Greg, both Spotify and Mog offer cd quality sound. |
If you're asking if there are streaming sites that offer quality equal to CD, I'm not aware of any.
Both MOG and Spotify Premium stream at 320 kbps, which isn't as high resolution as the bit rate of a CD at 1,411 kbps, but I find MOG streamed through a good DAC to be completely enjoyable even compared to a CD played through the same system. The maximum bit rate of premium Pandora One's desktop app is 192 kbps. It's still perfectly listenable but doesn't sound as good as MOG.
Despite the lower bit rates I think the streaming sites are the best thing that's happened to music listening in a long, long time. The vast catalogues of music and the recommendation algorithms mean you'll discover much, much more new music you really like, a lot of it music you would never have thought of trying. |
Sfar,
Re your 3rd paragraph...couldn't agree with you more.
I've been enjoying Pandora One for almost 2 yrs now. I've been thinking of trying MOG out. Can you tell me what the human interface is like comparing it to Pandora please?
Love to hear from others also that use both of these. |
Sfar writes: Both MOG and Spotify Premium stream at 320 kbps, which isn't as high resolution as the bit rate of a CD at 1,411 kbps, but I find MOG streamed through a good DAC to be completely enjoyable even compared to a CD played through the same system. Thank you for that. I did not realize the rate was that high. Regards, |
I also agree with Sfar. I've been a Mog subscriber for about a year now - streaming through my Logitech Touch. It sounds terrific and, even though I can tell the difference between a CD and Mog, the ability to explore new music and try out an album before buying it makes it well worth the $4.99 per month subscription. |
MOG ROCKS! I've been with them since day one and find the sound quality excellent.
I totally agree with Djohnson54's comments about being able to listen to a full CD before buying it. The $4.99 monthly fee has already paid for itself many times over from me buying terrible CDs. |
Good information. Good points above about streaming from the internet. It does open up the ability to hear so much more music. |
Onemug - The listening experience with Pandora compared to Mog is quite different and which you prefer will probably depend on what you want from a streaming service.
With MOG you're almost completely in control of what you listen to and in what order. Pandora makes most of the choices for you, guided by your starting point and how much time you spend 'training' it.
The MOG desktop application is well designed and intuitive, at least for me, and there are a number of ways you can select and organize music. You can build playlists, like the ones in iTunes, by album, artist or song. You can also view others' playlists if they've made them public.
In addition to playlists you can tag albums or tracks as 'favorites' and have them always accessible.
Doing a search for an artist will pull up all their work in the catalog, organized by album or track. You also get a list of similar artists. There's also a 'browse' function for new releases, editors' picks and top albums and tracks.
Once you begin choosing and playing music a page is created for you that lists other music that the algorithm thinks you'd like. If you play an album and the album ends without your choosing another album MOG will start playing something it thinks is similar, in the same way that Pandora does.
With both Pandora and MOG's algorithms the more mainstream your taste the more likely you'll be to get other, similar music. For instance, I listen to a lot of fairly obscure stuff and creating a Pandora station for one of them pulls up only limited choices that are often not that similar and there's a lot of repetition. That's less of a problem with MOG's choices because you have much more control over what it plays.
If you pay $10 a month to MOG rather than the standard $5 you can get a mobile app that lets you download any music you want to your tablet or smartphone so that it's available anytime offline. You can keep it as long as you maintain a subscription, if you drop your subscription the downloaded music magically disappears.
As with all software there are details of the navigation in MOG you have to get used to that can seem confusing at first, but that's true of Pandora, as well. MOG works like a combination of iTunes, where everything is under your control, and Pandora, where the choices are made for you and the serendipity is valuable.
I still listen to Pandora and Spotify sometimes but it's MOG most of the time. As I said, though, which you prefer will probably depend on your musical taste and your personal preference for how your music is served up. |
Sfar,
Thanks. That was as excellent reply.
I put the MOG app on my iPad from the App store. It said it was free. I know you can get a 14 day free trial for the paid one. Do you know what the free one does? Is it still at 320 kbps?
Also, when it downloaded, I got the window, "email and password". I thought it was for my Apple password but it didn't work. Are they asking for my email password or am I supposed to create a MOG acct and make my own? |
Does anyone know if MOG can be accesses with the Oppo 95. |
Good question. Imagine a service like MOG that streams 1,411 kbs or even more, say 3-4 thousand kbs (real Hi Res, 24 bit/96 khz)! I can stream HD movies with 5.1 soundtrack on VUDU through my ROKU box. What are the technical limitations preventing high bitrate music streaming? BTW, I've been fooling with a service called Orastream which seems like a step in the right direction. |
Onemug - I think the confusion about the cost is that while the app is free to download from the Apple Store, a subscription to stream and download to the iPad adds $5 a month to your paid Mog subscription.
I don't know the answer about the streaming rate through the tablet app but can't find any information that it's any different from the normal rate.
The app is asking for your MOG account email and password since the two services are designed to be used together. Your Apple account and password would be only for use to apps or other content downloaded from the App store, not to access MOG content. If you haven't created a MOG account you'll need to do that before the iPad app will work. |
Onemug - p.s. - you might want to try MOG through the regular desktop application trial period before committing to an additional $5 a month for the iPad content. I like MOG a lot, obviously, but it might not suit everyone. |
Sfar,
Can't thank you enough. Once again your answers are perfect. I plan on trying that 14 day trial starting tomorrow.
I'm listening to some easy Jazz on Pandora One right now. I am pretty impressed with the quality on some of the better recorded songs and that's at 192 kbps. Looking forward to hearing what 320 sounds like. |
RD, As you say, this isn't a technical problem since HD movies are already being streamed. The only real issues I can think of are the bandwidth cost that the streaming company would incur and the fact that all of their music would have to be re-ripped at the higher bitrate. I wouldn't want to have to do that for my current catalog which isn't very big - imagine doing it for the 16 million plus tracks MOG advertises! This assumes that they weren't forward thinking and already have the uncompressed tracks somewhere.
However, probably the real issue is record company restrictions. The labels will flip when you start talking about sending out unadulterated digital copies of master "tapes" much less high-resolution copies. HDTracks had to raise their prices for high resolution downloads due to pressure from the record labels. Of course this is totally artificial. The only difference in costs for a 24/96 track vs. a 16/44 are the slight increase in costs for storage and download bandwidth.
Dick |
Just signed on for MOG primo. Thanks to all for the great info here - I'm looking forward to using the service |
Still wondering if the OPPO 95 can access MOG? |
FYI - iPhone 5/BMW types
Today I learned that the BMW cradle for the iPhone 5 won't be available 'til early next year so you won't be able to get MOG thru your screen+controller until then. In the meantime, I plan on piling up a sh*tload of music so it's ready to roll when the hardware arrives.
Marty |
Gdush, Sorry that no one seems to be answering your question. I don't have an Oppo so I can't either - directly. However, I stream Mog through my Squeezebox Touch and it requires an account on Logitech's Squeezecenter site that the Touch logs into that when I switch to that "library." I think most current streaming devices work that way although I don't think there's a technical reason why a direct connect to Mog/Pandora/Spotify, etc. couldn't be built in to a device. The downside would be that, if a new service popped up, an older device wouldn't know about it and couldn't access it w/o a firmware update. On the other hand, if Logitech shuts down their controlling web site, I'm out of luck.
Dick |
Thank you everyone. The information was very helpful. Greg |
