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SiriusXM audio quality question

22K views 12 replies 8 participants last post by  mchartra 
#1 ·
Hey does anyone know if SiriusXM carry hi-res audio? Is their quality better than online streaming of FM radio, or 320kbps MP3?
 
#3 ·
I believe their max online streaming quality is equivalent to 256 kb mp3. That probably varies by station, just like it does in broadcast. Symphony hall will get larger bandwidth than news talk radio,etc.
 
#4 ·
lots of compression of Sirius/ XM audio: especially highs and mid range, and lows are emphasized
For me it sounds good in a car but in a high end home sound system, I can always tell it is a Sirius channel because of the compression
 
#5 ·
I recently got a new Dodge Charger with their in dash Uconnect unit with the Beats stereo (I know, sigh) package, and there is a noticeable difference in audio quality drop between playing high bit rate mp3 off my flash drive plugged into the Dodge head unit and the built in Sirius/XM. Kind of surprised me since the last time I used satellite radio was XM before they combined into one company. In a way, it doesn't make sense to me that they haven't since Google Play Music, Spotify, and Pandora can do higher quality sound. Seems to me that they would want to compete on sound quality.
 
#9 · (Edited)
I've had XM since the day it went on the air in 2001 or so. I think it was first offered on Cadillacs just like OnStar was in 1997.

I still listened mostly to KCRW (89.9) KROQ (106.7) and KUSC and whatever our jazz station was. XM sounded little better than most of the local FM, but not as good as KCRW did when they had live groups in studio, which was often.

Here in C-bus, all of our FM hugely sucks so it's XM, flash drive or media player. It's OK enough for a car. I don't think I would even try it at home though. Still vinyl at home and the occasional CD or some other digital format if I have to. New car on order so will access to all formats in the car.

OnStar was slightly more useful back in the days when a Garmin or equivalent was about it in nav systems. And certainly more fun when I accidentally called OnStar in the middle of doing the below (yeah, that's me in there). So I did what any normal person would do and asked OnStar how fast I was going.


 
#11 ·
OK thanks for all your feedback. The real reason I asked was I wanted to record the Met Opera live broadcasts which are available in FM and SiriusXM and I wanted to know which has better quality. Based on your replies, it appears that SiriusXM is no better in sound quality but is a convenient substitute for people who can't get local FM reception.
 
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#12 ·
That sums it up pretty well.

I hadn't noticed your location before. You probably have as good a selection of FM as anywhere in the country. I listened to frequent KCRW live studio broadcasts and I thought it was pretty good, and better than what I heard from XM at the time.
 
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