Pandora

My daughter listens to Pandora as a primary source and I put together a system for her that works really well.

The amp is an Onkyo A-5L integrated that has a built-in Burr-Brown PCM1796 DAC with coax and optical inputs. Toslink out from her MacBook Pro or Airport Express goes into the optical input on the amp.

The Onkyo drives a pair of Cambridge Audio S30 speakers. It's a great sounding, compact system that cost around $500 buying the amp refurbished from accessories4less.

As Mceljo said, Pandora streaming is 128K, unless you subscribe to the premium service for $36 a year, then you get 192K (and no ads or restrictions on how often you can skip.) It does sound good.

Mceljo - What your receiver is telling you is correct. If you're listening to the free Pandora service it is sending files at 128 kilobits per second and if you upgrade to the premium service you receive higher-quality 192 kbps files. That's unrelated to the speed of the streaming.

Whether you can hear the difference or whether your system can resolve the difference is a different question but with my modest setup I can hear and appreciate the higher bitrate.

Mceljo - can you explain what you mean by in-home components?

I run Pandora One on an iMac and use Airfoil to send it to three separate systems, the iMac locally, a small system in my basement and my living room system, the latter two through an Airport Express attached to each.

Right, thanks.

As far as I know the ways you can access Pandora are through a browser, a desktop application running on a PC or Mac or a mobile app on an iPhone, iPad or Android device. I think Spotify and Mog work similarly but Mog does work directly through some LG Blu-Ray players and other streaming devices according to their site.