I've had it for 6-months in both my cars (one Sirius receiver and one XM). These are OEM radios built-in. Sound is barely tolerable for music. How are they even in business with so much digital artifacting in the music? Seems to get worse when there is lots of sports programing). Is there any hope for better quality or have they thrown their hands in the air and said "this is all we got and good as it will get". I love the programing but I'm not sure I'll renew if the quality remains this low :'(. 20 million subscribers is a miracle sounding like this.
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Can you take satellite radio siriusly
- Thread starter Fortner1073
- Start date
Had it for 8 years and I love the sound quality.
I've been a XM subscriber for over 5 years.
I know the sound quality isn't as good as a CD or even a well-engineered FM signal, but it sounds better than a lot of online streams.
People keep talking about the shrunken playlists, but there is still far more diverse music (not to mention talk & sports) content available on XM than even all the stations in a major market (NYC, LA, Chicago) could ever hope to offer.
Online streaming (via 3G/4G) isn't yet at full, coast-to-coast coverage.
I know the sound quality isn't as good as a CD or even a well-engineered FM signal, but it sounds better than a lot of online streams.
People keep talking about the shrunken playlists, but there is still far more diverse music (not to mention talk & sports) content available on XM than even all the stations in a major market (NYC, LA, Chicago) could ever hope to offer.
Online streaming (via 3G/4G) isn't yet at full, coast-to-coast coverage.
dxer720 said:
Audiophiles are a noisy micro-niche, hardly worth worrying about. The average American radio listener is perfectly comfortable with sub-FM-level audio quality. After all, that's what's coming out of the mp3 players they love so much. Content is king, screw the audio.
Yes, I can and I do.
Living in the hills, valleys and mountains of Vermont, it's good to have radio that I can listen to without fade-in/fade-out or scrathy reception.
Sure, now and then I drive behind a mountain or in a valley that cuts the signal out for a few moments, I can live with that.
I was totally suprised a while ago when we were in Boston and were
parking in a parking garage and the XM was still working. Not having
repeaters in the wilds of Vermont made me forget that they have such things in the big town. I'm pretty happy with satellite radio. So much that I even have a few shares of stock in it. It ain't making me rich, but what the heck.
Living in the hills, valleys and mountains of Vermont, it's good to have radio that I can listen to without fade-in/fade-out or scrathy reception.
Sure, now and then I drive behind a mountain or in a valley that cuts the signal out for a few moments, I can live with that.
I was totally suprised a while ago when we were in Boston and were
parking in a parking garage and the XM was still working. Not having
repeaters in the wilds of Vermont made me forget that they have such things in the big town. I'm pretty happy with satellite radio. So much that I even have a few shares of stock in it. It ain't making me rich, but what the heck.
D
Darth_vader
Guest
"How are they even in business with so much digital artifacting in the music?"
The same way CrApple made an enterprise of providing s---y sounding 128 KB/s MP3 files, written with a known-faulty encoder, for a buck each--overzealous marketing hype.
Yup, it's just that simple. Market something to death, no matter how crappy it is, and the naive masses will jump all over it. I mean, how on earth do you think Dell manages to maintain such a big presence in the PC market? It shur ain't from selling reliable, high-quality computer systems.....
The same way CrApple made an enterprise of providing s---y sounding 128 KB/s MP3 files, written with a known-faulty encoder, for a buck each--overzealous marketing hype.
Yup, it's just that simple. Market something to death, no matter how crappy it is, and the naive masses will jump all over it. I mean, how on earth do you think Dell manages to maintain such a big presence in the PC market? It shur ain't from selling reliable, high-quality computer systems.....
TheFonz said:
And I squeezed 10 trouble-free years out of a rebranded Packard Bell (NEC) PC!
No manufacturer turns out mostly lemons; you just have a slightly better chance of getting a crappy machine from some than others. The crap percentage isn't much more than 5 percent for any of them, though.
Darth_vader said:
Well, I'm in my 8th year with my trusty Dell Dimension 8300 desktop. I replaced the original hard drive with a larger drive but the original still runs fine as a work drive. Added some memory and a DVD burner. Never had a hardware or software failure. It runs about 12 hours per day, 7 days per week and is in use by 3 users. I don't think you can ask more of a machine than that.
I've only ever listened in rental cars, but that would be many dozens of times....
The audio took a huge hit years back when the number of channels was increased. 2006?
Somewhere around the same time the playlists tightened up and what content interested me was gone.
Some was never there. Where was the 20's channel? the 30's channel?
The 40's channel music was syrupy schmaltz ignoring all hot jazz and swing...
The audio was tolerable before, but afterward, far too gritty to listen to.
I'd rather there be NO upper audio information than searing crispy distorted grunge.
As is it, it would be worth listening to for free, but pay actual money for something that sounds so bad?
Not in this lifetime.
Meanwhile tonight on the way to work I listened to an old Grampa Jones song on WSM nearly 500 miles away,
and it was so strong and clear you could hear the air in his teeth.
And no artifacts tonight via the atmosphere. Just clean solid signal. For free.
The audio took a huge hit years back when the number of channels was increased. 2006?
Somewhere around the same time the playlists tightened up and what content interested me was gone.
Some was never there. Where was the 20's channel? the 30's channel?
The 40's channel music was syrupy schmaltz ignoring all hot jazz and swing...
The audio was tolerable before, but afterward, far too gritty to listen to.
I'd rather there be NO upper audio information than searing crispy distorted grunge.
As is it, it would be worth listening to for free, but pay actual money for something that sounds so bad?
Not in this lifetime.
Meanwhile tonight on the way to work I listened to an old Grampa Jones song on WSM nearly 500 miles away,
and it was so strong and clear you could hear the air in his teeth.
And no artifacts tonight via the atmosphere. Just clean solid signal. For free.
A
audiomusiclover
Guest
There is little doubt that the sound quality of Sat radio is not good when compared to other sources. It is compressed in dynamic range, inner detail, as well as both frequency extremes (bass & treble) are cut off. The music quality that we listen to is bad but most have grown use to it as mentioned in other posts. All you have to do is compare Sat radio to a CD or Album to hear that you are missing plenty on Sat radio. I guess we put up with it as a society now as we are accustomed to doing with less over the last couple of decades. Efficiency and convenience is king and we live in a drive-thru instant world where we put up with lower grade crap in order to have "it" immediately. It is sad how most old 8-track tapes sounded at least as good (over 40 yrs ago) as most music on Sat radio does now. Comparing Sat against old recorded cassettes is not even fair in most cases (over 30 yrs ago). The masses are happy in our relative crap though so I don’t see any change. Unfortunately, quality in most parts of our daily lives died years ago so that things like Sat radio, HD radio, fast food, could live....
D
Darth_vader
Guest
Re: Can you take satellite radio seriously?
Amen.
Although an eight-track cart, when mastered decently (usually meaning self-recorded) on decent tape and played back on a high-quality deck (think Akai) can sound better than a modern-day cassette, particularly to my tin eardrums. Unfortunately most record-label tapes never approached that level, save for maybe RCA tapes ("there's a reason why the carts were sealled, as opposed to spring-clipped! They never need maintenence!" my Grampa always told me) and the majority, in fact, ended up being crap.
Of course, when compared to a reel to reel tape running at 15 IPS (or even 7, as most main-stream home reel to reel decks I've seen can't handle 15) all bets are off......
[size=8pt]"No manufacturer turns out mostly lemons; you just have a slightly better chance of getting a crappy machine from some than others. The crap percentage isn't much more than 5 percent for any of them, though."
Is it safe to assume, then, that you've never heard of a certain brand called "Coby"?
Incidentally, my parents have had, in total, eight Dell machines over the past decade. All have failled on the hardware level within the first couple years of installation. I even had an (admittedly older) Optiplex GX100 catch on fire last summer. Meanwhile, I'm still on my same self-built Pentium 4 machine that I built in 2003. That's my regular non-networked machine that I use for every-day, non-Internet purposes. The only serious problems I have had with it as of yet have all been software-related.
Apparently you guys just happened to get lucky. Uttering the name "Dell" in my computer centre is like publicly praying to Satan at the Holy See.
Amen.
Although an eight-track cart, when mastered decently (usually meaning self-recorded) on decent tape and played back on a high-quality deck (think Akai) can sound better than a modern-day cassette, particularly to my tin eardrums. Unfortunately most record-label tapes never approached that level, save for maybe RCA tapes ("there's a reason why the carts were sealled, as opposed to spring-clipped! They never need maintenence!" my Grampa always told me) and the majority, in fact, ended up being crap.
Of course, when compared to a reel to reel tape running at 15 IPS (or even 7, as most main-stream home reel to reel decks I've seen can't handle 15) all bets are off......
[size=8pt]"No manufacturer turns out mostly lemons; you just have a slightly better chance of getting a crappy machine from some than others. The crap percentage isn't much more than 5 percent for any of them, though."
Is it safe to assume, then, that you've never heard of a certain brand called "Coby"?
Incidentally, my parents have had, in total, eight Dell machines over the past decade. All have failled on the hardware level within the first couple years of installation. I even had an (admittedly older) Optiplex GX100 catch on fire last summer. Meanwhile, I'm still on my same self-built Pentium 4 machine that I built in 2003. That's my regular non-networked machine that I use for every-day, non-Internet purposes. The only serious problems I have had with it as of yet have all been software-related.
Apparently you guys just happened to get lucky. Uttering the name "Dell" in my computer centre is like publicly praying to Satan at the Holy See.
What I'm saying...you get more car and performance with a higher end BMW or Mecedes then a 30,000 model. Really all they are at the lower end are equivalent to high end Fords and Chevy's. The name is there, but doesn't mean the quality is.
In a higher end Dell, you get a better quality motherboard, processor, graphic card, sound card, design or engineering performance, and slots or ports etc. The bells and whistles are anything anybody wants to add on any model, like accessories.... TV tuner, adapter card, etc. all perform the same depending on what you purchase. Usually the XPS series are the higher end , and they perform more like Dell use to be when they first came out.
In a higher end Dell, you get a better quality motherboard, processor, graphic card, sound card, design or engineering performance, and slots or ports etc. The bells and whistles are anything anybody wants to add on any model, like accessories.... TV tuner, adapter card, etc. all perform the same depending on what you purchase. Usually the XPS series are the higher end , and they perform more like Dell use to be when they first came out.
D
Darth_vader
Guest
One of those that failled WAS a 2006-model XPS. It had two vented electrolytics on its motherboard, another whose canister blew off completely and a couple more that were starting to go (the G--D--ed defective Nichicons that just about everybody seemed to be using then; looked similar to the scenario depicted in this photograph) rendering it inoperable, and was already six months over the warranty. So I ended up fitting it with a fairly decent, late model off-the-shelf MSI Pentium IV motherboard and 600-watt (peak) power supply unit. Mum hasn't had that box give her trouble since then, hardware-wise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
The (perceived) "higher quality" of the XPS was partially why Mum bought the thing in the first place, as a last-ditch attempt following a previous unsavoury track record of failure on their "lesser" models. Unfortunately, like the others, this one turned out to be no different. But then again, "quality" is just a word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
The (perceived) "higher quality" of the XPS was partially why Mum bought the thing in the first place, as a last-ditch attempt following a previous unsavoury track record of failure on their "lesser" models. Unfortunately, like the others, this one turned out to be no different. But then again, "quality" is just a word.
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