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Quick Hits: Thoughts from Sonos’ CEO; results from NPR’s audio quality tests

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:


Sonos CEO on streaming’s impact: Sonos Co-founder and CEO John MacFarlane wrote an opinion piece for Re/Code about how streaming has impacted listening habits. His insights are accompanied by some fascinating data points from Sonos; for instance, 92% of all listening on Sonos is from streaming. It’s a great assessment of the recent trends from a unique technology perspective.

NPR listeners get an F in their audio quality test: We haven’t heard as much buzz recently about improving the audio quality for streaming services lately, and based on a recent survey by NPR, perhaps we shouldn’t. It conducted an online survey asking people to listen to two copies of the same song, one a lossless WAV file and one typical MP3 file, then pick which was the better quality. A dismal 80.6% of respondents got half or fewer of the six comparisons correct. Ouch.

 

Anna Washenko

One Comment

  1. The NPR test provided *three* choices: 128 kbps, 320 kbps, and WAV.

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