There is a TSB to replace the SXM antenna. But I think that one specifies channels cutting out when there is a clear line of site to the satellites.

 

You know what, I think it is actually the antenna. I went out there and played with it for a bit, I found a couple stations that actually sounded fine. Alt nation, BPM, to name some. Lithium, hair nation, and a few other rock ones still sounded like crap. I went out and wrenched on that antenna (figuratively, used my hand) then Everclear came onto Lithium and sounded great! I played around some and it does sound better now, so maybe it was signal quality.

I am a little leery of the connection though as I did try to tighten it down on the weekend too but not to the same result... I guess I will keep my ears on it for a bit.

 

I had the Sirius in my Compass wight he premium Boston speakers and on the KL with the premium sound package and both sound the same. If you only listen to the Satellite radio it seems to be ok, but when compared to the quality of any other media, its sounds like garbage.

That was a recurrent discussion I had with my wife during the Compass years and that we had again on the way back from the dealership when we went to pick up the car. She thinks it sounds ok... I think is sounds empty and "compressed"and I prefer sticking to my USB with all my music collection in high quality audio.

But that's just my humble opinion

 

I know what you mean for sure on that one (the wife part included). This was different though, really unlistenable. I think it might have been the antenna though as per a post above as wrenching on it has seemed to have helped.

 

The quality of satellite radio has always been, and will always be, crap. It varies station to station and probably on signal strength but best case it isn't good. I've always thought it sounds just like a heavily compressed mp3, like 32-64kbps tops. I think it has zero to do with the Uconnect system and is inherent in satellite radio technology itself.

 

Has anyone done an audio test while listening to the same siriusxm channel on their head unit in the car vs using siriusxm app on their phone and sending the audio with Bluetooth to the head unit to see if there is any difference in audio quality for satellite versus the app? That would be an interesting test to see if it is any different.


I think many streaming music apps have better sound quality than siriusxm, like iheartradio, Pandora and especially the upgraded service from spotify.

 

I think many streaming music apps have better sound quality than siriusxm, like iheartradio, Pandora and especially the upgraded service from spotify.

Without a doubt! Plain old Pandora is much better quality. I upgraded to Pandora One a while back and it's even better, they say One streams at up to 192kbps.

 

I'll know soon enough as my TH is in shipment. My Xterra satellite sounded great, but the satellite in my Rubicon sounds horrible. Very muffled.


Sent from a pay phone.

 

Maybe you just have it tuned to the country music station? Aaaaaa-ooooo!

 

narrow bandwidth

I spent most of my life in satellite communications, even though I haven't worked with satellite radio I'm going to give my 2cents.

Satellite radio is a digitial signal, so you either have it or you don't. At the point that the signal is to weak it will either cut out completely or become very garbled. There is no static or distortions, because all satellite signals use error correction of some form.

As far as it sounding crap, in my opinion it is from one of two possible situations. First, the people that are streaming the station to SXM are streaming at a low bit-rate resulting in the flat audio. Or Sirrius is limiting the bandwidth of the satellite signals to save money.

If you were to look at the signals on a spectrum analyser, individual transmissions appear as a hump above the noise floor. The wider they are the more bandwidth they are using. And the more narrow they are the more signals you can fit on one transponder. And satellite signals are very expensive so I think this might be the case.

 

I spent most of my life in satellite communications, even though I haven't worked with satellite radio I'm going to give my 2cents.

Satellite radio is a digitial signal, so you either have it or you don't. At the point that the signal is to weak it will either cut out completely or become very garbled. There is no static or distortions, because all satellite signals use error correction of some form.

As far as it sounding crap, in my opinion it is from one of two possible situations. First, the people that are streaming the station to SXM are streaming at a low bit-rate resulting in the flat audio. Or Sirrius is limiting the bandwidth of the satellite signals to save money.

If you were to look at the signals on a spectrum analyser, individual transmissions appear as a hump above the noise floor. The wider they are the more bandwidth they are using. And the more narrow they are the more signals you can fit on one transponder. And satellite signals are very expensive so I think this might be the case.

Absolutely right. My guess is satellite radio has been very limited in data rate from day one, it's always sounded bad to me.

 

@stackmeup its due to the heavy compression/decompression used to transmit

 

That's what I'm talking about, the music is being crammed into a small bit-rate audio feed, and to get really technical, it is more precise to say it is being encoded straight into a crap audio stream. But that's a small word difference.