Sound quality on XM and Sirius

[CDH]

I recently purchased a new Acura which included a free trial of XM radio service. Frankly I'm very underwhelmed: not by the selection of channels, which seems fine, but the sound quality. Many stations sound to me as if they are being played under water: not very high quality. This is especially true of those that are mostly talk-based (such as BBC) rather than music-centered, but to a degree this is true in the music channels too. I presume there is a higher bit rate or at least less compression on the music channels.

I certainly don't expect it to sound quite as good as a CD-player (or 256+ kbit Mp3s that I play in my other car), but to my ears even regular FM radio actually sounds better. In an Acura one would expect decent sound quality from the stereo, so I'm guessing this is a factor of the XM service. Do others experience this?

Do the Sirius channels better? I find Sirius channels played through my Dish-network box sound better than the XM channels in the car.

I was simply going to let the free subscription expire, but because it now looks like the merger may go through, a 50-channel a la carte package might have some appeal if the Sirius stations will sound better ($6.99/month see here: http://www.siriusmerger.com/uploads/ala-cart-Press-Rel-7-23-07.pdf )

CDH.

 

[Peter Parker]

Doa search on this forum and you will find a series of polls on th two. As it turns out this isa very pro Sirius crowd and it wound up winning almost all the polls even wher the two have pretty much the same programming (eg Classic Radio).

interestingly though Audio Quality was one of the few areas that came upa draw between the two.

I wills ay that the Sirius and XM channels on satellite TV tend to get more bandwidth than the mobile counterparts. So I would not assume that Sirius is better because of your experience.

 

[Shipsnake]

I currently have sirius now, but XM before. there ia a difference in sound quality to me. the factory sirius reciever in my Avenger sounds alot better compared with the factory XM we had in our Honda.

 

[CDH]

Hmmm... I had checked the Satellite Radio forum and found only 13 total threads plus a few stickies. Those are the only threads I can browse, though I do now see there are many others that come up when I search (but no archives in the forum?).

There are some old ones that address this direct question (such as http://www.satelliteguys.us/satellite-radio-forum/83565-sound-quality-xm-vs-sirius.html ), who indicate that people are happier with XM than Sirius. Others no doubt the opposite.

What is most interesting to me is how many people seem to think it sounds good. Obviously this is a matter of opinion, but perhaps there is a problem with the head-unit in my Acura?

CDH.

 

[Peter Parker]

Doa forum search. you can see older threads.

 

[stonecold]

Now for me I will have to say it really depends on the radio. I have a 99 Jeep Grand Cherokee and a was with a friend and I turned on my XM Xpress (orginal not EZ/RC) and it had been professionally hardwired in with an XM FM director. He loved the sound quality from it, though he said that his stock XM radio sounded like crap. So I unplug my radio from it hardwired dock and try using my home doc and plugging straight in with the aux jack on his radio. He said it sounded better then the built in tuner but the sound was still muddy . I agreed with him and then he turned on his built in and it did sound like he was underwater.


I do believe in some cases it a mater of radio and speakers ..... Another thing is that I know that some of the Satellite ready Mopar radios from 02-06 where sirrus and XM were a choice that people stay away from XM do to wierd bugs with the xm tuner and the mopar radios.

I like both but for my jeep the xm sounds better.