Anyone think XM radio sounds terrible??

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FADEC

FADEC

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Picked up a used certified GM Avalanche a couple of months ago. It came with three months of free XM radio. Frankly after having it for a little over two months now I think it sounds terrible. The highs are not crisp, matter of fact there is really no highs to speak of. The bass sounds just ok, and most singing/vocals sound very shrill. I have the upgraded Bose audio system...still no help. It sounds like I have five AM radios in my car. Someone said they have cut back on the kilobites per second, or something like that to get more channels in the stream. Seems like I had it in a car five or so years ago and I enjoyed the sound much better. Will NOT be signing up for it when my free trial ends!! Tom
 
Huh. It sounds okay in my Cruze. The classical music channels especially sound okay. The talk channels can sound a little tinny, but the music channels come through well.
 
Yeah it doesn't sound that great. Personally I use it for talk radio or the standup comedy stations 75% of the time, and they don't really need to sound that great. The music stations are only good for their variety. If I really want to play something loud, I better have it on my USB drive.
 
My wife cancelled hers for this very reason, used to sound great then poor sound quality and poor customer service also
 
Originally Posted By: Miller88
It's always sounded like low end streaming internet radio.


Exactly....Thats what I'm talking about.
 
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I noticed the poor audio quality too. I have a 2009 GM that came with free XM for a year, and every year they usually have 30 days free in an attempt to get you to subscribe. I always thought that the music sounded thin; with weak base and treble and lacking dynamic range. I suspect that this is the result of the compression algorithms that they are using to cram the maximum number of audio programs into the satellite bandwith available.
 
I don't know about XM (or any other satellite system), but the downloaded songs on my iPod sound downright horrible as compared to ANY actual CD I play on my car stereo (Alpine 9886 head unit, Alpine KTP-445U in line, 4x45 watt RMS amp, and 4 Focal PC165 speakers), and not even like music when compared to a good, well engineered (NOT compressed too badly) HDCD disc.

Why I will NEVER even bother with MP3 ONLY type head units even though the current texting generation swears by this tech.
frown.gif
 
Haven't listened to it in a while, but from what I've read, they stream their channels at anywhere from 24 to 46 kbps VBR (HE AAC). It probably varies by channel. While HE AAC is a fairly efficient codec, still, at 24 kbps things are not going to sound very good. 46 kbps may be passable, but still far from great. It also depends on the quality of the decoder that you have in your car's radio. Some higher end decoders can "fill in" the missing audio material that was discarded during the encoding by applying some elaborate filtering/reconstruction algorithms and make things sound better than others.

To my personal ears, listening on a PC, most stuff encoded below 64 kbps AAC sounds rather bad. However, some stuff streamed at as little as 48 kbps AAC through my Squeezebox sounds decent.

All in all, my ears aren't as sharp as they once were. Some people can't digest anything below 128 kbps AAC, claiming it sounds like poop. Personally I can't tell properly encoded 128 kbps AAC material from the original in a blind test. I realize 128 kbps AAC still cuts off everything above 17 kHz, but again, my ears can't tell anymore.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Haven't listened to it in a while, but from what I've read, they stream their channels at anywhere from 24 to 46 kbps VBR (HE AAC). It probably varies by channel.


It definitely varies by channel, with classical being better, as sciphi mentioned. Up here, at least, XM advertises some of the classic channels as "HD" and they do sound better than many others.
 
Originally Posted By: sciphi
Huh. It sounds okay in my Cruze. The classical music channels especially sound okay. The talk channels can sound a little tinny, but the music channels come through well.


The Classical channel is 64Kbps, it has the highest bitrate offered from SXM. Most music channels are 32Kbps but I don't believe they are using the Neural pre-processing that XM used for cleaner sound prior to the merge of the two companies. Limited bandwidth by the FCC is the main culprit.

As a result, music is low-boomy, lacking highs, slushy everywhere.... a mucky mess.

My solution to the awful, FCC-mandated bandwidth-limited music? Use the SXM app on my smart phone by listening to it in my car with an FM transmitter. Yes, the $12 el-cheapo transmitters from NewEgg.com sounds worlds better than the SXM radio unit. The online streams are 128Kbit, throttling down to 40Kbit when connection bandwidth to the cell towers is limited. While purist audiophiles my scoff at 128Kbit, and they will, it's sounds great...the way it was intended to be all along.

A number of channels on the online-only feed (via SXM app) don't exist on the SXM radio units too, sweetening the deal. I like the live station and Rock Bar to name a couple of them.
 
I have Satellite radios in both my Silverado and Impala. The Impala has the Bose radio in it which makes the satellite radio sound acceptable. The audio stream from Sirius/ XM is compressed so it makes music sound more like it is coming from an AM radio or an Ipod rather than a CD or a good FM signal. The advantage in the car is the signal doesn't fade as you get farther from the transmitter like FM radio.
 
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Originally Posted By: sciphi
Huh. It sounds okay in my Cruze. The classical music channels especially sound okay. The talk channels can sound a little tinny, but the music channels come through well.


The Classical channel is 64Kbps, it has the highest bitrate offered from SXM. Most music channels are 32Kbps but I don't believe they are using the Neural pre-processing that XM used for cleaner sound prior to the merge of the two companies. Limited bandwidth by the FCC is the main culprit.

As a result, music is low-boomy, lacking highs, slushy everywhere.... a mucky mess.

My solution to the awful, FCC-mandated bandwidth-limited music? Use the SXM app on my smart phone by listening to it in my car with an FM transmitter. Yes, the $12 el-cheapo transmitters from NewEgg.com sounds worlds better than the SXM radio unit. The online streams are 128Kbit, throttling down to 40Kbit when connection bandwidth to the cell towers is limited. While purist audiophiles my scoff at 128Kbit, and they will, it's sounds great...the way it was intended to be all along.

A number of channels on the online-only feed (via SXM app) don't exist on the SXM radio units too, sweetening the deal. I like the live station and Rock Bar to name a couple of them.


Where can you find the bitrate for a particular channel?
 
Must be my Cruze's receiver is pretty decent or my ears stink, since I can't tell much of a difference between the same song played over XM compared to played over my Rockboxed Sandisk Sansa E280 MP3 player. Even the ones I've ripped at fairly high bitrates.
 
In my Acura it is very noticeable with its high end audio system. I actually got it free for a few months under a promotion. Dreadful.

With our other car not as notifiable but it has average car stereo.
 
XM sounds terrible in my 12 terrain. Told xm to take a hike. Hate the quality and menu layout is dreadful. Mylink or even just using Bluetooth is 10x better.
 
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Use the SXM app on my smart phone


That is a good solution in general for anyone with a smartphone. With an app like XiiaLive or similar, you can access tens of thousands of radio channels, any station that offers a stream. Most car audio systems have an audio input jack these days, so connecting the phone to it is easy. And all you pay for is your data plan. Just gotta watch not to go over your monthly data cap.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Use the SXM app on my smart phone


That is a good solution in general for anyone with a smartphone. With an app like XiiaLive or similar, you can access tens of thousands of radio channels, any station that offers a stream. Most car audio systems have an audio input jack these days, so connecting the phone to it is easy. And all you pay for is your data plan. Just gotta watch not to go over your monthly data cap.


Ive tried using internet radio through a phone and even at lower data rates (48-64kbps) its so unreliable as to be a joke. Actual play time is 40-60% and the rest of the time its buffering.
Im keeping my SXM for now, though I have been building my MP3 library so I can eventually get rid of it.
 
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