Originally Posted by Woofman

. . . download and use the SiriusXM smart phone app under Android Auto or CarPlay and see what you think about its sound quality

Originally Posted by Electric Lizard

I have over 40 hours of music on my Spotify playlist. If I download it onto my phone and play that through the car radio, would the sound quality increase over what I can get directly from SiriusXM?

Originally Posted by Electric Lizard

I have over 40 hours of music on my Spotify playlist. If I download it onto my phone and play that through the car radio, would the sound quality increase over what I can get directly from SiriusXM?

Originally Posted by Schnave

For best results, be sure to download your Spotify tracks at one of the High bit rates, selectable in your app. As you can see, there is a huge difference in quality; ranging from 24kbps (really crappy) to 320 kbps (pretty good). Here are your options:

• Low: Approximately 24kb/s
• Normal: Approximately 96kb/s
• High: Approximately 160kb/s
• Very high (only available on Spotify Premium): Approximately 320kb/s

Originally Posted by Electric Lizard

Thanks. If I do this and load on a thumb drive, would the Spotify app on the PCM be able to read it? (I did see that post on another thread noting that the drive must be formatted FAT32)

Originally Posted by Silververtu

I am curious what volume you guys turn up to? I rarely have the volume pass 50% (half of the bar on screen) as the sound becomes too loud to focus on driving.

Originally Posted by Vapordan

A lot of bose haters here 4 sure. Unwarranted imo. My thoughts. I start with a high bitrate source. Then, I run all my music thru a 10 band EQ. All of that is on my iphone, I have no extra stuff in the S. The bose are good because I cannot hear distortion at the volumes I listen to (I can hold a conversation while the music is playing). They arent as good as the burms, which are tuned to the high end but light on base to give a sense of clarity. But I can go all the way up on the burms without much perceived distortion (noise). The bose won’t do that but they are good enough. They are objectively better than MB HKs which are tuned to the mid-low end and dont offer much clarity at all e.g., cymbals do not sparkle. I don’t turn these up at all because i don’t like what i hear at mid to high volumes. Source is key. Its not possible to get satellite anything (64 kbs???) to sound good. That is a fool’s errand. Bitrate, a measure of compression, is the culprit. Compression artifacts, which some folks here talk about is something different. Usually, untrained ears cannot discern compression artifacts so we should not talk about those. Take a listen to relaxingjazz.com setting the stream to 320 kbps on the same ‘****ty’ bose system and you will hear it come alive. Set the stream back down to 32 kbps and you’ll immediately notice the difference. There isn’t a way to ‘fix’ a 32 kbps stream because most of the audio info is removed from the stream and cannot be put back in using software, better speakers or a bigger amp. These streams are suitable for talk radio but not music. Even media-based music (USB, CDs etc) needs to be encoded (put in) at the correct bitrate or they will not sound good. My better half insists on bootlegged mp3 on the burms and that irritates me to a whole other level. The abject sacrilege of a radio recorded mp3 on Burmesters!!! Dieter would roll in his grave 4 sure. Once the source is good, an EQ can be used to compensate for speaker/system shortcomings, cabin noise, poor listening environments etc by surgically altering the offending frequencies (tuning the system). I own a studio btw and i am also a music lover.

Originally Posted by Schnave

Not sure. The PCM app will look for your library online. Don’t know how to change the file path to your USB drive.

If you can’t change the Native Spotify app’s file path on your PCM to the USB location, note that the downloaded Spotify files on your USB are encrypted and can’t be played by the normal USB music player.

Originally Posted by Schnave

Very high (only available on Spotify Premium): Approximately 320kb/s

Originally Posted by chassis

Is this comparable to Tidal’s 1411k HiFi offering? In other words are the measurement units the same? Or do the music services rate their files/quality differently to thwart consumers making comparisons?

Thanks.