month.....

I am deep in debates myself right now lol....

halo71

Thanks! So far so good with Pandora. I think I can live with it for now.

EndersShadow

halo71 wrote: »

Thanks! So far so good with Pandora. I think I can live with it for now.

Yup, I been using it for a long time...

Perfect for your daughter....

I might suggest you look at MOG though as from what I understand you can browse to specific artists and CD's and play just those. With Pandora you put what you like in but cant select a specific track (though it might come through your playlist)...

Just a thought .

P.S. Hope your still recovering well...

codyc1ark

I think you can use mog on more than one device...

EndersShadow

codyc1ark wrote: »

I think you can use mog on more than one device...

So what your username and password :razz::biggrin:.... hehehehe

michaeljhsda2

soundfreak1 wrote: »

Halo check out groove shark better sound and u can pick spicific artists and definitely better than Pandora because now and you get the stations you can also pick the Pacific sorry my dearplay only them and play whole albems.much better streaming quality.

that's the great thing about Grooveshark. You can specify a song and it plays it for you, not maybe it will play it for you, like Pandora. And Grooveshark has the radio stations like Pandora if you want to go that route..

tonyb

Mog has the best audio quality of any of the streaming services right now. They have a pretty good library too of 15 million or so songs that you can save to a playlist. Pandora bugs me in that you can't pick your own songs, whats the point then ? Rhapsody also has an extensive library and a better user mobile app/ web service. They are a few notches under Mog though in the bitstream wars.

halo71

EndersShadow wrote: »

P.S. Hope your still recovering well...

Thanks! I am feeling much better than before!


Tony, I agree with you. But today....everything I heard on that channel/station was all songs I love. I would prefer to pick an artist and press play. But "when it's free....buy plenty of it"! That is a quote from my father in law! lol

RamZet

After reading this thread I did some of my own research.
Im a Pandora user myself and I normally use Sonos to play back Pandora Radio. However just like you I wanted it to sound better.
I just got pair of CM9s and because they have more detail then my Polk M70s I needed something a bit better.
So after maybe 1hr of reading countless post and private demo test people have conducted I came up with MOG. MOG plays all of their music back at around 320kbps. Not to bad for a streaming service. So I signed up for the $9.99 a month plan it sounds great (better). I think you should give it a try for yourself.

Another cool advantage is that it allows you to playback entire albums ( like Spotify).

cfrizz

I've been enjoying Pandora on my computer through my Polk TL3s. I like the randomness of the songs as well, and all for free. I can deal with 1 commercial every few songs then back to the music.

I've been checking out the free option for MOG, but it's a bit of a bother, so I will probably stick with Pandora.

PSOVLSK

DSkip wrote: »

I like the randomness that is Pandora. I've gone on some interesting tangents during shuffles and added bands that I would've otherwise never heard of. I'm tired of hearing the same old band; if I wanted that, I'd just listen to my own collection. The "discovery" aspect of Pandora is what keeps me coming back.

Agreed. Must be a North Texas thing.

hochpt21

I love mog.

And for you random lover's...you can choose an artist and then pick between three levels of how often you want them to pop back up.

hochpt21

And yes. Multiple devices.

$5 for computer streaming. $10 for comp and mobile.

PubFiction

Groove shark is my favorite right now, I really cannot stand Pandora, I don't like most live songs and Pandora picks those a lot as well as covers. It makes sense right pick the songs that are like the song you picked, lol so how about live versions and covers. But I hate both of those.

Groove shark has annoying features though. For 1 you can get any random songs, they have little control over it, but the most annoying issue are the magical shrinking play lists. basically people will remove songs from groove shark and slowly over time your play list will just get smaller, you will get no notifications this happened, you have no idea what song disappeared to go find it again. Some songs are not normalized right, they are just twice as loud or quiet as others songs too. It seems to be half broken in internet explorer too. Bad for HTPC plasma users since IE is the best HTPC browser in full screen.

But other than that groove shark offers a alot, you can collaborate on playlists, just subcribe and search for random ones, pick radio like stations, pretty much anything.

With pandora discovery is slightly better but you have to listen to 20 bad songs to discover a good one. At first it also seems random but very quickly you feel like the same songs keep popping up.

halo71

So far, I have not had the chance to try out anything else. And, so far, I am still liking Pandora. But I found today that I need to turn down the volume IF the Kindle Fire dies or you exit Pandora. It leaves a rather nasty thump through the speakers!

badchad

I use Pandora so much its almost embarrassing. I've found its perfect for entertaining and background music. Just the other night, I had some guests over, set a pandora Christmas station and I was good to go for the next three hours.

Pandora is great in that you can set it and forget it. I've even discovered some new artists with it. I'm most pleased with the Pandora app on my receiver, there is no lag whatsoever. As soon as I turn it on, I don't even have to wait for it to buffer or anything, it just plays.

cubdog

I use and enjoy both Pandora and Mog. If I could only choose one it would be MOG no question.

cubdog

usp1

I had not heard about MOG so thanks for the introduction. I am trying the free version and I am finding that it seems to drop out more often than Pandora. IT could be because the higher resolution is taxing the bandwidth of my wireless network.

monepolk

This thread had me listening to Pandora all day yesterday. I'll have to find time to check out MOG.

usp1

Strange how free MOG seems to have very slight but audible drops in the signal. I am not sure that it is my wireless bandwidth anymore. Even with wired internet I seem to be having this problem. I wonder if the MOG stream is not working well with my Rega DAC.

tonyb

Sometimes when you have too many wireless devices, they interfere with each other. Try using another channel on the router if your using one. The dac should have no bearing in this. My microwave used to be the culprit for dropouts, I simply switched channels on the router and have never had a drop out since.