[Nigel79]

Whats the differences? Pandora sounds Great to me? Am I missing out?

 

[ljokerl]

First off: if it sounds good enough to you, then you are not missing out.

Now, most audio streams are 128kbps, same as a large chunk of mp3s out there. With a half-decent setup it is possible to notice a difference between 128kbps and near-cd (320kbps) or cd-quality (flac/alac/wav etc). If you want to visualize the difference, check out the excellent work done in this thread.

Also, some people are so used to the way compressed (128kbps) mp3's sound that they actually prefer them to higher bitrates. If you want to quickly test whether you can tell a difference, go here, scroll down to the mp3 samples (same track sections in 128 and 256kbps). Have someone else play them back randomly (a sort of blind experiment) and try to see if one sounds better (or indeed different) than the other to you.

Edit: found an easier-to-distinguish one here. The 3 Santana samples (64 vs 128 vs 256kbps) are easy to tell apart even with my worst setup (netbook straight to Skullcandy Ink'd buds).

 

[AtomikPi]

I believe pandora streams 128 kb/s mp3. I think it's good enough for listening to new music and is far better than terrestrial radio. If you a/b/x 128 and flac you'll find that 128 actually is pretty listenable.

If pandora sounds better than other sources to your ears you may be dealing with a volume imbalance - for example if you max the volume on pandora but have foobar at 80% volume etc.