steph280

When I switch the channels on Sirius radio, there seems to be a long delay before the next station would start playing, which making channel surfing almost painful. It reminds me of the first digital cable box that we had which was almost useless. The XM/Sirius radio in our other car is lightening fast compared to this.

Are you guys also experiencing this? Is this "normal?"

listerone

I get the same thing.While somewhat annoying I've always assumed it's normal.I have a small XM radio which I bought about 4 years ago and *it* does the very same thing.Unlike some (perhaps) I'm simply amazed by the fact that one can get radio programs from 22,000 miles in the atmosphere so I'm willing to accept this small imperfection in the technology.

dfordham

The delay in satellite station changing is probably due to "buffering". The music is not played in "real time" but, rather, some duration of the signal is stored internally in the radio before being played. If this wasn't done, the playback would be rife with dropouts every time the signal was momentarily blocked by things like trees, overpasses, etc.

The difference in radios might be based on the duration of the buffering. If it was 1sec of data, then channel changes would be quick, but dropouts would be frequent. If another radio buffered 3sec, then channel changes would be slow, but dropouts would be less frequent.

Regards,
Don

tjkaz

What Don said ^^^^^

BTW, if the Sirius signal was instantly turned on (from being off), it would take about 0.1sec (100ms) to reach us. However, since it's constantly transmitting all channels, the distance and delay of travel doesn't factor into the noted delay.
That being said and FWIW, whatever you do listen to will always be at least 100ms old (plus the buffer delay).
For reference, I'd say that the delay I experience when changing channels is in the 1 to 2 second realm.

steph280

While the above points are valid, we have 3 XM/Sirius in cars of different make, and they switch as fast as the FM stations. Which leads me to believe this is not a normal behavior of the satellite stream, but more of COMMAND's implementation.

dfordham

There would be ways to minimize the effect of buffering when channels change, but it would be more complex/expensive. Amortized across all the MB's sold with Sirius, it would be very little but I think MB's cost/benefit analysis found that very few complained about this implementation. After all, you are the first person I have seen here to even comment on it.

I don't mean to trivialize your complaint, it's just that I think most of us live with it without even noticing.

Regards,
Don

Karl901

Sirius is joke. Programming is terrible. They play the same music loop on every channel every day for months.