[FliGuyRyan]

I just signed up for Grooveshark to get their desktop application which is pretty cool, but what quality does their music stream at?

Thanks, and sorry if this was on here already. I looked, but couldn't find an exact bitrate...

-RC

 

[tasteful]

Bump.
 
Also, the music doesn't really stream; the whole song is loaded as fast as possible.

 

[OllyNewport]

Quote:

Bump.
 
Also, the music doesn't really stream; the whole song is loaded as fast as possible.

I can confirm that the bitrate for Grooveshark is 192kbps, using streamed + cached MP3 files. It sounds pretty good, but remember you need to be on a decent connection otherwise it'll downgrade the bitrate to below the hundreds. 
 
Source: Grooveshark Forums.

 

[tasteful]

Quote:

I can confirm that the bitrate for Grooveshark is 192kbps, using streamed + cached MP3 files. It sounds pretty good, but remember you need to be on a decent connection otherwise it'll downgrade the bitrate to below the hundreds. 
 
Source: Grooveshark Forums.

 
Nice, thanks. I would guess that the "Use lower quality files for streaming" option takes it down to 128 (which is a bit better for me, because I'm unfortunately on a capped connection). I'll report back when Grooveshark answers me on Twitter.
 

 

[digger945]

You may be able to go to the upper right hand corner and click on your user name(I have a paid monthly subscription so it may vary if your not a subscriber) and under the "general" tab uncheck "use lower quality files for streaming."  Now I dunno if your connection speed will have an effect on that or not, but it should be noticable if it does. Also what I did is to right click on the player screen somewhere and bring up the Adobe Flash Player settings, and adjust the "Local Storage" tab to unlimited, or at least something high, so that Grooveshark can store as much as possible to my computer and playback from there. Initially the local storage setting was pretty low. It doesn't take a lot for a 192k file, but moar is bettar, no?
 
I like Grooveshark. Got a lot of new music there listening to Radio. Much bettar than Last.fm.

 

[Mak333]

Is it fair to use a spectrogram to aid in detecting this?
 
I have a Zune subscription and used a spectrogram to test a streamed song and then the CD album version of the song and they were pretty darn close to the same - visually.

 

[OllyNewport]

 
Quote:

You may be able to go to the upper right hand corner and click on your user name(I have a paid monthly subscription so it may vary if your not a subscriber) and under the "general" tab uncheck "use lower quality files for streaming."  Now I dunno if your connection speed will have an effect on that or not, but it should be noticable if it does. Also what I did is to right click on the player screen somewhere and bring up the Adobe Flash Player settings, and adjust the "Local Storage" tab to unlimited, or at least something high, so that Grooveshark can store as much as possible to my computer and playback from there. Initially the local storage setting was pretty low. It doesn't take a lot for a 192k file, but moar is bettar, no?
 
I like Grooveshark. Got a lot of new music there listening to Radio. Much bettar than Last.fm.

Actually since emailing Grooveshark via their Feedback VIP box thing that you get if you're a fancy subscriber, they also said that in some circumstances they will use higher quality files, so 320 and 256. 
 

 

[Chacho]

I cannot find a setting called "Use lower quality files for streaming" option.
 
Could some elaborate clearly and concisely about how to turn this option off.

 

[Reticuli2]

I can't imagine myself ever paying for MP3s, per track or a subscription service.

 

[rjohn]

Grooveshark quality is the worst you can get. The users upload their content which are mostly in lossy formats. Then grooveshark reencodes that to 192 or 128. Not to mention the possibility that the user uploaded track might have been already transcoded. Transcoding from a lossy source to a lossy format significantly degrades the quality and is far worse than encoding once from a lossless source. It doesn't take a super audiophile to spot a difference. It is so significant that you can even distinguish with apple earbuds. DO NOT PAY FOR GROOVESHARK.