I was fooling around with my new iphone and came across pandora.com which I now have on both my phone and computer. All I did was put in the "The Eagles" and for 2 hours I was astounded by the fact that I liked every song that played ! Pandora just kept picking music automatically that I liked. Has anyone ever listened to this music through the Mcintosh system ? I was listening on my imac while working on my computer so the quality was limited by the sound coming through small computer speakers but I have to say I loved the variety; like they say " a customized radio station for you".:banana::banana: The best thing is that it is totally FREE !!

ok I just found something else that is totally amazing. There is a program called pandora jam which lets you wifi pandora music from your computer to the airport express connected to your stereo and play music. The website http://www.bitcartel.com/pandorajam/index.html say's you can also record music directly into your itunes library and create a playlist from the music recorded from pandora even when you are not connected ie put on your ipod and take it with you.

Cool, I've been looking for something like this! Thanks...

Doc,

I've been using Pandora for a couple of years, it's positively amazing for background music (create a station to match your mood). I even paid the measily $36/yr subscription price so I can listen to it through my Squeezebox.

If you like Pandora, you might also like Rhapsody. It's a bit more expensive ($13/month) but, unlike Pandora, you can stream entire albums and create your own playlists. I love the ability of saying "Hey, I want to listen to this album - out of 10,000s and hear it in its entirety within seconds. They have a 14 day free trial, well worth trying it IMO.

I think both Pandora and Rhapsody, with streaming, are the future of music (no wonder music stores are closing left and right).

Now for the challenge ...

The bummer is that the streaming bit rates are pretty low (128Kbps) which is WELL below CD "quality".

I don't plan to use streaming internet "radio" for critical listening, but I must say that playing it straight through a high resolution system it can get a bit fatiguing - especially if you plan to listen to it for hours as background music.

So I've been experimenting with ways of making the music more warm and pleasing and less digital sounding - even if this means giving up some resolution.

So far, my experiments have be in the direction of smoothing the digitalness by adding some euphonic distortion (i.e. the kind of distortion that can sounds pleasing to the ears) - yes, there is such a thing :D.

This past week, I've been passing the signal from my Squeezebox through a Musical Fidelity X10 V3 tube buffer, then through a Bottlehead single-ended topology (SET) amplifier. SETs are usually rich in 2nd order harmonics (which are more pleasant sounding than higher order harmonics).

Passing the signal through the tube buffer and amplifying it with an SET amp took out a considerable amount of "digital edge" and dramatically reduced listening fatigue. The price, of course, is a "mushier" sound. But I find that much more tolerable that fatiguing digital sound.

I wonder if using the MDA1000 would help much with low bit rates.

Alberto

I have been using Pandora for a year or so. I am using a Squeezebox which is connected through my MDA1000. The sound quality is very good.

I also use the Squeezebox for most of my CD listening. Pandora doesn't sound as good as a flac-encoded CD image, but it is pretty good.

I have a squeezebox, and discovered pandora about a month ago. I had dropped the 36/yr within a week. I hate radio, they never play much that interests me. I have heard new (to me) music that I love!

I 100% agree, I love it. I do a LOT of work around the house and in the garage. While the sound quality is as good as a CD, I find it worth the tradeoff. Anything that I am in love with I just buy on disc!

If your reading this, and have not tried pandora you are missing out!

Evan

went to check it out and got this
http://www.pandora.com/restricted

I guess i cannot play around with it unless i use a proxy, which will result in buffering issues..

bummer.

I like the fact that I can record the music from pandora straight into itunes and have pandora playlists to take with me and play in the car. I know it is not the same fidelity as a cd however when I am at my desk on the computer, in my car, in my backyard at the pool or on vacation using the ipod I find it to be atleast as good as the system it is playing through. When I go to my hi fi listening room I get a different experience which makes me appreciate cd and sacd music even more. I am looking forward to the quality of on demand internet radio to come up to cd quality and beyond to HD.
I think Mcintosh missed the boat with there new tuner, they should have included wifi radio, the internet is the future just as cable and now the internet replaced analog antenna.

Love Pandora!:thmbsp:

Pandora is great. I listen at work. I have found that some of my playlists repeat the same set of songs over and over. I have a 'The Who' channel and it always plays the same set of songs. Maybe I have 'thumbs up'd too many songs and it won't stray from the list.

I'm using the free one. Maybe it is limited in some way. If so, they should document that. If I had a better way to control it, like a squeezebox, I would purchase the subscription. At home I run it on my server and use VNC to control it, which isn't do great.

The only other problem is that it is quite CPU intensive, compared to running squeezeslave on my PC. This is a problem on my music server which is only a pIII 500. It does other things besides music, and sometimes gets bogged down with Pandora going. Especially when VNC is in use controlling that machine.

Overall, it is still a fantastic service.