OT: Pandora quality

I realize many of you are not into streaming services because of the lower quality, but ...

I've had a paid Pandora account for years. While most songs used to stream up to at least 20k, I'm finding now that everything I've checked only goes up to 16k (and cuts off sharply). I checked cuts from several different albums and this seems to be the case.

I didn't downgrade to a free pandora account. So I'm wondering if anyone else here pays for Pandora and has noticed this lower "mp3 level" quality. Or if you can check what you're finding on your end.

(BTW, I think most of us here, including me, are audiophiles, looking for the best quality. And go to painstaking steps to get it. But I'll just say this about the streaming services I pay for. I discover great songs on them. And then buy them on CD, or at the very least, lossless format on Qobuz).

Edited by EdisonLite - 02 June 2025 at 3:48pm

Well, this is a strange one. On Pandora, I discovered an alternate mix to a 1979 Frank Mills song, which I liked a lot. It showed it cut off at 16k (mp3 quality), as did about 5 other random songs I checked. So I bought this recording from Qobuz to get the better quality. And the qobuz file also cuts off dramatically at 16k. But here's the strange part. It came from a V.A. comp CD from 1995. (I couldn't find the CD anywhere, but back then, before most people even had home computers, there weren't songs released only on streaming services, and not CD. So an mp3 was supplied as a source for this 1995 CD. I know starting in the 2000s, an occasional CD single release would have an mp3 as a source. But in 1995, a CD of a 1979 song??

Maybe Pandora still broadcasts in 20k+ quality, like I had observed a few years back. I'll have to check more songs.

But it always such a disappointment when buying a "lossless" flac on Qobuz and 7Digital and getting mp3 quality. And Qobuz stopped giving refunds for something like this situation quite a while ago.

It sometimes depends on the source. Sometimes all a label or distributor delivers to any given service is a an MP3 or maybe even a WAV that's sourced from MP3. I won't say that it happens all the time but it certainly does happen.