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Satellite radio sound quality.

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Originally posted by: I Saw OJ
Compaired to a CD, its not as good. But I would rather deal with a slight compression issue that have to hear the radio crackle, pop, snap, fade in and out like with regular radio. I think its far better.
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Or you can go to your radio station website and they might have online streaming
Such as: www.1069freefm.com
64 kb/sec but sounds perfect
 
Originally posted by: BD2003
Originally posted by: getbush
I have sirius and in my room it is wired to a home theater receiver with the rca plugs. I can definately notice the compression they have to do, as music is a little muddled and isn't as dynamic as a CD. About like an MP3 at 128kbps, or worse. I think you get about the same with both due to the compression they have to do to fit the content into their bandwidth.
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Its more like a 64-48kbps WMA file.
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For XM, I think its something like 64kbps AAC. I also think some channels are alotted more bandwidth then others.

Something tells me the dont have the smartest audio engineers working there, or at least working on their web-broadcast system. They stream using 64kbps WMA9, with many channels using 44kHz, but most using 48kHz, which is too high for WMA9 at 64kbps, there is definatly artifacting that happens and its pissing me off.

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
kinda sad they chose such a low bitrate,, but i guess they are afraid of piracy or something. too bad.
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There are technical, financial, and politicial restrictions on the amount of bandwidth they can use. And they are trying to squeeze as many channels in as they can, for as little cost as possible.




And yea, I agree, the sound quality is defintly lacking. XM sounds significantly worse then CD's or even 128kbit MP3s from my iPod, hooked up the exact same way.
 
Originally posted by: Xylitol
Or you can go to your radio station website and they might have online streaming
Such as: www.1069freefm.com
64 kb/sec but sounds perfect
Click to expand...
Perfect on your Z-640s possibly, sounds like ****** here.

Originally posted by: michaels
Mine sounds great, I use the old original Pioneer reciever box and it's wired into a Pioneer mp3/cd player.
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Yours must be very different than all the others, lucky you.

 
the higher quality my car sound system got, the worse Sirius sounded... To be honest though, they BOTH sound compressed, nothing compares to CD/IPOD unfortunately for the quality without commercials...

That being said, i LOVE Sirius. 🙂
 
XM used to be much better than Sirius, but now, I think they are only slightly better. They have added a number of new channles is the past year and its starting to strech the bandwith. On my wife's Roady 2, a few of the music channels sound 'tinny' (I notice it most on 90's on 9). I havent noticed that on my skyfi 2, but I have noticed a decrease.
 
Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Originally posted by: Xylitol
Or you can go to your radio station website and they might have online streaming
Such as: www.1069freefm.com
64 kb/sec but sounds perfect
Click to expand...
Perfect on your Z-640s possibly, sounds like ****** here.

Originally posted by: michaels
Mine sounds great, I use the old original Pioneer reciever box and it's wired into a Pioneer mp3/cd player.
Click to expand...
Yours must be very different than all the others, lucky you.
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So are you honestly saying it doesn't sound good? SOunds better than FM that is for sure.
 
Hard to compare, FM has analogue limitations in all aspects of sound reproduction, satellite has digital compression. I'm almost inclined to choose FM because even though it's limited much like satellite, at least it maintains waveform integrity. Many satellite streams also have difficulty maintaining flat frequency response.

Regardless though, if we're referring to the same thing, calling it great is absurd. 128kbps MP3 is superior to either one and that is far from great.

Not that it concerns me, satellite radio will die out via internet radio soon enough. So we all win in the end.
 
Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Hard to compare, FM has analogue limitations in all aspects of sound reproduction, satellite has digital compression. I'm almost inclined to choose FM because even though it's limited much like satellite, at least it maintains waveform integrity. Many satellite streams also have difficulty maintaining flat frequency response.

Regardless though, if we're referring to the same thing, calling it great is absurd. 128kbps MP3 is superior to either one and that is far from great.

Not that it concerns me, satellite radio will die out via internet radio soon enough. So we all win in the end.
Click to expand...
No it won't.
 
Satellite radio is a dead simple decision.

If you care about Howard Stern, get Sirius.

If you don't care about Howard Stern, get XM, because it rocks Sirius in every other way, including sound quality.
 
Originally posted by: Red Dawn
Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Hard to compare, FM has analogue limitations in all aspects of sound reproduction, satellite has digital compression. I'm almost inclined to choose FM because even though it's limited much like satellite, at least it maintains waveform integrity. Many satellite streams also have difficulty maintaining flat frequency response.

Regardless though, if we're referring to the same thing, calling it great is absurd. 128kbps MP3 is superior to either one and that is far from great.

Not that it concerns me, satellite radio will die out via internet radio soon enough. So we all win in the end.
Click to expand...
No it won't.
Click to expand...

You're gonna have to take that steaming piece of ****** to the scrap yard soon enough, I guarantee it 🙂
 
Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Not that it concerns me, satellite radio will die out via internet radio soon enough. So we all win in the end.
Click to expand...

If satellite radio dies, it will be through Sirius and XM spending way too much money trying to show who has the bigger penis. Internet radio won't replace them unless you can reliably pull down a wi-fi signal anywhere and everywhere, which isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
 
Originally posted by: Sheep
Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Not that it concerns me, satellite radio will die out via internet radio soon enough. So we all win in the end.
Click to expand...

If satellite radio dies, it will be through Sirius and XM spending way too much money trying to show who has the bigger penis. Internet radio won't replace them unless you can reliably pull down a wi-fi signal anywhere and everywhere, which isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
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Which is why they are doing the next best thing - joining up with cell phone companies and trying to jack bandwidth from their cells.

RE: the update - about as I expected. Sounds terrible, but for what its worth, it used to sound MUCH, MUCH better before there was a race to see who can get more channels.
 
Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Originally posted by: Red Dawn
Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Hard to compare, FM has analogue limitations in all aspects of sound reproduction, satellite has digital compression. I'm almost inclined to choose FM because even though it's limited much like satellite, at least it maintains waveform integrity. Many satellite streams also have difficulty maintaining flat frequency response.

Regardless though, if we're referring to the same thing, calling it great is absurd. 128kbps MP3 is superior to either one and that is far from great.

Not that it concerns me, satellite radio will die out via internet radio soon enough. So we all win in the end.
Click to expand...
No it won't.
Click to expand...

You're gonna have to take that steaming piece of ****** to the scrap yard soon enough, I guarantee it 🙂
Click to expand...
Sure it will buddy. Sure it will...
 
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