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XM Music Channels Switching to MONO
- Thread starter JohnnyElectron
- Start date
Now that I've cancelled (and paid the cancellation fee) they of course would put Escape back in stereo, and it's not available as a free preview either. I'm assuming when they got rid of that crappy Dave Matthews Band single-artist channel that XM got enough bandwidth for stereo again.
I still don't hear much stereo separation.
Kids Place Live & Radio Disney are still in mono on my XM radios. These are the Two channels I have on when my children are in the car. Both used to be in stereo. They both really hurt my ears by hearing all this music in mono. I thought that they used to say that satellite radio sounded better than FM. FM is now sounding better than them now.
Way back before the merger the rumor was that XM was using bandwidth during the day for some other services sold to businesses (some Musak type server?).
So the story goes, during the hours that service was running the consumer XM channels all took a quality hit to accomodate this other service. At night and on weekends the consumer channels had a quality boost with more bandwidth available for them.
Whether that was urban legend or not I don't know but I did observe the pattern was true - nights and weekends the sound quality was better. I've been using XM pretty mostly on weekends lately and it seems to always be stereo and sounds pretty good.
So the story goes, during the hours that service was running the consumer XM channels all took a quality hit to accomodate this other service. At night and on weekends the consumer channels had a quality boost with more bandwidth available for them.
Whether that was urban legend or not I don't know but I did observe the pattern was true - nights and weekends the sound quality was better. I've been using XM pretty mostly on weekends lately and it seems to always be stereo and sounds pretty good.
The Edge had better sound than XM1.0, but youd' have to use headphones or very high qualety speakers to be able to tell. Serius had wider stereo imageing, but sounded swerly. I canceld everything other than my dad's Lexis, for several reasons. First I get better qualety audio out of my analog radio receiver. Second there doesn't appear to be a live DJ (All VT). third I wasn't listening to it much. Fourth, even though there were extra channels on the edge, the sound qualety was horible on the extra channels and there was no live DJ present.
In the Lexis when i switch from XM to FM, you can really tell the difference in sound qualety. The highs are much crisper and the stereo is much wider. Especially more noticeable since we took out the factory mids and tweaters in the back and put aftermarkit speakers in.
XM 2.0 regular channels does have better frequency response but the Lexis only has XM 1.0.
In the Lexis when i switch from XM to FM, you can really tell the difference in sound qualety. The highs are much crisper and the stereo is much wider. Especially more noticeable since we took out the factory mids and tweaters in the back and put aftermarkit speakers in.
XM 2.0 regular channels does have better frequency response but the Lexis only has XM 1.0.
What I've noticed, listening on my factory-built XM in a 2012 Chevy, is that there's some stereo separation on most channels (the only one I listen to a lot that occasionally goes mono is Pop2K). However - I tried listening to some internet streams using TuneIn on my iPhone, to Bluetooth on the car, and found that there was a dramatic increase in the amount of stereo separation, if I listened to a 128k MP3 or 64k AAC+ or better quality stream.
If you're really brave, try listening to Canada 360 / AMI Audio on XM 155. It's broadcast at 4k, just like the traffic/weather channels, but carries full news and weather reports from north of the border. AMI even reads articles from magazines and newspapers, which is at least something different if I'm bored of the other talk stations.
If you're really brave, try listening to Canada 360 / AMI Audio on XM 155. It's broadcast at 4k, just like the traffic/weather channels, but carries full news and weather reports from north of the border. AMI even reads articles from magazines and newspapers, which is at least something different if I'm bored of the other talk stations.
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