Satellite radio in general is just a notch above FM, but lower quality than CD's. The OEM receivers compound the problem by outputting a really flat signal to a poor Bose equalizer. If you mess with the audio settings treble/bass etc you can get it to sound OK never but never great. I would expect a really good equalizer could do a much better job.

Satellite radio is digital, so as far as reception goes you either get it or you don't; there's no in between.

 

How about a AAS-NIS2 hooked up to a aftermarket sat radio?

 

That is the setup I have with an aftermarket XM radio and it is exactly like Beowulf said. The sound quality is a notch above FM but definately not CD quality.

 

Wrong. I had Sirius on a aftermarket radio with XM as well both installed on the same deck on my old car. Both sounded just as good as each other with a slight edge going towards the Sirius. This is my first factory Sirius install and I will say the quality down right sucks and its the receiver or the deck that is the problem. Not Sirius or XM period. Go to any XM forum and you willl see people complaining because XM has compressed audio now and is actually making it worse sounding than Sirius.

 

Attenna on the dash with not effect quality only signal strength. I had mine on my dash in my 04 G35 without any problems with my aftermarket setup.

 

What's the average Sirius music channel bandwidth?

 

Uhh, SAT radio is not nearly as good as CD quality sound. SAT radio aims to perform as well as/better than FM radio in sound quality. That's the bottom line. XM Radio uses CTaac-Plus compression that tosses out high frequency data and recreates the data based on what the lower frequencies look like. This is done to conserve bandwidth - you can lower the sampling rate while still being able to transmit the desired frequency range. It's called SBR (spectral band recreation) and needless to say, it screws up the upper spectrum more often than I'd like. But what can you expect when you're creating something out of nothing?

If you want to find an easy way to expose the inadequacy of AAC-Plus, listen to something brassy. Trumpets and french horns will sound particularly bad as AAC-Plus has a very difficult time recreating all the overtones.

Sorry I don't know much about Sirius; they use a different compression scheme. XM's average music channel bandwidth is about 64kbps. Remember that this equates to something much higher in MP3 bitrates since XM is tossing out a good deal of information in the high frequencies, and the AAC codec is better at low bitrates on top of that.

More info on CTaac-Plus and MP3Pro SBR compression...
http://www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_291-dietz.pdf
http://www.telos-systems.com/?/techt...us/default.htm

 

Anyone try one of the full audiophile sat tuners (used on good home stereos)? I've seen them around, they are expensive compared to the regular ones, but I have never heard them.... I do know the sirius channels I get through my dish-network receiver sound really good...

 

Sat Radio has much to do with the area where you live. If you are in an area with good sat. coverage, or closeby a terrestrial repeater, you should get full signal bars all the time, and error-free audio. However if you are in an area with poor coverage, choppy audio will result.

 

You either get on or off audio. Not choppy or bad quality. It is Digital.

 

yea i was thinking about going with the samsung helix xm2go and just use that to stream via fm to my car...

 

correct, but not staying locked to a signal will cause it to go off, which can flicker the lock, hence, choppy ( on & off quickly ) audio mutes