Can you take satellite radio siriusly

[Starbucks]

They have improved noticeably the last few years. PC magazine's lab test have given their top models considerable ratings. For some strange reason, you even get noticeably better customer service. When it comes to Dimensions...you'll get 4 good ok years, and by the 6th, it's time to upgrade. You'll never know what you'll get out of them, but it beats an HP or an e-machine.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

I'm not an audiophile but I agree with Tom Wells description of the audio. Gritty and sibilant on the high end, and not much of a low end. For years I thought it was mixing with the ground loop whine in my car, then I got a different car and the whine was worse so I got a ground loop isolator. That did the trick, no more whine but the audio still sounded like crap.

They have never had a good channel that plays MOR music, Siriusly Sinatra doesn't do it for me. Escape with the vocals they play probably comes closer but they are really "Beautiful Music". When they got rid of Cinimagic I lost interest. Do they really need all the rock and hip hop channels?

I bought a car last weekend and tried to find a place to mount the Roady XT but there really wasn't a good spot so that was when I decided to drop XM. It was nice but no longer lived up to my expectations.

 

[cyberdad]

I'm not an audiophile but I agree with Tom Wells description of the audio.

+1. Me too.

The first time I heard XM it was in a upscale rental car in San Diego. The audio was just great. During that week, there was one occasion where the same song happened to be playing simultaneously on XM and a local FM station. The audio quality was indistinguishable....meaning both were very good. Last week I had the same experience in Mrs. Cyberdad's car....with a Bose audio system. Same song playing simultaneously on XM and local FM. Song sounded great on FM....almost painful on XM.

Why do people put up with this stuff???

(Full disclosure....Mrs. Cyberdad has XM so she can listen to a couple of the talk channels. She couldn't care less about having high quality sound. If she wants music, she puts on a CD).

 

[Radio_bored-Op]

Im in a car that is "older" and a tape deck is accessible.
...unfortunately, there are not many places I can get
the tape-deck adapter, and if there is a tape deck,
that means NO - mp.plug in... soo im "forced"
to use the FM relay - currently, i use 100.3 fm in buffalo
-
and, the audio there is poor (esp. when there is static),
but when it does come in - sounds "okay" ( i guess) but
very frustrating...

 

[Radio_bored-Op]

update:

I went to radio shack and got an updated
(awesome) car adapter w/ a crisp
connection - it rocks!

 

[Darth_vader]

Does your car radio have a "line-in" jack on the back of it? (Hint: you might have to take apart your dashboard to get to it; or just check your instruction book.)

Seems to me you'd have even better results just feeding it directly from the headphone or line-out jack (if there is one) than with a cassette adaptor!

[size=8pt]Progress report: my Mum's 2008 Optiplex blew a couple caps last Wednesday. And with that, yet another Dell becomes yet another entry in the dustbin of history.....

 

[Radio_bored-Op]

no mp-Plug in necassary - the tape deck works well !!
better than the FM_reception
(on the newer models) the older models,
reeeely sizzled - as the car next to u could hear ya!
(lol)

but i do like the FM:frequencey feature as it
feels "more like local" radio! ( LOL)

 

[sdh483]

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.

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.

You don't have to be an audiophile to enjoy quality sounding music. Audiophiles are a bit extreme when it comes to sound production. I am more of the middle of the road type of person where I want quality sounding music without being too anal retentive about it. People with bad taste in good sound quality have been around since the age of crummy all-in-one stereos to the Yorxs and Soundesigns of the 80s and 90s.

If "content is king, screw the audio" is a valid statement the public can relate to, then we would still have CHRs on AM radio that have a much stronger signal then FM. But people want, "digital sound" and opt for FM. People are also tired of tinny sounding MP3s, so a market for better quality MP3s for players equipped with larger hard drives are in demand. Also, with sites like Pandora and Apple's iCloud, there's more choices for higher quality music.

As for me, I still would choose Sirius/XM over FM radio. However, when I re-activate, I will purchase an XM equipped in-dash unit that has a little bit better sq than my old XMReady2 tuner.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

no mp-Plug in necassary - the tape deck works well !!
better than the FM_reception
(on the newer models) the older models,
reeeely sizzled - as the car next to u could hear ya!
(lol)

but i do like the FM:frequencey feature as it
feels "more like local" radio! ( LOL)

Be careful of using the tape deck. Somehow I've had the experience with a couple of units that eventually the motor on the deck goes nuts. I've had everything for tapes that sped up for no reason to a deck that made all kinds of noise. That never happened until I started using a cassette adaptor.

 

[Oldiesaholic]

Interesting.
Mine started making a clicking sound about a month ago.
I had an FM adapter in another car, and although it played really good, it would occasionally blow the fuse.
Made me go "Hmmm".

 

[Darth_vader]

~Interesting! I'd not had those sorts of problems myself when I was using cassette adaptors; does sorta' make one go "hmmm..."

Of course, I did actually manage to kill a cassette player with an adaptor, but (1) it was a factory-stock Eagle radio in my Mum's '87 Premier and (2) it was pushing 20 years old and about ready to croak anyways.

[size=8pt]The biggest problem I always had seemed to be tinny and scratchy sound, even with meticulously cared-for heads. Oh yeah, and there was the problem of scalability, as I gradually added more equipment to my dashboard (first it was a pocket CD player, then a CB, then an SCA radio, then a laptop, then an F1HD, then.....) so that prompted me to get my current Kenwood with built-in CD player (in lieu of a tape player) with line-in jacks on the rear, and a crossbar switch ($5 at Goodwill) to connect it all together.