Enabling this can help with seeking within transcoded media.
Without knowing how big a file is, it's impossible to display an
accurate progress bar. This option asks the server to send a
"Content-Length" header with a guess (based on bitrate and song length)
of how big the streamed file is going to be, enabling a progress bar to
be shown.
This reliably works with CBR transcodes, but can have issues with VBR as
the server doesn't know how big the file will be before it's transcoded.
If the server estimates incorrectly then songs could stop playing before
they actually finish or cause other glitches.
For the most part servers are pretty good with their estimates and being
able to seek in a transcoded stream as it downloads is a substantial UX
improvement so the option is enabled by default.
Enabling this can help with seeking within transcoded media.
Without knowing how big a file is, it's impossible to display an accurate progress bar. This option asks the server to send a "Content-Length" header with a guess (based on bitrate and song length) of how big the streamed file is going to be, enabling a progress bar to be shown.
This reliably works with CBR transcodes, but can have issues with VBR as the server doesn't know how big the file will be before it's transcoded. If the server estimates incorrectly then songs could stop playing before they actually finish or cause other glitches.
For the most part servers are pretty good with their estimates and being able to seek in a transcoded stream as it downloads is a substantial UX improvement so the option is enabled by default.