Originally Posted by
Skyeclad Again, I'm no audio-phile but I can tell when something sounds mushy and when something sounds like it has expansive dynamic range. Pandora has a problem in this area compared with Slacker and so I asked what the file compression is and I received an answer.
Pandora's stream is 40k AAC mono for BlackBerry's. They said this is the limit of what the carriers allowed them and is a compromise solution to optimize speed and battery drain. They are experimenting with higher quality audio.
In comparison, Slacker uses 40k HE-AAC v2 which per wikipedia "HE-AAC version 2 (HE-AAC v2) couples SBR with Parametric Stereo (PS) to enhance the compression efficiency of stereo signals."
So in the very least I garnered that Pandora = Mono and Slacker = Stereo. I know that audio quality is subjective but is it that hard to hear the difference guys?