Sirius XM audio quality?

DW's new Volvo came with 6 months or a year of free Sirius XM...

...but it sounds wierd.  There is a strange, micro-chorus (for you guitar players) or phased / flanged effect on all the music played on Sirius.  She doesn't seem to notice it, really, but it drives me nuts.  I'd almost rather not listen to it.

The car has an HK sound system and is perfectly capable of making CDs and even regular FM radio sound very good.

Is this typical?  We're not really planning on subscribing, but I want to know if this is a problem I should have checked out while the car is under warranty, or if it is "normal".  Anybody familiar with this issue?  Is it a settings thing in the system?  Thanks.

I'm not an audiophile. I had 1 year of Sirus  on the last new car I bought.  I didn't think sound quality was very good & the signal often dropped when going under overpasses.  I don't remember how much $ they wanted for renewal, but to me it's not worth more than $12/year.

I've had Sirius/XM for years and haven't noticed that on mine.  I've used both factory systems and aftermarket ones.  However, I would not consider myself an audiophile, so I may just not notice it. 

For me the advantage is to hear music anytime v. talk shows, the same music when I travel (I'm in the car a lot) and the variety.  I had a car without it for a little while and finding a local station that just played music (I'm ok with ads) as opposed to DJ's who had to fill with worthless drivel was impossible.  Ended up going to my phone, but that still doesn't provide the variety.

-Rob

I think it has to do with the channel you're on.  It makes me wonder if its a pay-per-bandwidth thing for the stations.

The NPR station on mine has a lot of that chorusing you're talking about.  Especially with Ss and Ts.  Its almost like there is a bit of reverb with certain consonants.  The first channel (the preview mix) is always that way for me.

But I don't find it to be an issue on other channels.  Either that or I've tuned it out in my brain.

I find it to be very good quality reproduction, but a bit attenuated.  For instance, if I play the same song on satellite and then a CD, the CD has more punch, more channel separation, and more bass.

Having said that, I cancelled mine.  It started becoming like cable; 200 channels and nothing worth listening to.

In reply to Curtis :

We usually listen to the modern / alternative / rock stations like Lithium, Octane, etc.  They sound terrible in this car - far worse than the same music on regular broadcast FM.

We got 3 free months when we bought the Concert Coach a couple years ago, and I don't recall any really notable difference in quality at that time and with that system.

Again, I don't need something else to drain me of $10 / month, and we're not planning to subscribe.  I'm more trying to figure out of there is a hardware issue I should be contacting the dealer about.

I've always noticed that on satellite radio. As Curtis mentions they can allocate more bandwidth on particular stations and it sounds better but for the most part they don't. It mostly sounds like bad late 90s low bitrate mp3s to me. 

I've subscribed to XM for about 5 years now since I drive around 40K miles a year (traveling sales). I typically listen to Liquid Metal, but occasionally drop down to Octane, Turbo, & Lithium. The stereo in my Silverado is nothing to write home about, but I've never noticed the audio quality issue you're describing. I do consider myself a slight audiophile. I'd say what you're describing is not normal.

Our 2007 SAAB has a funny feature  where one speaker will drop  out inter.mittently on xm/sirius.  Not one channel, which would make sense if it was a bad wire losing part of the stereo.  Sound is very compressed anyway, so not worth paying for IMHO

We had it free for a while on a new car and it always sounded flat to me.

I tried to give it a chance and see how low I could negotiate the monthly rate if we decided to keep it, but couldn't find a single channel worth paying for

In reply to FooBag :

It absolutely is normal. Each channel is allocated 32-64K of bandwidth which just isn't enough to get good sound quality. If you don't notice it then consider yourself lucky! Note that Pandora and Spotify have the same problem over cellular unless you pay for them. 

As dculberson said, it is normal based on the bandwidth allocated to the station.  The noise/effects you describe are compression artifacts.  Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done to make it better on your end.  The broadcaster would have to allocate more bandwidth to the channel.  Since satellite links are very limited, giving to one means taking from another. 

Some channels sound really good (like some of the classical channels) and others will be bad.  Even regular radio has it now.  With HD Radio, digital audio storage, and satellite feeds from a central studio, the sound quality is just going away.

No wonder vinyl's making a comeback...

I can hear it too.

Tried Sirius with a free trial and also HD radio for the first time a few months back. Was blown away how good HD radio was and how bad many of the Sirius channels were. Best case comparison, HD can have almost 10x the bitrate of a squashed satellite channel. More recently, I signed up for a paid Spotify account which lets you download playlists to your device at 320kbit (not the default but you can set it in the preferences).

Swmbo's Elantra has Sirius XM, and I too think the audio quality is often worse than FM. Sounds flat, and no fiddling with the equilizer fixes it.

I don't notice it much on the music stations, but the talk stations are so heavily compressed it can be hard to understand them at times.  I've been told the music channels are equivalent to a 128kb MP3 file, so not great, but not completely horrible, either.  Either way it's fine for my casual listening.