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Good gawd this sounds like CRAP!

Re: I'm with ya

[b said:
gerald ]
smashedcd said:
its not even good cassette quality
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I'm a 2 month subscriber, I got XM tossed into the deal when I got a new car (Saab).  It's a Harmon Kardon system and CDs and FM sound just fine.  You are very correct about SQ on XM, at first I thought mebbe it was just me and I wasn't used to it or something, but doing an A/B on the weekend between blues on a local FM station and on XM is glaring.

I love the variety and most of the programming, but I'm really disappointed with the SQ[/b]. 
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My experience and my feelings are very similar.  However, the first time I had XM in a rental car in San Diego,I remember the sound quality as outstanding. Equal or better to the CD player or the FM. This was shortly after XM came onto the market.  A few months later when I was given an XM radio as a b-day present, I recall the SQ as being quite good.  I thought it was my imagination or perhaps some sort of deterioriation in my radio that was causing the problem of it not seeming to sound as good as it used to. (I think it actually sounds better today over aol or the web). However between this board and my experience with other rental cars, I'd say its not my imagination, SQ is going south, and XM has a heckuva problem on their hands. 
 
Another opinion ...

I have a SkyFi wired into my 03 Accord. I am not having the severe sound quality issues that others are reporting on the main XM music channels -- sounds better than my FM channels, though not as crisp as my CDs. It's better than good casette quality.

The talk channels and MLB broadcasts, however, do resemble muddled computer streaming. Also, it sounds to me that the CC channels (KISS, etc.) are of poorer quality than the XM channels, and not the other way around as others are hearing.

I do agree: It sounds poor when run through my home stereo -- my cable box music (Music Choice) sounds much clearer.
 
I should be clear....

I have no problem whatsoever with less than stellar sound quality for talk channels and ballgames. What disappoints me is the apparent degradation in the quality of the music channels
 
True

kmalone11 said:
my cable box music (Music Choice) sounds much clearer.
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I have digital cable and run Music Choice through my stereo, it's as good as FM if not a tad better. And I find internet radio can sound awfully good depending on how much bandwidth they choose to buy.
 
I seemed to remember XM sounding somewhat better when I first got it back in '04, but I wasn't sure how much was my memory and how much was from reading these boards. Well, I was just skimming through a couple files of IT I recorded back in September of ')R, and MY GOD, the difference is amazing. Not only do they sound fuller, but the stereo is much better. There were lots of compression artifacts back then, but not nearly as bad as now. While I can't speak for the very early dasy of XM, but there has been a major decline in just the past two years.
 
So, has anyone determined exactly why it sounds so crappy? Is it really just cramming too many channels into a set amount of bandwidth? Or have they changed their processing, or stopped doing it, or something?

Because another annoyance I have is that even on the same channel, volume will vary widely from one song to the next. And I don't know if it's intentional or not, but bass energy is always quite high - is this to appeal to the boomcar generation which knows nothing but thumping bass in everything they listen to?
 
While I know looking at the date this subject has been drug on for the last three months but I have to say that I have nothing but success with five different XM decks. Two that I have bought for my own use, two decks that my friends bought for themselves and one that I bought for my Mom for Christmas last year and as far I as know nobody has ever had an issue with sound quality. For the most part I think my friends and family are generally surprized by the quality of the sound of the 2 Taos and the 3 Roady XTs that I am writing about.

I have used my Tao any where and every where and listened to literally hundreads of the channels produced by XM. From XM 175, which I listen to every single day for baseball coverage to XM 110, the classical channel that I listen to at night when I go to bed. And XM 65 the Rhyme for when i am working out. From XM 17, to Flight 26, I have never had one issue either with installation of my XM radios or the sound quality of them. And in fact, the antenna of my home kit is inside of my house and points directly at where two walls connect and I always seems to get three bars with great reception.

Of course the only channels that I have noticed a drop off in sound quality where the traffic channels, but that has never bothered me. Not until I started reading some of the responses on this message board did I realize that people had a problem with this. 99.9% of the time when I am driving in the LA and San Bernardino area of Southern California do I ever have one problem with reception from my XM Taos car kit. The sound is clear enough to turn up just like a CD or the FM radio and I have been very happy with it ever since I got my first Roady XT back around Christmas time of last year. This also goes for when I am sitting in most buildings listening to the radio or at a baseball game, to me the quality of the sound has never been an issue. Now if you want to talk to me about XM doing some switch on XM 143 that is another story and you should read my reply to the other message board.
 
XM's quality has definately diminished. I turned on XM Hitlist this morning, and a rock song was on that sounded horribly muddy. I wasn't even trying to listen for quality. I just realized I couldn't actually understand the lyrics due to the quality. After that a "flava" record came on that was not as bad due to lack of musical layering, but still horrible. I actually switched over to a local FM station and the qualify difference was night and day... No kidding.

How do they fix this problem without going backwards on previous station adds, etc? It is really disappointing. It makes the thought of going Sirius more realisitic.

Thoughts on a solution for XM?
 
If you want to compare good XM quality vs bad XM quality listen to Fine Tuning (ch76 sound good :)) and switch to most other music channels (sound bad :( :mad:)
 
buttonpuncher said:
If you want to compare good XM quality vs bad XM quality listen to Fine Tuning (ch76 sound good :)) and switch to most other music channels (sound bad :( :mad:)
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that is totally not true. if you have a good stereo all the xm channels.minus the 5 cc stations. all sound great. they are not cd quality but neither is AM or FM. they have fixed the swishy cymbol problem and the background noise problems. its sounds perfectly fine now. yea fine tuning is 96k cd quality..but the music sucks! oh and the trick to good xm is turn the bass down. xm is bass heavy.
 
quoting smashedcd
yea fine tuning is 96k cd quality..but the music sucks!
**********

Well that's a matter of opinion, I like the channel but could pass on the classical(dead composer music) they throw in... (also an opinion)

It's good to have a channel that plays a tasteful variety of genres of tunes.
 
If you read the XM Annual Reports in the tech section, you can figure out what is going on.

One of XM's core technologies is the software and systems that let it automatically and seamlessly vary the bandwidth needed on a per-channel basis. XM is also running a lot of data and other stuff that us consumers won't get on our receivers.

So what happens is, depending on when you listen, the audio quality could be really awful because that particular channel is running a lower bit rate.

I've noticed that after 8pm EST, the quality on a lot of the music channels goes up. All I can figure is that XM reduces the bitrate on their retail-business background music channels after business hours and frees up bandwidth.
 
Just need to mention 2 things - for variety everyone mentions Fine Tuning, but I prefer Hear Music even though it's programmed by the (evil) Starbucks empire. Now THAT'S a good variety of music.

And yes they do seem to play with bitrates, it's frustrating as hell. I really wish they would just bite the bullet, drop 10 or 15 channels and then promote the hell out of the improved signal quality that results. Yes we know that Brand S will dump on them for it, but how hard can it be to do some kind of clever riff on Quality vs Quantity?
 
gerald said:
And yes they do seem to play with bitrates, it's frustrating as hell. I really wish they would just bite the bullet, drop 10 or 15 channels and then promote the hell out of the improved signal quality that results. Yes we know that Brand S will dump on them for it, but how hard can it be to do some kind of clever riff on Quality vs Quantity?
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No one will buy XM for sound quality until they can actively make a differentiation between bitrates. Customers, and investors, will look at quantity over quality. I don't see many people buying HD Radio for its sound quality.
 
cyberdad said:
"Beyond AM, Beyond FM.....XM, the future of radio".....including mediocre sound quality
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mediocre..sounds fine to me. at least it doesnt cut out every 20 miles!!! followed by 50 minutes of static till the next town with a 6000 watt 200 foot station broadcasting 20 hit country songs over and over again..for about 20 more miles than more static....
 
DudeFan said:
If you read the XM Annual Reports in the tech section, you can figure out what is going on.

One of XM's core technologies is the software and systems that let it automatically and seamlessly vary the bandwidth needed on a per-channel basis. XM is also running a lot of data and other stuff that us consumers won't get on our receivers.

So what happens is, depending on when you listen, the audio quality could be really awful because that particular channel is running a lower bit rate.

I've noticed that after 8pm EST, the quality on a lot of the music channels goes up. All I can figure is that XM reduces the bitrate on their retail-business background music channels after business hours and frees up bandwidth.
Click to expand...

That's interesting. You'd think quality would go DOWN after 8 because that's when the sports play-by-play channels come to life, claiming their share of bandwidth after sitting dormant with looped low-bitrate filler during the day.
 
Sports broadcasts sound like AM/telephone line quality broadcasts. They can't possibly be eating up a sizeable amount of bandwith. One of the 5.1 channels that nobody listens to in 5.1 probably eats up more bandwith than all of the MLB games combined.
 
What I don't understand is why XM (and Sirius for that matter) got saddled with such limited bandwidth to degin with.
 
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