I've had a rental car this week that has a Sirius satellite radio
receiver in it. It's a lot like cable TV (which I don't have) - more
than 100 stations and nothing I really want to listen to.

OK, so I like bluegrass. There's a bluegrass station. Boring! On an
inter-city drive, I listened to the Sirius bluegrass station all the
way (about 3-1/2 hours) and was really disappointed by the choice of
material, the seemingly random programming, no sense of knowledge on
the part of the jock, and the really stupid bumpers every few songs.

For comparison, I listened to a Bluegrass Overnight show (radio
program on WAMU, Washington DC) that I had on my Jukebox 3 on the
return trip. What a difference a knowledgable programmer makes!

As far as sound quality, the Sirius programs sounded like every band
had the same bass player. Turning down the bass on the car radio
helped a bit, but mostly it just went thud-thud, just like pop music.
And I noticed a couple of consistently screechy notes on the fiddle,
even on different songs. I guess this must be an artifact of the
compression. Overall, I thought it sounded like a good cassette,
slightly misaligned.

The signal chain to the Jukebox was fully under control but was
equally atrocious - off the air to a very modest Technics receiver,
recorded through a Sony PCM501 (Monte's favorite setup) to beta
videotape, then recorded analog-analog in real time to the Jukebox
using it's internal MP3 conversion at 192 kbps. The Jukebox was played
through the car radio using a cassette adapter.

The difference in sound quality was remarkable, even at 70 miles/hour.
Neither sounded as good as a CD, but the Jukebox, even through all
that hari-kari, was pretty close. The Sirius, indeed, sounded like a
cassette in comparison.

But at least there were no commercials.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
I've had a rental car this week that has a Sirius satellite radio
receiver in it. It's a lot like cable TV (which I don't have) - more
than 100 stations and nothing I really want to listen to.

In that case I'm glad I went with XM.

As far as sound quality, the Sirius programs sounded like every band
had the same bass player. Turning down the bass on the car radio
helped a bit, but mostly it just went thud-thud, just like pop music.
And I noticed a couple of consistently screechy notes on the fiddle,
even on different songs. I guess this must be an artifact of the
compression. Overall, I thought it sounded like a good cassette,
slightly misaligned.

I was a little disappointed in XM's quality. It sounds like a compressed 92
kbps MP3 file.

But at least there were no commercials.

And options. The only two reasons I am a subscriber.

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 07:36:46 -0700, Mike Rivers wrote:

As far as sound quality, the Sirius programs sounded like every band
had the same bass player. Turning down the bass on the car radio
helped a bit, but mostly it just went thud-thud, just like pop music.
And I noticed a couple of consistently screechy notes on the fiddle,
even on different songs. I guess this must be an artifact of the
compression. Overall, I thought it sounded like a good cassette,
slightly misaligned.
--------------------------------snip----------------------------------

David Ranada and some of the other staff writers with what we used to call
STEREO REVIEW (now called SOUND & VISION), plus the staff of CAR STEREO
REVIEW, has done several evaluations of Sirius and XM Satellite Radioo over
the last few years. They came to the general conclusion that Sirius had more
music choices, but they gave a much stronger edge to XM for sound quality.

I initially thought that XM sounded very mediocre, like a bad 96K MP3 file,
but that was through a 1st-generation Sony receiver. But about a year ago, I
changed over to the SkyFi receiver, and it sounded remarkably better. Gone
were a lot of the harsh, phasey, "metallic" artifacts, and a lot of it
sounded much better. It's still not as good as the best FM transmissions,
but it's more than acceptable for listening as background music in a car or
office.

Note that one of XM & Sirius' dirty-little secrets is that they do a lot of
dynamic-range compression as part of their process. Apparently, they found
that using their Mpeg4-type data compression schemes, they could use far more
lossy data compression when the music had very little dynamic range. This
wreaks havoc on classical works, so be warned of that in advance.

Speaking as a rock and sometimes-jazz listener, I can tolerate it as
background music, but I'd hate to have XM as my only source for music. That
having been said, at least they have an enormous selection of music I can't
hear on any competing LA broadacst stations. And the lack of commercials is
a huge plus. (BTW, if you want to hear the worst compression artifacts in
the history of mankind, check out the higher-numbered XM Traffic channels for
different cities. Good god... this crap sounds like some kinda ultra
auto-tuned robot from Mars -- barely human!)

I heard some demos of HD Radio at NAB a few months ago, and felt that it
sounded a little better than XM, but not dramatically so. At best, it sounds
like a halfway decent MP3 file, but not nearly as good as a top-notch
cassette, let alone a CD. The demo people assured me that HD Radio was
capable of outperforming FM in every way, and "comes close to CD-quality
sound," but I'll believe that when I hear it. HD is said to work well with
AM transmitters, which will undoubtedly add a lot of new life to those old
stations.

--MFW

In article writes:

Note that one of XM & Sirius' dirty-little secrets is that they do a lot of
dynamic-range compression as part of their process.

That's not surprising, both to make the data compression work and
because the primary application (at least I think so) is in cars where
limiting the dynamic range often helps keep things audible under
varying driving conditions.

Speaking as a rock and sometimes-jazz listener, I can tolerate it as
background music, but I'd hate to have XM as my only source for music. That
having been said, at least they have an enormous selection of music I can't
hear on any competing LA broadacst stations.

I suspect that a large number of listeners go for the talk programs. I
listen to radio for the music, and to get good music programming you
need knowledgable programmers. One kind of "knowledgable" programmer
works for the programming services that gives us what we hear on
commercial radio. I particularly enjoy the programmng on
non-commercial radio where the programmers (usually the same people
who are on air) really know their stuff, bring a personal library of
music that may go back 50 years (Dick Spottswood on WAMU plays 78s on
the air, and he's particularly enthusiastic when he finds a rare one
at a record traders show) and can comment intelligently about it.
That's the "talk" I enjoy on the radio.

In my short trial of Sirius, I didn't listen to the classical
programming to see if it was like the "Top 40" on our local classical
stations (which come from paid consultants).

And the lack of commercials is a huge plus.

I found the emphasis on "commerical free" both in the bumpers and the
on-air comment to start getting about as annoying as comercials.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1087132543k@trad...

In article
writes:

Note that one of XM & Sirius' dirty-little secrets is that they do a lot
of
dynamic-range compression as part of their process.

That's not surprising, both to make the data compression work and
because the primary application (at least I think so) is in cars where
limiting the dynamic range often helps keep things audible under
varying driving conditions.


While the latter is a validreason, lossy coding is far more transparent if
there is a natural amount of peak program content to hide the artifacts in.

--
Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
615.385.8051 http://www.hyperback.com

Note that one of XM & Sirius' dirty-little secrets is that they do a lot
of
dynamic-range compression as part of their process.


That's not surprising, both to make the data compression work and
because the primary application (at least I think so) is in cars where
limiting the dynamic range often helps keep things audible under
varying driving conditions.


in article ,
Bob Olhsson at wrote on 6/13/04 5:37 PM:
While the latter is a validreason, lossy coding is far more transparent if
there is a natural amount of peak program content to hide the artifacts in.

(forgive the usual ignorance) what happened to the (Brit?) data-stream
system that allowed the RECIEVER to select dynamics?
I still think the world wold be a better place with full-dynamics in the
medium and EVERY ONE of the playback devices just had a prefab chip like,
say, a $.25 dbx-II ENCODER in the playback chain so everyone could have
Loudugly as a switch choice.

--
John I-22
(that's 'I' for Initial...)
Recognising what's NOT worth your time, THAT'S the key.
--

"JoVee" wrote in message
...
(forgive the usual ignorance) what happened to the (Brit?) data-stream
system that allowed the RECIEVER to select dynamics?
I still think the world wold be a better place with full-dynamics in the
medium and EVERY ONE of the playback devices just had a prefab chip like,
say, a $.25 dbx-II ENCODER in the playback chain so everyone could have
Loudugly as a switch choice.

Even with the advent of universal and inclusive remote controls (even for a
fricking car stereo - what person shouldn't be paying attention to the
****ing road?), nobody wants to do anything like actually approach their
playback system and do adjustments. It's stupid because if something's too
quiet, then I don't have a single problem turning the fricking volume up.
But I find, more than not, that today I'm turning the volume down. It won't
be long before I simply turn the **** off.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio