Of a more light-hearted nature... What do you guys think of SiriusXM? Vote in the poll attached...

I grew up in the dawn of FM Rock Radio, when radio was FREE, and still is. (I even hosted a show on a Campus radio station for awhile.) I constantly get the emails offering $5 per month (a sale that never changes). $60 per year for satellite radio when you can get unlimited choices over AM/FM for free does not compute for me. And I don't listen to over air radio much, anyway, when Comand offers SD card music on demand.

It's nice our Comand Audio system includes satellite radio options. I suppose if you are a diehard baseball fan (pick your team) and travel long distances by car alot, having your fav Yankees station follow you by satellite could be worthwhile. Beyond that, I just don't see it.

Writing this because SiruisXM has yet again enabled my car(s) for the holidays. Just set the Comand for satellite radio, and it reboots SiriusXM in a few minutes. But I find the reception iffy when parked in the garage or under an overhang. And the fidelity of sound is poor compared with music stored on SD card. I'm not sure the sound quality is better than any typical (free) FM radio station. True, there are no commercials, but the yapping between songs by on-air talent is not much different.

What do you think?

 

Well for me, I see little value, when the radio is uncooperative in music selection, I change to CD, I used to drive a lot and reception was not great so this was the easiest. But I am old, my children all have Apple Car Play

 

We don't listen to radio a lot, when Sirius was constantly dropping the signal downtown Las Vegas.
You can buy Sirius subscription on the net in couple of minutes, but took me 3 hr on chat rooms and emails and finally phone calls to cancel it. I finally opted for $3/month live traffic coverage.

 

My wife likes to listen to Howard Stern, but when our free first year ended on her Jeep, she agreed it was worthless. I have never been a fan and have no clue how these guys make money. I’m not a big sports fan, comedy, talk show guy and stick to music or local news on the normal FM channels.

 

Read my experience above.
They lure you with free offer available with single button and then will do brainwashing tactics to never let you go.
On other hand, I bought new Ford Truck, who come with 1 years Sirius radio and Sirius live traffic.
I never extended the subscription, so radio stop working after 1 years, however live traffic worked for following 3 years till I sold the truck.

 

I always just do the $60 for a year. Had no problem doing it again this year, under 10 minutes on the phone with a few of those being on hold and a few of them reading their standard full disclaimers. I mostly use my ipod with Spotify or bluetooth but you get bored of those once in a while. I listen to the comedy channels and some of the music channels you don't normally find on FM. Then there's always the national news channels and sports channels, just a different take on things once in a while is interesting.

 

You can do better than $60 per year if you call them directly. Back when I used to have Sirius, I never paid $60. Once Spotify came out, Sirius for me became very limited. If you drive long distance, you find that the playlists are limited and you hear the same songs over and over. Spotify has pretty much unlimited variety but at a higher price point.

 

That's basically their $5/month option and I think that's the lowest they go. Haven't really heard of many people getting lower than that unless there was some kind of special promo. I think one old trick used to be claiming that you were a new owner and you'd get 2 months free and to keep doing that every 2 months. But I won't stoop that low.

 

I started with XM back in ... hell maybe 2002 or 2003? big clunky radio had to add into my truck..
was like $7 a month back then...
I liked it because I traveled a lot for work and this allowed me to know what I was listening too as I ranged out of local radio stations...
I mean there parts of the country where all you get is church preaching and country..for hundreds of miles and well that is not my cup of tea..

I loved the comedy channels and a few others..
Eventually I upgraded radio to a small one you could use with headphones and walk around made by pioneer.. very cool had car and house cradle so I could put it anywhere...
Then they had a LIFETIME membership offer for $300 or so... I did it... this was back in like 2007 or so before merger..

I still have this radio and it is still connected and I have not paid a dime for subscription in a long long time...

As for one built in car... The initial trial is all I Will use until they offer lifetime again...

I mean I do not mind giving them $300 or so as long as I get it for the life of the radio and I do not have to pay anymore...

but make me pay $60 a year is just another PIA Bill

I like XM but not enough to pay monthly or yearly.....
the MP3 killed satellite radio.

 

They play the same **** over and over.....over and over again. Unless you like news or podcasts maybe.

 

I have over 10000 MP3s on a sd card that I just keep on random and press the next button if it's something I don't want to listen to. Better quality selection and audio fidelity than anything Sirius pumps out. I used to keep it for howard stern, but he's a pathetic shell of his former self these days.

 

We like it and have it in both MB’s but not in the errand car (VW). Road trip cars get it, in town errand car does not. $175 +/- a year for two cars and the app, is ok with us for when you need/want it. Kids like the holiday music, and I like the ability to listen to sports while on a long drive. We also like the 40’s channel music as easy background music (daughter likes that one too).

 

As said, the music cycles about every 2 hours. Also, the audio is really low fidelity due to heavy compression - worse than an FM radio. Not worth the $

 

If my wife and I plan a long road trip for the summer, I'll subscribe for the shortest period possible, and then let it lapse after vacation season is over. It is nice to have plenty of music choice while far between radio stations. But it can get old when it starts to feel like we are listening to the same music.

The low fidelity is the worst part. The compression takes out all the brilliance to the music, leaving it sound flat. After a while, silence is better than listening to Sirius/XM.

 

I did a free trial of SiriusXM and for some reason the volume is really low on my car. I haven't experienced this in different cars with SiriusXM, namely a Volvo XC90 and Chrysler Pacifica that I've driven before with it. I thought the sound quality was nice and not having commercials was welcome, but in my car the volume is just too low for some reason.

 

I do a lot of long drives, it's nice to listen to the same channel the whole way or not have to fiddle with looking for a new station every hour for example. Also, when you're driving up the mountains or places with bad reception, it's nice to be able to listen to satellite.
Quality is better than regular FM. I rarely go to FM, since the "today's hits" is technically still all the same junk as on Satellite. I like listening to some older hits as well from the 90s, 2000s, etc. Anyway, $5/mo to me is worth it. But you can say its the same price as apple music..why not stream the whole library from apple? Well, we don't always have reception to stream. I don't have a bunch of songs loaded onto my phone either, I just got out of that years ago. The albums I do have on there, I get tired of it too. So, I tend to just turn on XM because it chooses what to play for me rather than me looking for songs or albums, etc.

 

The sound quality of Sirius XM is nowhere close to regular FM or FM HD. In fact it's about 1/4 of the sound quality of AM HD.

Those familiar with MP3's will know that 128 bit is OK in terms of sound quality when listened to with ear-buds,.. but sounds bad on the home hi-fi. 256 bit or 512 bit is better,.. but Apple Lossless and the like smoke them all.

SiruisXM is the equivalent of 24 - 48 bit. THAT'S NOT A MISS-PRINT!


Their problem is they only have 4 meg worth of bandwidth from the FCC to share between ALL of their channels. So if they had 15 channels, their SQ would be fine. But they want to offer 150 or whatever,.. so with each added channel,. the SQ of the others drops. They used to have more when Sirius and XM were competitors, each offering 120 or more channels in the same shared bandwidth as they ave now,.. so the sound quality has nearly doubled since the merger from about 1/12 of FM, and is now roughly 1/6 of FM bandwidth. The following tricks make it seem closer however.

Some channels are worse than others. Some of the hit music stations are given more bandwidth,.. while stuff like the stand up comedy channels have so low a bit-rate,.. that it sounds like the comedian has his/her hand over their mouth.

They use a Sony technology,.. where they basically send out the signal in mono,.. and then send a side signal that adds some clues to the differences in the 2 channels to simulate actual stereo. This saves bandwidth.

They also cut off all the frequencies above about 8,000 or so hz (Been a long time,.. that freq number may be off). This saves a lot of bandwidth.

Then they use a Sony (I believe) compression technology that further massively compressed the signal before sending it out.


I MUCH prefer FM.

 

Fascinating info! I follow most of it, and certainly can’t argue against any of it!

I do notice certain channels are better than others, and now I know why. I do notice it sounds much better in the wife’s new 2020 vs my 2014, but probably speaker count is the reason.

I guess I’m just getting to old to really notice to the point of caring on the fine details of car audio now. It’s really just background noise to me, and I actually prefer music with no vocals (classical, jazz, etc), or talk radio. If you are reading this and don’t understand why, then I suggest you go borrow a couple of little kids for a week! Ha!!

 

I like it. 60 per year (or whatever it is) is worth it to me. No commercials and great selections.

 

Have had free Sirius on cars over last several years. Never renewed it. Every time I take my Nissan in for service, I get offered a free 3 months trial from Sirius. Never do it.
I have never found more than two stations to which I wanted to listen. And then they started having DJ's to yammer on and on. Sorry, will stick with the 3 FM stations in my area that I like, my six CD changer and the over 1,000 songs loaded into my Music Register. On my Nissan, we have a USB with hundreds of songs on it.

 

Question: Not that knowledgeable about all this, but I do record CD's to my PC and then either make a CD or record to a USB. I contacted the USB manufacturer and they said not much difference in recording, but recommended 128,000. So that is what I use and music sounds good to me and wife. Choices on PC are 48,000; 64,000; 96,000 and 128,000. What do you recommend? Thanks.