i currenty have the non bose non 6 disc changer stock head unit with the starmate receiver connected via the auxniss by soundgate. my only complaint is the sound quality i get from what i think are my tweaters up front. does anyone else notice a sort of fuzzy sound when listening to your satellite radios? it only occurs through when im listening to the satellite....im not sure if its the speakers or what......i always have full reception through my signal so i don't think that is the issue....should i just replace my front speakers or would this not help?

thanks in advance for any suggestions

 

I shopped Sat Radio (my HU has a native SR interface) and was greatly disappointed in every stores' sound quality. I read several reviews that confirmed Sat radio concentrates many channels at low quality sampling rates. High quality digital audio needs either CDs or digitally wired MP3 players (lower noise than the headphone jack). Saving the monthly charges will afford you new CDs. Good luck!

 

At home I run my satellite radio signals into a Klisph THX rated system ... the results are less than pleasing. The highly compressed audio has swishing, high-pitch whines and other non-musical artifacts ... just like watching satellite television the digital picture doesn't come close to meeting analog television.

 

interesting....so this is as good as it gets.....i spent a fortune on this thing between the receiver itself, adaptors, custom mounting and of course monthly fees.......and on top of it, i just got an email from sirius saying that the state of virginia is about to pass a law that will allow them to collect telecomunications taxes on all satellite radio subscriptions.....the emailed urged us to write to our senators to try to block this from happening......its basically gonna be like our cell phone bills eventually.......oh well, im knee deep into it and i can't look back......i just hope they spend some money on improving their sound quality....thanks for the posts

 

It sucks when a product's Marketing perception isn't reality. Vote with your $, and don't subscribe to low quality audio. No consumer grade technical standard every improves. Since legacy upgrades would alienate existing customers. Only new companies honor this mantra: "Innovate or Die!".

To recreate the best audio, buy great CDs, dbase sample them uncompressed/lossless, then run your playlist through a HU dedicated digital interface (don't use the MP3 player's LOUSY headphone jack). Enjoy!

 

I think a lot of it has to do with the DSP on the satalite receiver. I have XM in both cars, One with a Delphi SkyFi (originally $200) and one with Alpine's External AI-Net Receiver (that one was $300). The Ski-Fi sounds "Good" and to be honest, Isn't any worse than MP3 music. The Alpine seems to fill in for compression errors using Media Xpander and is pretty much CD quality.

 

Sirius sound quality is not a good as XM either. It's a well known fact at this point. It really pisses me off actually. I can't stand the Sirius quality otherwise I'd be a subscriber.

 

I can't put up with MP3 sounds except in the garage working, playing softly at work, or in my iPod while cutting the grass. The Pioneer AVIC N2 has MP3 abilities and I've only used it once to play back an album from the headend in MP3 and from the 6-disc changer in full CD quality ... like going from AM to FM. I have found that MP3Pro seems to be a bit better but I'm still recording everything in a lossless file format too.

 

I'll listen to mp3s in the car, b/c the Bose sucks anyway. I encode all mp3s at 256kbps, but the ipod seems to butcher certain signals anyway.

 

so very true....before i subscribed i was under the impression that this would be very high tech good quality sound.....i guess i should have done my homework....oh well

 

i have a pretty top notch stereo set up...it costed $2500+... i have sirius and it's wired directly to my headunit (no fm transmission). the highs are fine but the bass and mids suck ***. they compress it so much it almost cuts out the lows. i gotta turn up the woofer on the head unit signifcantly to compensate. i really dont think satellite radio is meant for high quality sound systems b/c your amplifying crappy signal. im pretty disappointed in it.

 

You couldn't have said it any better.

 

yea it sucks too! well, instead of the sirius add on i think i gotta buy an ipod and get the ipod interface for my kenwood ddx-8017

 

I have the Sirius SIR-ALP1 wired directly into the Alpine CDA-9855 head unit via the Ai-Net connection. I can say that the sound quality is totally sub-par. I find myself mainly listening to the news/talk stations because I cannot stand the sound quality of the music channels.

The thing that really gets me is that they compress some stations more than others, so the music stations that I am interested in (the less popular ones) are worse quality than others that I dont care for...its a good thing I installed the thing for news/talk radio in the first place, otherwise I would be pretty miffed...

 

I have the same set up except for going into an Alpine IVA-D300 and it's the same with me. It just sounds like garbage... I mean you put a CD into my $3000 + system and it sounds phenominal... you turn it to sat. radio and it sounds like trash.... It almost makes me feel like I paid a whole bunch of money for some shiittay sounds... then i realize sirius sucks

 

is XM any better?

 

Without a doubt. I've done a personal, side by side comparison, and it is much better. I've read many articles that agreed. XM doesn't appear to use as aggressive of a compression program. It just sounds better. It's still not CD quality, but is a big improvement over Sirius.

 

what is the advantage of using such an aggressive compression program? more channels?

do you think Sirius will address these complaints and improve their stuff?

 

Sirius uses a Lucent PAC audio codec. XM uses a codec based on the AAC format that's familiar to those w/ iTunes. I know XM has quite a few improvements planned in the near future as well. Right now, their audio streams are limited to 64kbps, but supposedly that is changing this year. Sirius streams most music stations at 64kbps as well.

I don't know of any planned improvements for Sirius. I really can't say why XM sounds better....the AAC compression must be a better system.

 

Yes - more channels.

I work in television where a full un-compressed channel is 260 megabytes per second. By the time our MPEG encoders are done with it we stream out as few as 900 kilobytes or as much as 6 megabytes - content and intended receiver dependent. Our target bit rate is 6 MB/sec. Both DirecTV and Dish Network are a tad lower than that from my observations.

As long as you don't listen too close, as long as you don't look too carefully, you'll not notice the compression artifacts. With more and more people getting high-dollar big screen televisions they're starting to notice the MPEG artifacts as well as their sets issues - the shimmering screen effect, the screen door effect, the clay face effect ...