Community/SoapBox

i have the sportster 5 on my 04 galant… im more 50/50 on this issue… i “had” high hopes but after listening for about a couple weeks im really tired of quality of music being sent…. its very mono tone.  FM radio has better quality sound then the my sat radio… a little dissapointed…

I had a Sirius “Conductor” home unit with a digital opitical
output.  What a joke.  I subscribed for 1 year, listened to
the highly compressed crappy, internet quality, 32-90 kbs MP3 sound, and got a refund on the whole system the
next day.  What a huge disappointment.  Now, Sirius radio
on the Dish Network is good, at least 128kbs or better.
Notice that there are NO claims be “cd quality” on there
website or literature.  Sirius is guilty of fraud.

umm not radio? How do you think satellite works? RADIO WAVES…..

SIRIUS FREQUENCY: 2320 to 2332.5 MHZ
XM FREQUENCY: 2332.5 to 2345 MHZ

Get a brain audioph1le

When I let my subscription go, they sent me a survey asking why didn’t renew.  They had lots of questions about the programming and pricing, and even reception quality. However nothing was asked about how I liked the sound. I had to write it in the additional comments section.  I don’t think that they realize how many people give up on them because of the sound quality.

They keep asking about the programming…the programming is FANTASTIC. I really enjoyed the variety.  But listening to all of this great music when it sounded like I was listening to a digitized AM radio ruined the experience.

I sure hope they get the bandwidth issues fixed, because it’s a shame to put out all those super cool stations and then ruin it with low-fi sound.  If they can at LEAST get it sounding as good as it does on direct TV or like it does over the internet or WIFI, I would sign on for life.

Yo Crib,

Analog television broadcasts from 54 to 88 Mhz for channels 2-6 and 174 to 220 MHz for channels 7-12—and yet we don’t refer to that as RADIO now do we? 

I wasn’t referring to the frequency. Just the popular definition of the medium itself. Just because your garage door opener operates at around 40 MHz dosen’t mean we call it RADIO.

The deal: I have Sirius in one car and XM in another. I can access both via the Internet for “free”. I upgraded the sound quality to 128k for my Sirius account for $2.99/mo. (Sirius—and the Jeep w/ Sirius came first). I buy another car with XM and it has one and only one Internet access (no upgrade available). Is this access Sirius’s “premium” or “standard” version? The reason: Why pay an extra $2.99 if XM’s one option is the Sirius-equivalent-premium version and that comes free? Anyone know the stream capacity of XM Internet? Thanks!

I have XM on a Pioneer XMP3.  My original excitement has turned to disappoint because of the poor audio quality.  Definitely not as good as broadcast FM. 

I would say the quality is poor for the home, but probably acceptable on a car audio system. 

My equalizer has not been able to get any channel to sound good. 

I feel ripped off due to the poor quality, which is disappointing because commercial free radio is great.

I bought a new car recently and it came with a 3 month trial for Sirius XM. I enjoy the music and so on and would love to spend the money every month on the service, but the sound quality is so bad, I just can’t do it.

My car came with a top of the line 7 speaker Pioneer sound system, so I know it’s not the radio; cd’s, my ipod and FM sound great. But when turning on Sirius XM, it sounds just a tad bit better than AM radio.

Doing research, I found out what many of you know already, the problem is on Sirius XM’s end with their low transmission rates and high compression.

I don’t have a problem paying for satellite radio. But, when I am paying for a service as oppose to getting it for free, it should be better than the free service. I enjoy the programming, but, unfortunately, my ears cannot take the sound quality of the broadcast.

Maybe, my expectations are too high because satellite tv is so much better in picture quality than broadcast tv and I figure that satellite radio could/should be the same. I guess it could be, but Sirius XM doesn’t see it that way. So, I keep my money and have it to spend on something else. It’s frustrating, because the potential is there for an excellent service that I would be more than happy to spend $16 a month for, but it just isn’t worth it to me in it’s current state.

I have XM and Sirius both. At times,I’m amazed at how certain songs (even on the same channel) can sound decent, while most of the rest,especially any song with symbals, just sounds awful. Not sure why that is. Maybe phase issues with different recordings.  I have seen people describe the sound of satellite radio as being better than FM,and I just have to stare at their words in dazed disbelief. What kind of FM radios do these people listen to? What satellite channel sounds even half as good as an FM station? Just because an FM station CAN sound bad due to poor reception or incorrect processing by that station,I assure you that the fidelity of that analog radio station is MUCH closer to the original song. As far as talk is concerned,AM is better. It doesn’t have that thin,over “fake sibilant” sound. I don’t know if I will continue on with satellite radio for very long. It’s that bad. Again,though…once in a while there will be a song that comes on,and it’s tolerable. Who knows why.