Satellite Radio Sound Quality

[garymd]

Unrelated to the topic of sound quality but has anyone else noticed that since XM and Sirius merged it seems like they play the same songs over and over again? I listen to XM 54 the most and it seems to me I'm hearing the same songs over and over a lot more than I used to. Anyone else notice this?

YES!! Even the Deeptracks station (used to be The Vault on Sirius) now plays the same stuff over and over. Glad someone else noticed.

And yes, the sound quality SUX compared to CD/LP or even good FM reception. I don't care when I'm in the car but I thought home reception would be better. It really blows. I've never tried any of the options posted in this thread, maybe I never will. I'm thinking of cancelling my subscription pretty soon anyway to save a little money. I listen to a lot of books on tape while commuting and sometimes I'll go an entire month without an hour of Sirius.

[mark1101]

I tried the free on-line 3 day trial to test the supposed CD quality they brag about. It was aweful. Worse than over my satellite dish. The free trial is surely not CD quality.

[jdm56]

Well, I guess I'll stay on the fence a while longer. Looks like "change" is coming to satellite radio, though. I was hoping with the merger of Sirius and XM, they would up the sound quality, maybe to the 128kbps range. If I just want crappy, low-level background music, I can get that with my Dish service. It's a shame, really. Think of the quality we could be getting if they weren't so intent on cramming as many channels through the system as they possibly can. Same statement applies equally to video (Dish, Direct, Cable). They compromise quality way too much for me. The love of money is not only the root of all evil, it is the enemy of quality in ANY endeavor.

[skonopa]

YES!! Even the Deeptracks station (used to be The Vault on Sirius) now plays the same stuff over and over. Glad someone else noticed.

And yes, the sound quality SUX compared to CD/LP or even good FM reception. I don't care when I'm in the car but I thought home reception would be better. It really blows. I've never tried any of the options posted in this thread, maybe I never will. I'm thinking of cancelling my subscription pretty soon anyway to save a little money. I listen to a lot of books on tape while commuting and sometimes I'll go an entire month without an hour of Sirius.

I used to listen to the Boneyard (XM-41) station a lot, and noticed they were repeating quite a bit more. They since got rid of the Boneyard channel since the XM/Sirius merger, which royally sucks. They also used to have a channel called The Lab (If I recall, it was XM 52 or something close), that played a lot of progressive rock and fusion jazz. I've listened to that quite a bit, but in thier infinite wisdom, they got rid of that as well and replace it with some stupid Latino channel or some such. Ever since I've gotten my iPod hook-up in the car, I've found myself using the XM tuner less and less and ultimately got rid of the subscription. Nothing like having some 8200+ songs at the ready, and listening to what I want, without having to sit through a bunch of crap that I don't care to listen to.

I've all but completely gave up on the local FM scene, as all the radio stations around here pretty much suck these days. There used to be a really good rock station out of Richmond (XL-102 on 102.1), that I used to listen to quite a bit. I was actually good friends with one of the DJs (it was such much fun hanging out with him when they did a remote at Kings Dominion, as well as when they did one at the ski area where I patrol at). They played all the kick-butt hard-rock music that I grew up with, everything from Rush, to Styx, to Queensryche, to Led Zepplin, to Metallica, to Cars to Yes, and even Asia. Heck, they even threw in a bit of Dream Theater and Fates Warning now and again! And yes, they still played some of the cool new hits at the time as well. They then fired the local DJs, and changed thier format to an all "alternative" format, and it went down hill after that (Yup, chalk that brilliant move to the fine folks at Clear Channel [:@]). I've lost track of were Lucas Fox (the afformentioned DJ) went since then (last I've heard, he got out of radio), which is crying shame - still miss the guy. And in typical Clear Channel fashion, thier playlist pretty much seemed to have stagnated. I mean, really - how many friggan times do I have to hear "One Week" by the Bare Naked Ladies, for example? I was not unual that I'd hear the same song three times in a day on that station. Not only that, there used to also be a pretty good rock station right here in good ol' Freddyburg on 99.3, but they changed it to a hip-hop/R&B type station. They rebadged themselves as "99.3 The Vibe". I call it "99.3 The Vapid". Needless to say, I took that one off the radio presets.

As for the sound quality of the XM/Sirius, when I first signed up back in the early days of XM, the quality was definitly better than FM, at least through the built-in tuner that was in my Alpine deck in the car (the reason being the aforementioned experience with the local FM scene as described above, thus needed to find something that was better, and at the time, the XM was a Godsend!). I figured it was equivalent to around 96 to 128kbps MP3, with very little repeat (I think I listened to it a good solid week before I heard a repeat! Also discovered quite a few new bands that I've never heard of, since the Boneyard channel at the time had a pretty heavy rotation of the power/prog metal that I like to listen to), with the talk stations noticably at a lower quality (makes sense, after all, do you really need "CD quality" for talk radio?) Seems that as they try to add more channels and squeeze more bandwidth from thier satellites, they were compressing the audio more. Now, it seems it is more like 64 to 96 kpbs MP3 in the quality for the music channels, with a lot more repeats in the playlists. Now, enter the iPod hookup and from henceforth on, any car I get will have an iPod hookup (and I am not just talking about through an aux port - I am talking through the actual dock connecter with controls from the head unit itself!), even if I have to go aftermarket to get one installed.

[skonopa]

Well, I guess I'll stay on the fence a while longer. Looks like "change" is coming to satellite radio, though. I was hoping with the merger of Sirius and XM, they would up the sound quality, maybe to the 128kbps range. If I just want crappy, low-level background music, I can get that with my Dish service. It's a shame, really. Think of the quality we could be getting if they weren't so intent on cramming as many channels through the system as they possibly can. Same statement applies equally to video (Dish, Direct, Cable). They compromise quality way too much for me. The love of money is not only the root of all evil, it is the enemy of quality in ANY endeavor.

To be honost, I think you are making the right decision here. I'd sit it out and see how this whole merger thing shakes out before worrying about getting a dedicated reciever or signing up on the streaming, on-line thing. Since you mentioned you had a Sqeezebox, if you really wanted to try and see if the subscription server was better quality than what is through the Dish service, then I'd go that route for now. Frankly, just stick with what you get through the Dish service and see how it shakes out in a few months or so.

[SWL]

Hey Steve........What do you think of the Cambridge so far?

Sorry, got off track.......I have Sirius/XM with my dish network and yes, sound quality sucks. Strange thing though.....right after they merged for about the whole month of December.....it sounded great. I mean, it sounded really good like never before and I'm thinkin' the merger between the two is all right.

Then after Christmas it went back to the same. Oh well, I still listen to it all the time. I like a lot of the channels, especially the rock channels.