Community/SoapBox

hear hear!  Alpha is right, FM can sound really good.  And of course, the ne’er do wells have really screwed that up, too.  What with over-compression and not to mention really cruddy programming and music.  It may top out at 16kHz but a nice receiver (and some decent music :-) can deliver sound that is full, rich and clear...and makes Sat. radio that much more unlistenable in comparison.

Unfortunately I don’t expect better sound quality anytime soon. For one thing few of us evidently care that much about it. (See Matt’s comment on the decline of TV quality.) If you read certain message boards it seems many joyously ignorant people can’t even hear that there’s a problem. If they ever do merge the bandwidth of the systems then I expect we’ll probably see backseat video or more stock quotes before we get bandwidth dedicated to increasing sound quality. In the short term, sound quality will probably decrease even further as some Sirius content is added to XM.

I’ve been an XM subscriber for about a year and the sound quality is my main complaint. I would be satisfied if everything could sound at least as “good” as the 64kbps Windows Media audio that they’re broadcasting online. The _free_ AOL streams sound even better than that. The two XMHD channels pretty much meet this standard (or at least they did at one point. I don’t listen to them very often since the content there doesn’t excite me in the least.)

Sound quality?

Look at all the spring training games I get to listen to today:
Astros at Indians on XM176 (1:00 PM )
Red Sox at Blue Jays on XM177 (1:00 PM )
Reds at Pirates on XM178 (1:00 PM )
Phillies at Tigers on XM179 (1:00 PM )
Royals at Angels on XM180 (3:00 PM )
Giants at Cubs on XM181 (3:00 PM )

NOW, tell me again about satellite radio sound quality will keep them from succeeding?

We have noticed that the XM feeds on Directv seem to sound quite a bit better than the XM feeds directly. Anyone else confirm that? It would seem to bode well for the possiblity of improvements that could be made?

The DirecTV feeds are apparently 192kbps MPEG-2 audio-- which is most like better than the 24-64kbps AAC+sbr from the satellites.  AOL Radio is 128kbps AAC+ (if you subscribe) and 64kbps AAC+ for the “free” ones-- both probably also better than the XM birds.

So yes, that’s true.

XM’s music library is stored at 386kbps MPEG-2 audio, so the capabilty is there--the transport has very limited bandwidth, though.

I’ve worked with XM.  I was a production manager.  I’ve encoded audio that was sent through their pipeline from New York City to the facility near DC.  Their sound quality (pre satellite uplink) is AWFUL.  Good sound quality sucks-up bandwidth and so does a plethora of available content/channels.  XM chose the latter to deliver, with good reason.  I can’t listen to XM, because so much of the original data is stripped out of the content; more than what FM loses in a normal transmission.  If you’re a sports fan, the benefit of XM is huge:  you get many games in real time.  The only sound quality you lose is when music-intensive audio is played during the game.  For music and syndacated content, I’ll take my iPod and the many podcasts that are available.  At least that way, I can play redbook .wav files or high bitrate .mps files or even AAC if I so choose.

I think that XM may succeed in the long run, but there is way too much overhead to be covered by subscription revenue.  Advertising/sponorship revenue is mandatory to keep XM/Sirius afloat.  Unfortunately, advertisers get more bang for their ad dollars with terrestrial radio because millions more people, in distinct locales, is measurable demographics listen to terrestrial radio everyday.  A 1 million dollar national Ad buy will not go far in support XM, whereas many local direct businesses do quite a bit to keep terrestrial radio stations on the air.  Broadcast Advertising spending is down as a whole; XM is trying to grab a piece of a shrinking pie.  In the end, Wall Street, not sound quality or the number of Baseball games airing at one time will decide whether or not XM succeeds.

I have used XM in a number of my cars for over 3 years now, and I got Sirius in a new Mercedes that a purchased 6 months ago.  My experience has been very different from John’s.  I love satellite “radio” and have found the quality to be excellent.  I will still sometimes listen to local FM, but when I change back to satellite, the sound is MUCH better - just like I put in a CD.  I travel a lot by car and have never thought satellite sound sounded “thin.” The only complaint I have is that I lose the signal at times when the satellites are close to the horizon and I am near a hill or embankment.  XM and Sirius are very equililent for the channels I listen to.  I admit that I am not an “audiophile” but I find the quality great!

I too wish XM would give me some better sound quality, but if your not listening to FM for typical playlists or listen to popular music, FM sucks too. The typlical pop or urban station is compressed so bad and pushed that I can’t listen. On top of that, the only way I can get old-school hip-hop, full time jazz, or a cool channel like Hear Music is through XM. Some of us like the interaction on the channels, like the mix shows on hip-hop stations. If you want the same playlist all day with no DJs then get that iPod cranking. Paying for the equiv of a CD a month is worth it to me. In fact, I have 3 radios from XM. If they upped the sound quality at the expense of the endless talk channels they would have a subscriber for life.

I got Sirius for Stern mostly, but in my truck, it sound quality is tolerable for music too. I recently replaced the high end head unit I had problems with a mid range unit, and Sirius actually sounds a little better, but regular FM still sounds a lot better, and it’s not nearly as good on FM as the older unit was. The newer unit has the WOW “enhancer” which makes Sirius sound very “swirly”, the other unit had BBE, and it was actually useful when kept on the low settings.
I had no Sirius for 3 weeks, and the commercials drove me insane. Yeah, Sirius has commercials on the talk channels, but there aren’t that many. Hopefully that won’t change. I have a receiver at home, too, and through my HT system, it sounds pretty bad, streaming on my PC is a lot better. I think some of the endless sports and repetitive music channels could go away and very few users would miss them at all. A good friend of mine has XM, and everything I just said applies to it, too. I will say, I feel at 13 bucks a month, it’s a bargain, I just wish it sounded a little better.