MOG

[richidoo]

http://www.audioadvice.com/blog/audio-advice-news/2011/have-you-heard-about-mog/

http://mog.com/

Like Pandora's intelligent playlist but you can control the ratio of named artist to similar music. Like Rhapsody with the large database and instant access to any song. Unlike either of those, the bitrate is 328kbps!! Not as good as 1411.2kbps of CD, but far better than free Pandora's 128kbps.   $10/mo subscription fee.

Coming soon to Sonos, I'm excited to try it.

[mdconnelly]

Wow!  At that streaming rate, it's going to sound good.  I do believe that the future of the music industry is a service model.  I may not be ready to give up owning my own music library just yet, but if/when I can pay for a service that will provide the same level of quality as my own library... well, then I just might jump in.  Hell, I spend a lot more than $10 on music now - whether it is for vinyl, CDs or downloads. 

[richidoo]

How does the Oracle do with streams Mike? I was thinking it might be too revealling for compressed files, or can you turn down the detail with oversampling or filtering settings? On full res material the detail is amazing.

[mdconnelly]

Rich,  I generally keep the Oracle DAC in bypass mode rather than having it upsample.  When I'm playing hi-res via the SB Touch (24/96), the upsampling "may" sound better, but not always.  Overall, I've been happiest just leaving it on bypass. 

When I'm playing Pandora or other Internet streaming, it's generally just for background music so I'm generally good with however it sounds.  But as with most things, I find the quality of the stream far more dependent upon the recording being played than with the stream resolution.  But yes, there are also times when I just need to switch from Internet streaming to my own recordings because the sounds just gets grating. 

[richidoo]

I have the same problem. 99% of the time it is fine, then one comes through that is unbearable. I always preferred the Oracle DAC in bypass too. I remember that the oversampling settings seemed to mellow out the sound a little, which might help deburr the mp3s. But maybe it takes off too much of the good to be worth it.
Thanks Mike.