Streaming Audio

Hey There,

There are quite a few places to look for streaming audio. Many people I know are just using iTunes to stream pod casts...there's an abundance of music there. Have signed up for free Spotify or Pandora accounts? Spotify, aside from a few adds will give you around 14million songs to choose from..that may keep you busy for a bit. Also, soundcould is fun to explore.

i tunes has free streaming radio stations. i have a sonos connect, it also has a bunch of free streaming radio stations i can listen to.

pandora is great, the free version has a few short commercials here and there or for 30 ish bucks a year you can get better sound quality which is pretty good IMO, no comercials, you can skip as many songs as you want. and stuff like that. i had a paid spottily account for about a month, i like Pandora allot better so i am sticking with pandora,

i am sure there are more places you can get free streaming internet radio but i have not really looked into it much. but those are a few things you might like. the sonos unit is great for streaming my music and its really nice that i can listen to all these free radio stations too.

I tried out Spotify as well but ended up sticking with Pandora. With Spotify at a premium account audio is 320kbps while I think Pandora is a 192. I think I just became lazy when faced with picking from 14 million tracks on Spotify (lol) and felt like Pandora was picking good enough tracks for me to not mind. Every now and then I want to listen to a specific song or album though. Songza is another radio type streaming service but you pick playlists based on genre or even mood, like "Cooking Dinner" it's not bad. For discovering new artists, check out wearehunted.com.

You can go to vtuner.com or tunein.com to find streaming radio stations by genre.

For a paid service, I prefer MOG. Streams at 320 kbps and allows you to select and build your own playlist by album, artist, genre, etc. Its $4.95 per month.

You need to research computer audio - the power supply in your computer has no direct bearing on audio output.

Regarding your computer audio set up, I'll suggest that you buy a pair of decent powered speakers/active monitors first.

You can connect them directly to the analog audio out from your sound card.

Later on you may want to consider buying a DAC to further improve sound quality.

Audioengine makes some decent entry level stuff for computer audio.

http://audioengineusa.com/

Emotiva offers powered speakers, too. I use their Airmotiv 5 speakers on my desktop.

http://www.emotivapro.com/collections/all

There are lots more, just Google powered speakers or active monitors.

I also have a full blown 2 channel audio system connected to my computer but that's another story.

Here's a link to web site that provides a good starting point to learn more about computer audio.

http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/

Here's a link to another site to learn about computer audio. Check their forum, too.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/

For streaming classical music I enjoy the programs at Concertzender:
http://www.concertzender.nl/?language=en

They have a live stream, themed channels, and a radio on demand section that provides access to a huge library of past programs.

MOG is another streaming site which was rated higher than Spotify by computeraudiophile.com. They liked the quality of the audio (apparently has more higher res music than Spotify and has a greater selection of music). Also 320 kbps but like Pandora, has a radio-like function which allows you to spontaneously discover music based on what you like. But I'm a musician so I quite frequently want a specific song by a specific artist and I want to play it several times in a row. I pay $5 a month for their desktop service to play on my desktop or laptop. It's another $5 per month for phone/ipad player. I like it a lot.

Have fun!
Mike

There are many plugins for Spotify that help with automatic playlist and discovering new music. I would recommend but am currently in day 3 of a power outage.

One huge advantage of Spotify is the ability to download offline playlists. Because I am not always connected its good to have a nice collection while mobile.

I liked MOG but they need to get their user experience in order before I go back. I found MOG to be great for several genres, but a bit lacking for classical.