So I have the sportser installed in my car, along with MB Quart speakers, pioneer head unit and Eclipse amp. This is cd quality? Sounds like AM to me. Surely I'm not the only one who isn't pleased with this quality. Bueller, Bueller. Anyjone care to weigh in on this?......I guess this is really more of a rant than anything else

Where did you the idea Sirius was CD quality? I ask because Sirius themselves has never advertised their service as CD quality.

The sound quality is highly dependent on how the receiver is connected to your audio source.

The best quality by far is obtained using a direct line out connection.

Using an FM transmitter often results in very poor quality.

From what I've heard the sound quality in general is much better on XM than Sirius

From what I've heard the sound quality in general is much better on XM than Sirius
This is another myth. I have both. Quality is comparable.

I have noticed that in my Acura with factory XM the sound is pretty good but in my Wrangler with Alpine head unit quality speakers and a amp the sound quality is marginal at best. I attribute this to the factory sound systems being crossed over at the high and the low end limiting the frequency band while the aftermarket gear has a more open frequency band.

I have sirius, Sound quality doesn't even seem good as FM. Its like listening to Bose. No highs and no real lows.

fm transmitter degrades you to AM RADIO QUALITY (MONO)

IMO, XM sounds slightly better than Sirius, both sound bad. Not even close to a decent FM station. I knew this before I got Sirius, and it's ok.

Sound is decent. It's obviously not CD quality but it's not AM either. Direct method makes a huge difference. As someone mentioned, the FM modulator is mono.

I have an Alpine hu and the alpine XM box, I use the Ai port and the sound quality is better than FM. Remeber, friends don't let friends listen to FM.

The sound quality is highly dependent on how the receiver is connected to your audio source.

The best quality by far is obtained using a direct line out connection.

Using an FM transmitter often results in very poor quality.


Agreed.

The silly FM transmitters ruin the signal. This obviously make sense since it's wholly device dependent. I do think that XM makes better devices however.

Both XM and Sirius have similar sound quality. These services do provide more bandwidth to music channels than talk however. The signal qualities is comparable to really good FM signal IMHO, but it's not CD quality! That's impossible considering how much stuff they're throwing down the pipe.

The quality is really disappointing. I have XM and when I switch to FM there is no comparison. The difference is night and day.

It is not CD quality for sure. As said above, if just using the FM transmitter then you won't get the full quality of the sound, however it should sound far better then AM radio, mine is better than local FM.

Another reason why FM may seem better than satellite is that FM radio signals are highly compressed -- not compression in the digital sense, but in dynamic range. This increases the apparent volume and "punch". It is a common practice (sadly) in music today to severely compress the dynamic range of mixes because to the average listener, louder = better.

As with anything, it is highly subjective. I personally find the clean satellite signal sounds "better" than the often noisy, overly squashed FM radio signal, despite the artifacts of digital compression.

Nevertheless, sound quality has never and should never be a selling point of satellite radio.

Yeah, I knew the quality was nowhere near as good as cd when i purchased it with my new car. What's even worse is the bose speakers in there, combined with sirius, is almost unbearable. :(

Well I out and bought the Sirius gear and hooked it up in my Jeep (which I had XM in) and the sound quality is better without questions, less compressed, and less drop outs.

Can't really explain it at all but I'm not complaining.

It depends on the station as well, the talk stations do sound like am, but they also get alot less bandwidth then the music stations.

I know Stern gets more bandwidth on his show because of all the music they play.

As for the music stations, when I got sirius a little over a year ago, FM did sound a little better, but since then Sirius has made some improvements and to me they sound the same now.

I will say that I rarely ever listen to terrestrial radio anymore, but when I do the sound is about the same.

Both my cars have built in sirius headunits though so that can make a difference.

Sirius never claims to be CD quality. However, whatever type of sound quality you do get is going to depend upon how your receiver is connected to your audio source. If you want the highest possible quality you should either use a direct line connection or get XM instead.

...or get XM instead.
The sound quality of XM is not markedly better than Sirius.

So I have the sportser installed in my car, along with MB Quart speakers, pioneer head unit and Eclipse amp. This is cd quality? Sounds like AM to me. Surely I'm not the only one who isn't pleased with this quality. Bueller, Bueller. Anyjone care to weigh in on this?......I guess this is really more of a rant than anything else

When the services launched, CD Quality was indeed part of the marketing hype. That's changed and now it's "Digital Quality". There's only so much bandwidth available and the marketing direction is to increase the number of streams to cast the biggest net possible to catch the most customers. For me, the sound is way too "digital". My fear is that when the kiddy video streams are launched, it'll take away even more sound quality from the audio channels that I like. I just wish that both of the sat services would cut the number of streams and try to compete on who has the best sound quality. If I want to listen to baseball, football, talk radio or get the weather, AM radio is good for me thank you very much!

Nevertheless, sound quality has never and should never be a selling point of satellite radio.

If Satellite could boast about CD quality, or 5.1 surround mixes, don't you think that would be a great selling point? it's hard for me to listen to the 60kbps compressed music on my sirius radio.

If Satellite could boast about CD quality, or 5.1 surround mixes, don't you think that would be a great selling point? it's hard for me to listen to the 60kbps compressed music on my sirius radio.
It might be, for a select group of users, but that's not their business model. First and foremost satellite radio is designed to be put into cars where the ambient noise is so high that higher bitrates would not really make much of a perceivable difference to the average customer.

There's also a big race between the companies to provide breadth of content. That means more channels, and less bits available for each one.

The sad fact is, many users today are accustomed to listening to 128kbps MP3 files and streaming audio at low bitrates. CD quality and 5.1 surround mixes are lost on this segment of the market, which is the majority.

It might be, for a select group of users, but that's not their business model. First and foremost satellite radio is designed to be put into cars where the ambient noise is so high that higher bitrates would not really make much of a perceivable difference to the average customer.

There's also a big race between the companies to provide breadth of content. That means more channels, and less bits available for each one.

The sad fact is, many users today are accustomed to listening to 128kbps MP3 files and streaming audio at low bitrates. CD quality and 5.1 surround mixes are lost on this segment of the market, which is the majority.

BINGO!

Both services are ALL ABOUT CONTENT/CHOICE for people.

Also, the last line about people's IDEA of what sounds good being dumbed down over the last 4-5 years is absolutely correct.

Anyone 25 or younger probably has ZERO idea of what sounds good to begin with because they are use to there mp3 players/IPods.

Again, both of those are CHOICE/CONTENT, not superior sound quality, as well.

Having a ton of music/videos/whatever on the go in your pocket, for you to access any time you want.

BINGO!

Both services are ALL ABOUT CONTENT/CHOICE for people.

Also, the last line about people's IDEA of what sounds good being dumbed down over the last 4-5 years is absolutely correct.

Anyone 25 or younger probably has ZERO idea of what sounds good to begin with because they are use to there mp3 players/IPods.

Again, both of those are CHOICE/CONTENT, not superior sound quality, as well.

Having a ton of music/videos/whatever on the go in your pocket, for you to access any time you want.


Agreed, and honestly in a car, to me it doesnt make much difference anymore. I used to want the most perfect sound ever when I was younger, and now I reserve that for my home, the car I just want to crank it and have it sound reasonably good, I am not looking for CD quality sound, and to me it doesnt sound much worse then FM.

I think the sound quality is just fine.

People also have to remember that 90% of the market could care less if its perfect because one, they cant tell the difference, and two most people leave the OEM stereo in the car so even if the stream was better it wouldnt be realized using oem equipment anyway.

the OEM stereo in the car so even if the stream was better it wouldnt be realized using oem equipment anyway.

I've had XM in my cars and my wife's cars for 4.5 years now, and I just realized something. Last week I bought a new car and I did what I always do, put in an aftermarket stereo. The car I traded in also had an aftermarket radio, AND an amp, AND good aftermarket speakers all the way around. And you know what? This new car with just the aftermarket stereo XM sounds better then my last car with the top of the line stereo set-up. I guess having an amp, and good speakers showed all the warts.

I have noticed that some stations sound better than others. I would describe the worst sound as "thin" and the best sound as "middle class" -- definitiely not rich like a CD.

Some broadcasts like Radio Disney (when my kids want to listen to it) sound like it is being broadcast from the bottom of a trash can over a wet string. It is awful. Very much like an AM broadcast -- and that is NOT just because of the content.

A decent sounding station is 15 Classic Rewind (if you like rock). Suprisingly, channel 80 Symphony Hall is not great at all.

- Don Woon

BINGO!

Both services are ALL ABOUT CONTENT/CHOICE for people.

Also, the last line about people's IDEA of what sounds good being dumbed down over the last 4-5 years is absolutely correct.

Anyone 25 or younger probably has ZERO idea of what sounds good to begin with because they are use to there mp3 players/IPods.

Again, both of those are CHOICE/CONTENT, not superior sound quality, as well.

Having a ton of music/videos/whatever on the go in your pocket, for you to access any time you want.

We agree on something. :D

I might add that the music played by the "young" generation does not require quality equipment. Just my opinion but most of the "quality" musicians of today sound more like the garage band recordings of my era. Its no wonder that todays kids don't know quality. :eek:

I have noticed that some stations sound better than others.
Absolutely. They use variable bit rates based on the channel content. Talk stations get low bit rates and sound, well, your description is dead on ;)

For Disney, I guess they figure kids won't notice the difference, and they're probably right.

The music and Howard Stern channels get the highest bit rates, but still these are not near CD quality. IMO they are comparable to 96kbps MP3 files.

If you want high quality sound in your car, you need to use a subscription music service like Rhapsody or Yahoo with a mobile broadband service like Sprint or Verizon.

For example, you can subscribe to Sprint Sero (http://sprint.p.delivery.net/m/p/sprint/epc/epclanding.asp) at $30-$49/mo with unlimited Internet + Rhapsody at $8/mo for unlimited 128Kbps streaming music, and combine that with either a notebook (using EV-DO card) or Treo 700w connected to your car's stereo using an AUX INPUT. Mobile broadband provides sufficient bandwidth to stream 256-384Kbps music files.

Of course, you need mobile broadband coverage in your area (http://www.sprint.com/business/products/products/evdoEnterZip.jsp) for this to work.

Uhh no thats not high quality sound in your car. Stick to CD or better yet DVD Audio.....

For those kinds of prices, I'll stick with my CD burner and a library of my favorite music :) .

I had Sirius before, but now with a quieter car and a better sound system, I was really disappointed to find that FM now has remarkably better sound and dynamic range than the Sirius music channels. It hurts to listen to music on Sirius now.

Reading the earlier posts on this thread is kind of depressing as noone seems to have any expectation that Sirius has any inclination to improve the quality.

You guys keep talking improving the audio quality of XM and Sirius.

The bottom line is, it will never happen because they are and always will be in a content war between each other. The only way I see any of them changing the audio quality is, if another SAT radio station was introduced that was based on quality of the sound rather than content.

You have to see that when XM and Sirius started broadcasting they were given a certain amount of bandwith. Now they are trying to cram as many channels as they can into that same amount of bandwith.

I have a friend who works for Sirius, he stated that when the service originally started out, most channels were between 128k to 160k depending on the channel. He now says that most music channels are around 96k and the talk/news/comedy/traffic channels get significantly worse. Think about it, do you think a kid listening to Radio Disney cares about how crisp their songs are?

That might be true, but you can't add something like Metropolitan Opera Radio, make a big thing out of it and not think that the majority of those listeners are going to care about sound, and if the sound is good, they're going to join and quickly leave. On the other hand, it's not as if Sirius and XM are being dishonest; they don't advertise great sound.

For Disney, I guess they figure kids won't notice the difference, and they're probably right.


Nah. I bought Sirius just to get Radio Disney for my daughter. She doesn't listen to it anymore (she told me that her 30 or so Disney CDs sound better than the radio). Funny thing is that she only uses PSB Century, Yamaha digital receiver and Denon 910 (DVD player), nothing fancy.

Now I have a $100 paperweight at home.

I have never heard Sirius advertise themselves as CD quality and I definitely agree that they are not CD quality. I think that how could of quality you do get is dependent upon your connection though.

I have a friend who works for Sirius, he stated that when the service originally started out, most channels were between 128k to 160k depending on the channel. He now says that most music channels are around 96k and the talk/news/comedy/traffic channels get significantly worse. Think about it, do you think a kid listening to Radio Disney cares about how crisp their songs are?

Wow! :eek: Thanks for this Furcifer.. this clears things up.

I could always tell that the compression was really horrible, but I had no idea it was THIS horrible!
When I first got Sirius, I was VERY disapointed.
Even in the car, that warbly thin compression rate just pokes me in the ear.
I know they have 'their reasons', but to me as a listening consumer, they completely blew it.

But I do have to say on a side note - I'm happy that I finally found others that agree with me on this issue that it sounds like crap.
I have some good friends who swear up and down that Sirius "sounds amazing", "Better than FM" etc.. and then they look at me like my head is inside-out when I tell them just how bad I think it really is.

As of now I only keep Sirius for the traffic, and because I get signal in the desert on the drive to Vegas. For now my iPod is 'good enough' for music.

I have XM through DirecTV, and it is my only experience with satellite radio. When DTV first switched I complained on the message boards about how bad it sounded compared to Music Choice, which wasn't great itself. I also complained to DTV.

Now, a year later, I can say that I just won't listen to it. Every time I turn it on, thinking it would be OK for background music, OK to hear something different, how bad can it be, I still turn it off after 5-10 minutes. The longest stretch I've been able to keep it on was when I painted my house, and to do that I had to disconnect most of my equipment. I left the satellite receiver and the TV connected so I used that as my music source.

I have also bought an iPod and started downloading music podcasts and loading my CDs onto it. Most podcasts are at 128, and I use 256 for CDs unless it is something I want lossless. These are all far superior to XM when I listen from my ipod to my stereo, although not very often. I still refuse to buy songs from Apple at 128kbps although my son does. Streaming radio sometimes sounds better, although sometimes not, it depends on bitrate.

My overwhelming opinion of it all is that not only would it not be worth the money for XM, DirecTV took away a service I liked and replaced it with crap.

I'm sorry, I know that I shouldn't be apologizing for my opinion, but I honestly still think that XM is a lot better. At least this has been my experience when comparing the 2.

for the first time I got the chance to compare XM vs Sirius today. XM is, in fact, better than Sirius. Too bad XM doesn't have Radio Disney. Regardless, it doesn't matter, my daughter refuses to listen to Sirius anyway.

The only reason to have Sirus is for the NFL station. I have Sirus in my Jeep Grand Cherokee factory system and my wife has XM in her car. For music they both have horible sound. We listen to the comedy station on XM in her car or the traffic stations or wetaher and that's about it. These sataliete radio systems just sound so horrible!

for the first time I got the chance to compare XM vs Sirius today. XM is, in fact, better than Sirius. Too bad XM doesn't have Radio Disney. Regardless, it doesn't matter, my daughter refuses to listen to Sirius anyway.
Yes they do.

Pat

XM has Radio Disney? I don't see it in the listing (note: I live in Canada)

XM has Radio Disney? I don't see it in the listing (note: I live in Canada)
Not sure about Canada, but in the US they have Radio Disney and XM Kids for the younger crowd.

Pat

Yeah the none CD quality audio kinda sucks when you have it hooked up to a high end set of spreakers.

Yeah the none CD quality audio kinda sucks when you have it hooked up to a high end set of spreakers.

Have you tried upgrading your interconnects? I noticed a pretty large difference in quality with a mid-priced ($90) pair of interconnects between the Sirius receiver and my amp. You still won't be at CD quality on the pop and rock stations, but you'll be real close on the classical and jazz stations, especially classical.

I've had sirius in my vehicle for around a year, and I agree that the sound quality sucks. I also get sick of the drop-outs that I get whenever there's a tree within a hundred yards of the road.

But, since I'm in a rural area, the FM quality sucks too, plus all they do is advertise and talk, so in that since Sirius is a big improvement.

Over the last year, dispite the terrible sound quality, I've learned to stop listening to the sound and just listen to the music, and in the process, I've learned to enjoy Sirius quite a bit.

Have you tried upgrading your interconnects? I noticed a pretty large difference in quality with a mid-priced ($90) pair of interconnects between the Sirius receiver and my amp. You still won't be at CD quality on the pop and rock stations, but you'll be real close on the classical and jazz stations, especially classical.

Classical sounds HORRIBLE on Sirius and overpriced interconnects can't fix a ridiculously over compressed, artifact laden signal.

I have Sirius on Dish and it really does sound bad, truly unlistenable. I am, however, enjoying the 32 "CD" channels Dish offers. Does anyone know anything about the technical details of those channels?

Hawkeye7 - I'm also a Jeep owner. How did you connect your Sirius - fm or direct?

Also if anyone is in the KW area and using Sirius I'd really like to hear from you regarding home installation tips. Thanks in advance.

I've been an Xm subscriber for the last few years and am not unhappy with the service and listen to it in my cars/truck/motorcycle and home.

But while listening to it at home through my Yamaha AVR, the excessive compression does seem to take its toll.

I ended up dusting off my old dbX dynamic range expander and dbX sub-harmonic synthesizer that was in storage from my tape days and plugged them into the system. The result was a definite improvement in sonic quality.

The expander enhances the audio, and while I don't boost the sub-harmonic signal too much to minimize distortion, the Velodyne sub-woofer certainly adds a new dimension to the listening experience.

I have had many favorable comments on the new sound; and the price was right.

I have both systems. A RoadyXT in my Mustang and previously in my Mazda 3 that I enjoy. I've used it both in FM mode (using the FM direct attachment kit) and through Aux In. I find the quality to be decent if not a bit attenuated at the highs.

In my wife's new VW I went and got one of the new Sporster 4 units and installed it using the Aux in port and even used a ground loop isolator to remove the alternator sound. Both cars have decent stock stereos, nothing special outside of my Mustang having some top end JBL 2 ways in place of the stock unit. The sound quality isn't CD but it's certainly better than FM in both accounts. I can deal with some digital compression in my music, one thing I can't stand is static and I don't get that in either of my instances.

I went Sirius in the VW because the new units are pretty nice and I went to put another RoadyXT in the VW But I couldn't add another unit to my account as I subscribe to the US side with XM and their site doesn't allow Canadian credit cards like they did back in the spring. The XM Canada programming sucks ass AFAIK. Back in the spring when they did all those ads, they removed 2 of the music stations that I listened to all the time.

So anyways, I think some of you are being drama queens about the sound quality. One thing these things are good for is content and availability which both execute pretty well. I don't miss my local radio at all.

fm transmitter degrades you to AM RADIO QUALITY (MONO)


You're brilliant ;)

I've had XM since last Christmas and i'd say the sq's not bad[equal to FM at least imho].....if it was as bad as some people seem to think would i be extending my subscription for another 4 years?[probably since i'm a sports/music nut].

I have also bought an iPod and started downloading music podcasts and loading my CDs onto it. Most podcasts are at 128, and I use 256 for CDs unless it is something I want lossless. These are all far superior to XM when I listen from my ipod to my stereo, although not very often. I still refuse to buy songs from Apple at 128kbps although my son does. Streaming radio sometimes sounds better, although sometimes not, it depends on bitrate.

128kbps would be a significant improvement for XM and SIRIUS. :D

Remember, the better the audio equipment the worse it will sound. This is because the better equipment has the specs to really show off all the flaws of the compression. Great for CDs and high-bitrate/lossless sources but something as massively compressed as satellite radio is going to sound terrible.

Before this long rant, bottom line up front, don't expect cd quality sound from a Sirius radio (at least from my experience - which is below). In fact in my setup, Sirius sounds worse than FM, and is more comparable to AM on crack for the lack of a better word.

With that being said, I'm not an audiophile or claim to be one. But I have listened to thousands of hours of analog tapes on 3 head systems, digital audio tapes, compac discs and MP3s/compressed formats on various stereo units. These include high end component units, high end stereo headphones and high end car systems. And I love my music loud.

My current setup for Sirius is in an Infiniti G35 sedan, factory installed. The car comes with a Bose "premium" 7 speaker sound system (four 6 1/2s I believe, 2 tweets, and one 8 inch sub), which was an upgrade from the standard "premium" infiniti sound system. I find the stereo good enough and reproduces enough low's, mid's and high's at a fairly loud volume or even at softer volumes. We'll leave the whole Bose issue for another time.

With that being said, the quality of sound that comes through my Sirius sat radio is what I would call something inbetween AM and FM sound quality. I found this to be extremely disappointing, given the fact that this is supposed to be a superior format than FM. Technically speaking, yes, but in my opinion Sirius neglected sound quality to squeeze in as many channels through their bandwidth.

The only advantage I see Sirius over FM is that you can get a consistent signal (at least on my drives from Washington DC to New York, NY). And yes I understand FM is on a limited spectrum or frequency range (100-10,000 I believe, compared to 20-20,000 for cds - I have no idea what Sirius is running on).

I'm not sure how their personal portable players sound. But if it's anything like the sound quality that's coming through my car sound system, I can only imagine the sound quality through headphones/earphones would be worse than a strong FM signal. (Music especially, not so much with voice channels such as howard or talk radio.)

But in honesty, I think most people would buy/subscribe to Sirius for the fact that you can pretty much find something to listen to with it's wide variety of channels. For me, I am going to cancel my subscription after my three month trial that came with the car just for the fact that I have a 6 disc changer that can also play mp3 cds.

In pure sound quality, i would say in my opinion (this is only in reference to the highest quality of these formats) :

CD/DAT
Analog Tape
MP3
FM
Sirius
AM

I'm not going to throw in 8 tracks or records in here, because those are for the true audio enthusiasts :)

If you have problems with the sound you are doing something wrong or you are using a FM Modulator. The sound is great i repair audio equipment so i know.
With a Modulator it can never be better than the FM Radio. Do not overdrive the Modulator with audio.

If you have problems with the sound you are doing something wrong or you are using a FM Modulator. The sound is great i repair audio equipment so i know.
With a Modulator it can never be better than the FM Radio. Do not overdrive the Modulator with audio.

Wow, you repair audio equipment so therefore our opinions about the sound quality being bad are wrong or we don't know what we are doing?

My Alpine 9815 head unit has the Alpine XM adapter directly connected and it sounds no where near FM quality and there is nothing wrong with my equipment. I've had external Xm devices hooked up via the AUX input and they also sound bad. XM and Sirius are very compressed - there is no way around it. Hopefully if the merger goes through they will increase the SQ.

when i first got Sirius i for some reason remember them advertising CD quality sound. i fell for it and purchased a plug and play and was VERY disspointed with the FM transmitter. i was disgusted...i phoned and complained. since then i've completely overhauled my stereo, adding two amps, all new speakers, 10" sub, Kenwood DVD headunit, and Sirius tuner. Sound is MUCH MUCH better. its actually quite good...not CD quality but bearable. i'm happy with it.

HMM. Now why did that AM Tube table top radio sound so nice when I was a kid????

I will have to get back in my Jeep with factory installed Sirius and listen to what you people are talking about and compare to my CD's.

My biggest complaint is when Sirius loses signal, it is almost as annoying as FM crackle.

I have read that HD radio is CD quality. DOn't have one so don't know.

-DonB2

I don't ever remember Sirius or XM advertising CD quality. Digital quality yes, CD no.

A few things.

1. XM and Sirius do not compress music into any certain frequency band. The person who suggested that FM radio is compressed from 100-10,000khz might be right with FM, but when you get into the digital realm, the khz values are practically useless. Instead, in most cases (and I'm sure the satellite radio companies do this), they use math to approxmiate what the sound should sound like, and then they average each major tone around a certain range. Then they erase all data not within that range. Also, any frequencies that have no sound are also removed. This is what causes the digital artifacts.

XM and Sirius do not broadcast in 96kbps. They probably broadcast more inthe 20-40kbps for music stations. MP3 is a really outdated standard, so comparing those numbers to MP3 encoding is wrong. It probably approximates 96kbps mp3 in quality, but it definitely is not 96kbps-- that would be a ridiculous waste of bandwidth.

2. The quality of the sound on XM for me is horrible, except for the classical station XM Pops, which for some reason seems to run music at extremely high bitrates (but not always). Sometimes a song will come on XM Pops and it will sound like a CD. Maybe this is their high definition test channel or something?

3. XM needs to send up a new satellite soon. Hopefully they will get approval from the FCC to use a bigger chunk of frequencies. This would increase the quality of the sound.

A few things.

1. XM and Sirius do not compress music into any certain frequency band. The person who suggested that FM radio is compressed from 100-10,000khz might be right with FM, but when you get into the digital realm, the khz values are practically useless. Instead, in most cases (and I'm sure the satellite radio companies do this), they use math to approxmiate what the sound should sound like, and then they average each major tone around a certain range. Then they erase all data not within that range. Also, any frequencies that have no sound are also removed. This is what causes the digital artifacts.

XM and Sirius do not broadcast in 96kbps. They probably broadcast more inthe 20-40kbps for music stations. MP3 is a really outdated standard, so comparing those numbers to MP3 encoding is wrong. It probably approximates 96kbps mp3 in quality, but it definitely is not 96kbps-- that would be a ridiculous waste of bandwidth.


For sure, somewhere in the chain, XM and Sirius use a Loudness Maximizer, basically it's a multiband compressor. From there, the output is fed into a real-time encoder to MP3's 96 kbps bitrate equivalent.

XM uses AAC encoding which sounds much better than MP3 at lower bitrates. If XM streamed at 128kbps using variable bitrate encoding, the sound would be much, much better.

I've played around a lot with ACC encoding. At ~192 VBR, you can get very, very close to transparency, though I don't think it quite measures up to the better MP3 encoders at this higher bitrate.

XM uses AAC encoding which sounds much better than MP3 at lower bitrates.
Sirius uses PAC which is also superior to MP3 but not quite as good as AACplus. I'd guess their music channels stream at 64kbps which gives roughly the same quality as a 96kbps MP3.

There is talk that after the merger, all existing radios will receive content from both services. It is not clear if they are talking about duplicating some channels on both Sirius and XM bands, or if existing receivers are capable of decoding content from both services. The latter might just be true, since XM also used the PAC encoder before they switched to AACplus.

So, it is quite possible that after the merger, both companies will switch to the (slightly inferior) PAC CODEC, thus resulting in a decrease, not increase in sound quality.

The XM stream is AAC plus Nueral processing..
Major downside is its bit rate, 1/2 of the iPod..
Sounds reasonable but definitely not hi fi..

The bit rate can be increased for better quality but than the width of each channel would increase.. Meaning less channels....

Either quantity or quality...

Either quantity or quality...

Unfortunately for North American market, most people go fo quantity over quality. Especially when their selling points are "digital" and "hundreds of channels" :(

I don't know if this topic still fresh, but I have an Alpine CDA-9831 head unit connected to a SIR-ALP1 Sirius Ai-Net Tuner, obviously connected via Ai-Net, and I have to say, while I'd never get rid of Sirius, I've sure as hell been disappointed in the sound quality for the three years that I've had it. I never anticipated it to be CD quality, due to bandwidth limitations, but I did expect it to be less trashy, for a lack of a better word. In fact, I've heard different tuners, and they at least appear to sound better. I was hoping maybe someone else here has run into this issue, or may have some insight to my situation. Any input is appreciated. Thanks.