brianhogg

I've got a 2014 GLK250 and the sirius XM sound quality has been pretty horrible. Sounds like it's underwater/garbled, and lots of loud 'crack' type noises during songs. It's fine on FM/Bluetooth so I doubt it's the speakers, and the dealer has checked the whole system (including the antenna) a couple times and can't find anything on their end.

Is this just poor quality coming from Sirius or is no one else having this issue? I'm usually listening to BPM (channel 51) if that makes a difference...

Thanks!

AvWuff

I'm not sure this is what you want to hear, but Sirius/XM's sound quality has been going down steadily for years now. The bitrate keeps getting lower and the quality of the programming is also on the decline. There's also advertisements now, when it was promised there would be none.

Get yourself an SD card and fill it with music, and stick it in the slot in the dash -- you only need 100 songs to have a better playlist than most of the stations on there, and there'll be no monthly fees and no advertismenets.

Cheers
-av

brianhogg

Not exactly what I wanted to hear but yes, have seen around other threads that the quality has gone down. So others are getting popping/clicking noises and distortion?

While the sound quality is not ideal sirius is saving my wife from listening to my type of music all the time, which has probably saved our marriage. $10/month is a small price to pay

AvWuff

That problem sounds more like your specific setup, very odd. I hated it so much that I actually called to cancel my free trial subscription that came with the car (by the way, did you know that the dealer gives all of your details to Sirius when you buy a car, so they have all your information on file. Nice of them.)

brianhogg

Interesting, I didn't know that. I was already a subscriber from the previous car so at least they had my info. Definitely seems specific to the car as I never had these problems with the last one.

RSNovi

I have to admit that I thought Sirius sound quality was pretty good compared to my last car. In particular I haven't noticed any artifacts in the audio that are very disturbing on my 2014 GLK.

bop11

My Sirius's has no extra noises or sound degradation in either of my MB's or on my Sporster Portable which I use both at home and on a boat. At home I even use a wireless antenna adapter because Sirius signals won't go through my houses stone walls. Sound like 1. intermittent connection somewhere either before (antenna) or after the Sirius box, or 2 bad receiver board soldering. How is your Nav (if you have it)? With distortion plus clicks it sounds as if the antenna or the antenna cabling might be at fault. The dealer should fix this with out the "they all sound like that" garbage, because they don't.
The newer Sirius receivers have more memory so they don't fade out under bridges as the old ones did, so in your 2014 , unless it is a long bridge, there should not be any interruptions even there.
Around New York, the traffic information on radio and Nav is invaluable, so don't settle for not getting it fixed.
Good luck

Diabolis

While I agree that the Sirus sound quality has considerably declined in the last ten years (let alone the programming), there shouldn't be any crackling sounds or inaudible garbage. OP - you mentioned you listen to the BPM channel, but considering the type of music, it could simply be signal comression and/or the specific source material from the broadcasting center. Does it also happen on the other channels? How often does it happen? Does it only hapen in certian geographic locations but sounds OK elsewhere (i.e. OK in the vicinity of the MB dealership, but starts getting bad in a mountainous region 100 miles away)?

While the dealer service techs can run diagnostics on the various modules which may pass the disgnostics just fine, they can't tell you there's nothign wrong if the distortion and clicking you are describing is audible when they're in the car. If there's no distortion in one location but you hear all that stuff in another, it could simly be a matter of satllite coverage.

Ten years ago, Sirius used 48-64kbps AAC compression for all of their channels. Since then they have added a bunch of new ones, and as a result these days they are all encoded at 24-46kbps, which subjectively speaking is only marginally better than AM radio. I second the SD card or Bluetooth phone idea. A $20 32GB SDHC card will hold about 580 hours of 128kbps MP3 music. Assuming that you spend 2 hours a day in the car and never play back the same track, you'll go through your entire music library in nine and a half months. If both you and your wife are audiophiles, you have spent some $30K on improving the sound system and sound deadening in the GLK and you can completely tune out the engine, other traffic, tire and wind noise and you absolutely insist on the highest possible MP3 encoding rate of 320 kbps, you're still looking at over three months' driving before you have to listen to the same song twice. That ought to be enough to keep both you and your wife happy.