Spotify - high quality, legal, free, streaming music.

[DavidW]

Some do.

Nope. It just sounds either congested or lacking in detail.  Mp3 compression never adds noise.  In fact the high frequencies are filtered, and the lower the bitrate the more aggressively they are filtered so you'll never hear anything like noise.

Granted, I've never heard anything that sounds like what I think of as background noise--i.e. tape hiss--but have heard much that someone else might characterize that way, akin to the pops and clicks of ill-cared-for vinyl.

Pops come from ripping a cd unsecurely and it hit a scratch, and you can hear it in the wav before it is compressed.  It's not due to poor compression, it's due to poor cd ripping.

[DavidW]

Wireless cards can and do interfere with many sound cards and produce pops and other noise.  So much so that for most professional audio recording applications it is recommended to disable your wireless connection while recording music. 

I've had that happen on my laptop, and I bet that is the issue.  I get pops and noise and it's terrible.  I found a plugin for foobar and winamp that increases the buffer the soundcard uses and eliminates the problem entirely... but I can't remember the name, I'll post it when it comes back to me.

I don't know if this effects streaming audio in the same manner, but I do know it will effect music as you are recording it into Pro Tools or Cubase.

It does indeed effect it exactly like you described.

[DavidW]

It's called Asio!  There is another one called wasapi which I have not used.  But there are asio plugins for winamp and foobar.  There is a plugin to use asio all of the time for all apps under windows called asio4all, but I couldn't get it to work.

[DavidRoss]

Nope. It just sounds either congested or lacking in detail.  Mp3 compression never adds noise.  In fact the high frequencies are filtered, and the lower the bitrate the more aggressively they are filtered so you'll never hear anything like noise.

Pops come from ripping a cd unsecurely and it hit a scratch, and you can hear it in the wav before it is compressed.  It's not due to poor compression, it's due to poor cd ripping.

Apparently we still occupy different worlds.

[DavidRoss]

I'd like to give spotty a try.  Would any of our members in Europe care to send me an invite?  Thanks!

[Todd]

I'd like to give spotty a try.  Would any of our members in Europe care to send me an invite?  Thanks!

You can go the web-site and sign up for your own invite.  Took less than a day for mine.  You can download the software from ninite.com anytime.

[DavidRoss]

Thanks for the info, Todd. 

[Mn Dave]

I'm beginning to question the sound quaility on some recordings, but for ten bucks a month, it's still pretty much a no-brainer.

[DavidRoss]

Hmmm...the free service sucks with interruptions after every movement featuring one or another particularly loud, badly recorded, and unmusical example of what's worst about popular culture.  It might be worth paying for if there's enough good stuff available, but it seems that the cataloging of classical was done by a team swilling torpedo juice and using darts and dice to determine tagging.

[Mn Dave]

Hmmm...the free service sucks with interruptions after every movement featuring one or another particularly loud, badly recorded, and unmusical example of what's worst about popular culture.  It might be worth paying for if there's enough good stuff available, but it seems that the cataloging of classical was done by a team swilling torpedo juice and using darts and dice to determine tagging.

It's pop oriented of course and there is no gapless playback (not that I've found).

But still, ten bucks...

[DavidW]

but it seems that the cataloging of classical was done by a team swilling torpedo juice and using darts and dice to determine tagging.

That's what I found for all of the mainstream streaming services.  I use those kind of services for pop, I use nml for classical.  Also these non-nml streaming sites don't really offer that much content for classical, sure they represent the major labels, but other than that they really can't come close to the breadth and depth that nml has.

[Mn Dave]

What the hell is NML?

[Mn Dave]

Also these non-nml streaming sites don't really offer that much content for classical...

Are you including Spotify?

[DavidW]

Are you including Spotify?

Why not?  It's not like it offers oodles more than Rhapsody.  This thread is really overhyping a service that provides the same content at the same price as all of the other popular ones.  It's as if nobody here used streaming services before.

[Mn Dave]

Well, just from browsing, you can't use Rhapsody on a Mac and the sound quality is lower.

[Mn Dave]

What the hell is NML?

[DavidW]

Well, just from browsing, you can't use Rhapsody on a Mac and the sound quality is lower.

You don't need to use the program, you can use the website.  Rhapsody is just one.  Napster is also out there, and they have the billboard charts, plus their is in app for them on my tv.  And then we have mog which allows 320k downloads on ipod touch, iphone and android phones.  They also have shared playlists, which is very cool because they have some famous artists on there, you can listen to music David Bowie what thinks is cool for instance.

[DavidW]

What the hell is NML?

Naxos Music Library, expensive but it has an amazing catalogue for classical, beating all other services by far with the one weakness that they don't have major labels.

[Mn Dave]

I haven't delved much into the classical side of Spotify, but it has a lot of it, although on some recordings a track or two can't be played for some reason. I saw a Cedille album on there; haven't checked much for other smaller labels.

[Mn Dave]

It was rather amusing last night when the music stopped playing through my laptop and I discovered my wife had pulled up my account to listen to a song on her phone. Learned something there.