Recently subscribed to XM and also added a microtuner for my JVC XM ready receiver. On my receiver the signal is stating PCM linear. I thought XM was digital. I was hoping to pass it to my receiver that goes to the deck but was unable to pass it due to it not being a digital signal.

anyone?

The downlink from the satellite is digital. That's received and processed by the XM tuner. What comes out of the tuner has probably already been converted to analog; there may be copyright issues that keep them from passing along a digital output. Don't know for sure, though.

I suppose that most owners use it in their cars and that is analog. I just prefer digital sound. Sound is not that impressive on my home theater setup.

I suppose that most owners use it in their cars and that is analog. I just prefer digital sound. Sound is not that impressive on my home theater setup.

It doesn't matter. Satellite radio has decided to provide a lot of really good content. By doing so, and adding so many channels, they sacrificed sound quality. Sound quality on the BEST channels is roughly FM radio quality. On talk channels it's worse. There's really nothing you can do to make it sound impressive. Some tuning with a graphic EQ, turning down the middle freqs and amping the edge freqs improves things, but that's about it.

Just because it's digital doesn't mean high quality. Look at satellite standard def TV. Have you ever noticed how much better DVD looks than tv? They are both standard def, and both digital. The difference is sat TV compresses their signal a lot to squeeze so many channels in at a price of picture quality and color sharpness, where DVD has a dynamic bit sampling rate where they can really crank it up on action scenes for optimal picture quality, and then crcank it down on talking scenes that do not need it.

Sat TV and radio do not know when higher bit rates are needed, and each channel has a fixed bit rate that is good enough, but FAR FROM OPTIMAL.

Look at satellite standard def TV.I'd rather not. :)