Is Spotify as good of quality as the HD-Tracks?

onemug, i did try beats for two weeks--like mog, beats streams "up to 320kb" mp3, although they use a different streaming protocol. alot of people complained that beats doesn't sound as good as mog did ("more compressed" and "artificial highs" being the common refrains). note that some of the criticism may have been during beats' beta testing, and may no longer be valid. personally , i didn't hear much difference between beats' and mogs' sq--beats sounded very good, and immeasurably better than, say, pandora. all that said, i am finding spotify's sq to be a little better on most genres (more detail, range), although the difference is subtle and one might easily prefer one over the other.

Loomisjohnson...Thanks. You are very fair in you in your observations.

Larrybou...Doing the same i.e.,iDevice>dock>dac and also streaming via Sonos>bridge>controller>dac. Sounds surprisingly good.

you're welcome, onemug. a few parting rants, then i'll leave this subject alone:
1. i still mourn mog's demise, but all good things must pass...
2. compared to mog, spotify may have a better library--it has some artists (led zep, aimee mann) who were conspicuously missing from mog, altho it also omits some of the alternative/obscuro stuff i found on mog.
3. spotify's "discover" feature, which recommends artists based on your previous selections, works very well and is updated more frequently than was mog's.
4. likewise, spotify seems to post new releases more quickly than mog.
5. spotify's customizable radio mode is ok, but not as cool or easy to use as mog's "mobius technology" (which let you select how much of a particular artist you want to hear by moving the contiuum slider, and thereby tailors the radio station much more precisely to what you want to hear).
5. spotify's offline mode is decidely inferior to mog's--it's easy to download music for offline listening but difficult to find specific artists or tracks you downloaded.
6. the big advantage of mog was its interface, which was extremely intuitive and easy on the eyes. even after a month or so i find spotify's interface difficult and confusing--it often requires scrolling through different menus, and most maddeningly, presents everything against an almost unreadable black background, which is difficult for me to see, let alone navigate.

I have Spotify Premium, and I'm very happy with the sound quality. I have downloaded some songs from HD Tracks, and there is a difference between the HD Tracks songs and the sound quality on Spotify, the HD Tracks stuff that I downloaded sounds amazing. But judging Spotify on its own, I think it sounds great.

When I first got Spotify I did a rather unscientific comparison...ran the USB from my computer into my Peachtree integrated (it has a Sabre 9018 DAC), and connected an Onkyo universal player using Coax into the Peachtree's dac as well, so the DAC was doing all the work albeit from different connections (computer through USB vs. CD player through coax). I then queued up a song on Spotify, and the exact same song on CD, and started them at the exact same time so that all I had to do was change the input on the Peachtree to go back and forth and hear the exact same song, in the exact same place, from Spotify to CD. There was a difference, but to my ears, in my room, it wasn't big enough to override the convenience of Spotify. If I was doing critical listening of a piece of music, I'd listen on CD, but the convenience, library, and quick easy access to music on Spotify far outweighed any difference in sound quality between the two. Spotify has spoiled me...the ability to quickly shift gears from one artist to another, one song to another, at the click of the mouse, much more fun than having to get up, change CDs, deal with handling discs and CD cases everywhere.

Hope this helps...