[morijinal]

For about a year I listened to MOG every day for hours. I bought into their hype about having the most pristine audio quality, thinking nobody else could rival it.
 
Recently, I bought a new phone that MOG does not support, so I switched to Spotify, which, like MOG, streams at 320kbps. You would think they would sound the same, right? Wrong!
 
Spotify hands down sounds better to me. Details of music come to life, I'm hearing stuff I haven't heard before. Clarity is better, the sound overall is fuller, and on top of that the bass seems lower and more accurate. Imagine my surprise when I could clearly hear every pair of hands clap on a live concert recording!
 
As it would turn out MOG encodes with mp3, and Spotify encodes with vorbis. My understanding was that mp3 at 320kbps was good enough that it would be pretty much impossible to tell any difference in quality between it and anything else except under the most demanding hardware and discerning listener. Well, here I am with my computer, $50 sound card, Sennheiser HD558s, and the difference is immediately evident. Oh - and Spotify doesn't have to stop to buffer tracks so play seamless.
 
Lastly, I would like to thank MOG for deciding not to support Windows Phone - which inspired me to try Spotify.

 

[StratocasterMan]

Weird. I have both Spotify and MOG and MOG sounds clearly better to me whether I use headphones or speakers. I only use them on a computer with a USB DAC though. I never use them on a phone or without the DAC.
 
To me, MOG has more air and a bigger soundstage whether I use my headphones or my speakers.

 

[morijinal]

Quote:

Weird. I have both Spotify and MOG and MOG sounds clearly better to me whether I use headphones or speakers. I only use them on a computer with a USB DAC though. I never use them on a phone or without the DAC.
 
To me, MOG has more air and a bigger soundstage whether I use my headphones or my speakers.

Very interesting. What headphones do you listen with? Music preference? Also, do you enable the high quality setting, and disable auto-leveling?

 

[StratocasterMan]

Quote:

Very interesting. What headphones do you listen with? Music preference?

 
I use Audio-Technica ATH-M50s for headphones and my 2.1 speaker rig is in my signature. I listen to very wide variety of music. Punk rock, classical, country, electronic, reggae, jazz, classic rock, whatever. I have a FiiO E17 DAC / headphone amp, and so both Spotify and MOG are running through that. I use the E17 DAC with the headphone amp for my headphones and use the E17 as a DAC only with a line-out signal for my speaker rig.
 
I use the high quality setting and disable auto-leveling in Spotify. I also have the Equalify plug-in equalizer for Spotify which I can turn on or off. I usually have it on as I prefer Spotify with a little EQ. I have different EQs set up for my headphones and my speakers.
 
With MOG I've experimented with both the desktop player and just playing it in a browser without the desktop player. I think it sounds  slightly better just playing from the browser without the desktop player.

 

[musicana]

maybe its of phone

 

[morijinal]

Nope, talking about desktop audio. Am I the only one?

 

[musicana]

do you buy from Spotify and MOG
 
you could convert the mp3

 

[philo50]

Quote:

Weird. I have both Spotify and MOG and MOG sounds clearly better to me whether I use headphones or speakers. I only use them on a computer with a USB DAC though. I never use them on a phone or without the DAC.
 
To me, MOG has more air and a bigger soundstage whether I use my headphones or my speakers.

I also have both and to me MOG is clearly superior sound wise......