Pandora

i don,t know what you are trying to accomplish so hard to say. why not get mog or spotify which can deliver 320kbps instead of the lower quality of pandora? then you could then get better sound quality. if i was going to stream low quality i guess a budget reciever and some bookshelf speakers would work for background music. don,t take that wrong please but my opinion is better gear won,t perform all that well with pandora as the primary source. good luck john

Hello. Many of our customers use the Wadia 171, Cambridge Audio DacMagic, to an integrated amp like the Cambridge 650A to Dynaudio X12's. This makes for a good system without breaking the bank.

I use Pandora daily on my system. It's no match for a CD or SACD, but it sounds good enough to impress anyone that listens. I have to prove to them that it doesn't sound good by pulling out something better. I've been way more impressed that I would have ever anticipated. It's far better sound than my iPod on the dock using similar music files. Pandora is 128 MP3 and it takes Apple Lossless on my iPod to sound equal or better.

You can build quite a nice system and still enjoy an improved Pandora sound, it'll just never sound as good as other sources can.

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.