Siriusly Swooshy

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TNGTony

TNGTony

Unashamed Bengal Fan
Original poster
Sep 7, 2003
10,041
803
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Sorry if this has been posted before. I think I posted something similar about a rental vehicle I had in December, but didn't find it.

I am new to Sirius. I have listened to Sirius only through Dish until last month. Thanks to a driver who decided to remodel the back of my old car with an imprint of his grill, I had to get myself a newer vehicle. I ended up getting a newer version of the car I was replacing and it came with a Sirius radio. (Jeep).
I happened to get the car just before the "free preview" in February so I got to listen a little. I was not impressed with the sound quality of the music channels. They all seem really "swooshy". Essentially, I hear, very clearly the compression artifacts and sound degradation in the high end. The more brass there is in the music, the worse it seems to me.

When the free listening period ended, I though fine.... I don't need the low-fi sound anyway. The new radio has an aux jack so I started streaming I-Heart-Radio and thought that was at least as good and sometime better, but not by much. But then I was hit with the data cap on my plan I didn't know existed. (T-Mobile advertised heavily that music doesn't count towards the data totals. Well surprise, surprise... it's not for all plans, only certain plans).

So... faced with only FM and CD music, upping my phone plan so the data wouldn't be an issue, and getting Sirius, I decided to do the two month trial. When the music came back on, I heard the familiar swooshing and bad high frequency audio artifacts that make the music harsh. And the Radio channels that sound only mildly better than AM radio compressed to hell and back.

is the compression that bad? I have MP3s at 196mbps that sound better than the music channels!
 
Maybe my hearing just isn't good anymore. My dads Explorer has Sirius and I've noticed it sounds tinny compared to the XM radio in my Avalanche. Neither is great but I think the XM side sounds better. FM does sound better though, just nothing on FM radio I want to listen to. I rarely leave Siriusly Sinatra, 50's on 5, 80's on 8 or Radio Classics unless I happen to be out while a football game is on.
 
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Seriously Sinatra was the selling point for me, but that is getting old already. I love standards, but the library is really limited. Anyway, this is where I notice the most artifacts, on the more orchestrated music.
 
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I have a Delphi 3 receiver in my truck and a Delphi in a XM House unit. My hearing so bad I do not notice any thing. I do notice that the receiver in my truck works and sounds better thru the Aux Jack that is built into my Pioneer Radio as if it were an MP3 unit,
When I use the power cord to transmit the signal to one of the FM radio stations SiriusXM chooses to piggyback their signal on It (the XM Receiver) gets drowned out by more powerful FM stations in the area or the ones south of the border.
 
1. Neither Sirius nor XM hardware platforms have anywhere near the sound quality they had years ago.
2. IMO, XM is slightly better on most channels, but of course your mileage may vary.
3. If you're going to get the service, call up and talk to the retentions department, because there is usually a deal for 5 months at $25 total or 6 months at $30 total.

I just switched to T-Mobile and as far as I can tell, only the super low data cap plans don't have the "Music Freedom" feature. While I have a 3 GB/mo plan that comes with a 10 gig "Data Stash" - even the next plan down, 1 GB/mo with no "Stash" would still include Music Freedom.
 
I have a $40 a month plan with T-Mobile that has unlimited talk&text with 500MB cap on data. Up until this month, that has been more than enough data and all I needed. I figured If I have to pay $10-$20 more a month for the necessary plan to get more data just so I can stream music, AND when I travel I have issues with some dead zones, why not just try the Sirius music service at $10 a month instead? Now I am battling whether to just live with the swooshy crappy sound of Sirius radio, or up the plan so I don't have to worry about data to get slightly better music quality, or, learn to live with CDs and commercial FM radio again and just pocket the $13 a month. :)
 
I bought a Chrysler 300 in April of 2013 which came with a year of Sirius/XM. (I think the Uconnect Touch radio actually uses only Sirius signals.) You are right. The compression is so bad it varies (in my estimation) somewhere from pretty crappy to completely unlistenable. I wouldn't say "swooshy" so much as listening to the musicians through a bubbling aquarium or something. Warbly. Anyhow, silence is better! I never renewed. I've been offered $20 for 5 months many times, but if I can't stand to listen to it, what's the point? I also hate their subscription business model. They WILL jump the gun on you if you sub at a promotional rate for 5 or 6 months, and they WILL charge you full price at that time.

But if your Jeep has a Uconnect radio, you may find it has multiple inputs besides aux. My Chrysler has USB and SDHC card support. So I ripped all my own CDs into archival quality MP3s, put them on a spare 16GB SDHC card, and voila. Good music w/o commercials.

I'm on T-Mobile as well, and I haven't hit my 1GB limit. My understanding is that they don't cut you off or charge you more when you exceed that cap, but merely throttle you. Is the throttling too severe to stream even something as low-bandwidth as compressed music? :)-( I haven't tried that. But I can play music off my phone via USB or bluetooth, so that's another input you may have on your radio. You can visit http://driveuconnect.com/ and figure out what radio you have.
 
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jegrant said:
1. Neither Sirius nor XM hardware platforms have anywhere near the sound quality they had years ago.
2. IMO, XM is slightly better on most channels, but of course your mileage may vary.
3. If you're going to get the service, call up and talk to the retentions department, because there is usually a deal for 5 months at $25 total or 6 months at $30 total.

I just switched to T-Mobile and as far as I can tell, only the super low data cap plans don't have the "Music Freedom" feature. While I have a 3 GB/mo plan that comes with a 10 gig "Data Stash" - even the next plan down, 1 GB/mo with no "Stash" would still include Music Freedom.
Click to expand...

TheKrell said:
I bought a Chrysler 300 in April of 2013 which came with a year of Sirius/XM. (I think the Uconnect Touch radio actually uses only Sirius signals.) You are right. The compression is so bad it varies (in my estimation) somewhere from pretty crappy to completely unlistenable. I wouldn't say "swooshy" so much as listening to the musicians through a bubbling aquarium or something. Warbly. Anyhow, silence is better! I never renewed. I've been offered $20 for 5 months many times, but if I can't stand to listen to it, what's the point? I also hate their subscription business model. They WILL jump the gun on you if you sub at a promotional rate for 5 or 6 months, and they WILL charge you full price at that time.

But if your Jeep has a Uconnect radio, you may find it has multiple inputs besides aux. My Chrysler has USB and SDHC card support. So I ripped all my own CDs into archival quality MP3s, put them on a spare 16GB SDHC card, and voila. Good music w/o commercials.

I'm on T-Mobile as well, and I haven't hit my 1GB limit. My understanding is that they don't cut you off or charge you more when you exceed that cap, but merely throttle you. Is the throttling too severe to stream even something as low-bandwidth as compressed music? :)-( I haven't tried that. But I can play music off my phone via USB or bluetooth, so that's another input you may have on your radio. You can visit http://driveuconnect.com/ and figure out what radio you have.
Click to expand...

I just renewed my subscription Yesterday. They wanted $409.76 for two receivers. I got them down to 1/2 that price. Plus I got it online for free for the year. I almost soiled myself with the extent the lady went to to get me to stay as a customer. (Been an XM customer since 2001, I still use the second Delphi Receiver I got.) I have two Delphi receivers. I have a Delphi XMSkyFi 2 and a Delphi XMSkyFi 3 my first receiver was stolen. it was a XMSkyFi (it was really the best of all of them.) The lady did almost every thing except (as Sheldon on Big Bang Theory says) offer Coitus.
I am really think about doing Pandora for in the vehicles and the house.
 
Yes, satellite radio is heavily compressed. However, a few channels are given more bandwidth then the rest resulting is better quality The two Howard Stern channels sound excellent, better than any of the other talk channels and the 80’s On 8 is the best sounding music channel. I don’t know if this still holds true, but the 80s On 8 used to be the most listened to channel (according to Arbitron) so perhaps that’s why its’s given more. The Clear Channel owned channels (now down to just KIIS-FM LA and WHTZ-FM NYC) also sounded better because they didn’t squeeze in that many channels in their allotted bandwidth.

I’ve had XM since almost the very beginning and got Sirius about a year after their nationwide launch. I’ve had a variety of plug and play units over the years and maintained subscriptions for my home, car and the wife’s car. Sound quality was never the strong suit of satellite radio. Some plug and play receivers did provide better sound quality then their predecessors, but it was always pretty compressed. The Roady XT IMO is one of the best sounding XM receivers period. It’s the nationwide signal, no commercials, more variety of music, uncut content and every sports game that sells Sirius XM, not the audio quality.

Before the merger, I had a Sony home theater receiver with a built in XM tuner that was able to decode Neural 5.1 (aka XMHD) and the two channels that XM broadcast in 5.1 sounded incredible. Zero compression artifacts, high highs, low lows and discreet 5.1. Fine Tuning and XM Pops were the channels, but I can’t stand classical music so I would only listen for a minute or two at a time. So satellite radio is capable of some great sounding audio, but there’s not enough bandwidth for the amount of channels that are on SXM.

My new Sony Home Theater receiver has a built in Sirius tuner and the compression is pretty noticeable. I primarily listen to Octane, Bone Yard, Hair Nation, Liquid Metal and Prime Country for music and ESPN Radio, ESPN Xtra, NFL Radio, NHL Radio, Raw Dog, Opie Radio, Fox News and Patriot for talk. It does not sound pretty at all on my 7.1 system. My wife and I have nearly identical cars. I drive a 2013 Lincoln Navigator, she has a 2014 Ford Expedition both have Sirius XM built into the navigation system, and it sounds decent. I have the premium THX 2 certified audio system, which in previous model years was powered by JBL, not sure if it still is and my wife has the standard audio system from Sony. In both vehicles, the quality is much better then I get at home and the compression isn’t as noticeable.

When flipping between Sirius XM and FM, which I hardly ever do, the quality difference is very noticeable. It’s night and day. But there’s nothing on FM I care to listen to and HD Radio and it’s subchannels are an utter joke. I keep a 16 GB flash drive connected to my audio system, loaded with music but almost never use it. Never really stream Pandora in the car with my phone and via bluetooth because other than volume, I’d lose the ability to control my music with the steering wheel controls and no more voice commands with Ford Sync. When a Vince Gill or Patty Loveless song comes on Prime Country, it’s nice just pressing a button and say ‘Sirius Octane’ and have it change channels without doing anything else.

In the case of all three of my subscriptions, I am receiving the signal from the Sirius satellites, I’ve read the same thing before that a previous poster said, that XM has slightly better sound quality. Since I no longer have plug and play receivers and I only deal with Sirius it’s impossible for me to do a true A/B comparison. In the past, pre-merger, when I had both Sirius and XM connected to the same car radio in my previous Navigator and in my wife’s Zephyr via an adaptor with dual inputs, XM always sounded a tick or two better.

Oddly enough when it comes to sports, both the Bills and Sabres on Sirius XM sound better than the AM and FM HD-2 feeds here locally. Last fall I was down in the DC/Baltimore/VA area for two weeks for work and a colleague who lives in the area rode with me and is a huge Redskins and Nationals fan. The opposite was true. Both WZEZ-FM and ESPN 950 sounded much better than the Sirius XM simulcast of Redskins games and WJFK blew them away for the Nats. In fact 106.7 FM is still a preset on my radio six months later, because I never reprogrammed it since I simply have no need for FM radio.

Both vehicles were purchased used, and both vehicles didn’t receive the kill signal from the previous owners so for a short period of time we had free Sirius XM on each car. I had the Navigator three weeks before the subscription ended, my wife lucked out and went a little over two months with free Sirius XM in the Expedition. As a test I forced myself to not legitimately subscribe after the kill signal was received, I could barely make it two weeks without it before I called up and subscribed. After over 12 years with satellite radio, there is no way I would ever give it up. All day at work I stream Sirius XM using the Android app. Sound quality with the internet streaming is much better then over the satellites.
 
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Working from home and with the weather we have had the last 2 weeks, today was the first day in a week that me and the Avalanche have been out. I have the LTZ that has the Bose Premium System and I was actually listening to 80's on 8 for most of the day and it did sound pretty good, until I switched to FM, then you could hear the difference. I went back to Siriusly Sinatra on the way home and it sounded ok. I wasn't going to renew this when it expired, but it seems every time I switch to FM when driving it was on a commercial, I'm spoiled with the XM and will keep it and whatever discounts they may offer. Sometimes I will stream it in my office, but usually I just switch over to my Dish 722 and get it off there in the house
 
I'll probably keep it through the free period and then cancel. The sound quality just sucks. I wish I weren't so picky. I will miss NPR Now, and BBC world service, but the main reason for the satellite service is the music, and I find it almost unlistenable and $13 a month after fees and taxes for the basic service is about $8 more than its worth.
 
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TNGTony said:
I'll probably keep it through the free period and then cancel. The sound quality just sucks. I wish I weren't so picky. I will miss NPR Now, and BBC world service, but the main reason for the satellite service is the music, and I find it almost unlistenable and $13 a month after fees and taxes for the basic service is about $8 more than its worth.
Click to expand...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio
 
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Yes. Mostly music. It's $9.95+ a copyright fee which by all accounts should in part of the price of subscription because that is what I am buying is the music + state sales tax brings the price to just under $13 a month. That is the cheapest service and still $8 too much considering the sound quality of the music.
 
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I tried to get a S/XM rep to give me a deal on Mostly Music like they do every week for Select ($20 for 5 months). That was not a part of her script, :( so I said "goodbye" without subscribing. I still hate that subscription model.
 
If you have Bluetooth streaming..I recommend Pandora or Slacker.Both sound much much better than sirius/xm..both are free..have occasional ads BUT NO DJ CHATTER..slacker has a much deeper playlist
 
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The choice of Internet streaming services probably comes down more to how much bandwidth you can afford. Spotify and MOG can really burn through the data.
 
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