Who has XM Sattelite Radio

Does any forum member have XM sattelite Radio-do you have it in your car or do you have a XM radio at home.Are you satisfied with the quality of broadcasts.i am thinking about getting a XM Radio.

 

I don't have one, but there are add-on units that you can migrate between home and car. Unless you're thinking about changing your head unit!

I love XM. I worked with some of the jocks who are in the rock channels. Sounds fabulous.

 

A relative of mine had it for a time, and I got to listen to it quite a bit. The programming aspects of the music channels aren't 100% perfect but a damned sight better than conventional FM. The national sports and talk channels are what you'd expect them to be. And from time to time they'll come up with some pretty killer special programming; for instance, back in October they had a marathon show called "The Monster" that stretched across several music channels and featured every pop single to make the Hot 100 from 1935 to 1999. Something like that is literally inconceivable on commercial FM, for obvious reasons.

One thing sat-radio isn't is an audiophile format. Sound quality varies wildly from one channel to the next, and even at its best falls well short of the "CD quality sound" that's often advertised.

 

The only place where creativity still exists in radio. I wish I had it.

 

XM Radio

I've had it since last July. The variety of the music and the sheer quantity of the available channels is excellent. I hear a lot of songs I virtually never to get to hear. With a very few minor glitches, the reception is also near perfect. I am, however, disappointed with the sound quality. While at times it sounds very good, much of it sounds like fairly low quality MP3 type sound. There's some very obvious digital artifacts (a swishiness and almost metallic quality to the music). It's odd though......one song will sound almost perfect while the next one will sound like a low bit rate MP3. At first, I thought they were using MP3 soundfiles for the music, and that some them had been recorded at low bit rates. However, now I notice varying degrees of quality from day to day on the same song. Also, the live news channels (CNN, FOX, ABC etc.) also have that MP3 sound to them, so I have to assume that it's a transmission artifact and not a source problem. I have to wonder if they wouldn't be better off decreasing the number of channels and devoting a higher bit rate to the remaining ones.