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Pandora vs itunes

post #1 of 5
4/28/10 at 9:03pm
Thread Starter 
does itunes really deliver a substantially higher music quality?
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post #2 of 5
4/28/10 at 9:27pm
Do you mean the iTunes music player vs. the online Pandora radio?

If so, depends entirely on file bitrate. Pandora One plays 192kbps files, so I assume free Pandora is around 128kbps. Beat that and iTunes wins, but you have to own the files.

Also, there are arguably better players than iTunes for sound quality.
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post #3 of 5
4/28/10 at 9:49pm
Thread Starter 
thank you
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post #4 of 5
4/29/10 at 11:49am
Yes!
Since iTunes can play back up to 24-bit/192kHz lossless encoded music files - while Pandora stream lossy encoded 16-bit/44.1kHz files.
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post #5 of 5
4/29/10 at 2:20pm
I'm assuming you're meaning things bought from the iTunes store v. things streamed from Pandora. Otherwise iTunes just plays whatever files you have, assuming it's of a type it supports (ie mostly it can't be flac)

Pandora's files on the free account are relatively poorly encoded 128kbps .mp3(sometimes I think they're actually less, they just show up as 128kbps). The paid version 192kbps .mp3.

iTunes store songs are 256kbps AAC, which I feel is equivlanet to about 320 kbps .mp3. That is to say, they are a good bit better than even the premium account pandora songs.
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