Recording XM/Sirius Live broadcasts

Mumbles,

On the DTV its channel 850,on XM it's 70 I beleive. My dac upsamples the signal now which it did not do for a period of time. Last nights broadcast was super, really glad to see Sirius/XM team up with the owner of DTV. Now only if they can have the same stations as Dish.Geesh you would think now that DTV owns Sirius that someone would wake up!

My system to listen to the sattelite consists of a Hughes HD reciever and I use a Nordost optical cable and a quality video cable from the coax connection all fed to my dac. On everyday listening most stations produce a close to CD quality if not as good. The live broadcasts are a step up,just fun to listen to.

My recording was really good as the signal is processed through my dac. The sound quality was better than the best cd's and vinyl.

Thanks for an excuse to have a lazy Saturday morning testing this theory.
I've got 3 cd spinners, a tuner and XM channels on dtv-hd dvr gear all running at the same time to a ConradJohnson Met1 6 channel preamp. With a flick of the cj remote I switch between sources..
and Im gonna have to agree the line is getting blurry they all sound amazing.
The hd-dvr recordings look and sound really good, XM now waaay better, but my tuner is richer and the spinners, Primaluna8, Pioneer Bluray fd-05, Denon 5900 sacd all seem to have more depth. Not real good at describing what I hear, but I know what I like and DTV thru my CJs ARM into 5.1 is now a contender.

Agreed!
Dish Network subscriber here which has carried Sirius for years, at some low rate bit rate, which never passed my listening tests. Treble was tiring, and just a mess overall...

However, on a whim I recently decided to give it a whirl again, optical I/C, upsampled from 20/48 to 24/384 thru my CambridgeAudio - 740c thru the Meier Corda Opera headamp AKG-701s, Beyerdynamics DT-990('05e)'s, and/or Denons AH-D2000s and I was shocked to find, indeed this signal is as good and betters some of my CDs. Shocked I tell ya, although very pleasntly so, as you might imagine readers, or know by experience (OP)!

I mention my assortment of referance headphones,as being most suceptible to a nasty signal; But even the 990s with their very extended treble sing very nicely indeed on cymbal brushes thru to articulate lower octives too, etc.

Just wanted to confirm your findings for the readership, 'cause their skeptical first readings now need to be tested before typing that with which I too agreed with from previous experience.

Quite unbelievable, but it's true. Sirius/XM upsampled is very good listening now!

Enjoy the tunes ~

Mumbles,

Now check to see what kind of Coax cable you have running to your HD receiver. If it is the stock crap that's provided with the receiver,replace it with a good aftermarket video cable. I use a Monster 3 type (don't laugh),you will gain depth.

Not all the Sirius channels are the same quality though. The Jazz and Classical and a few others seem to have a higher quality signal.

Now tonight listen to the live broadcast and Sundays broadcast and compare.

This was one of the reasons I got back into RTR's in a big way. The sattelite feed should be a boon to those who can record.

Cheers

Wavetrader,
I just switched from cable to DTV after reading here about better bandwidth available from satellite than from cable. So I have the latest receiver ect. And the installer told me the double, hd cable he used was better than the standard stuff, It is 99.9 oxygen free copper. Was this the case with the cable you replaced? I will look into monster 3 to receiver.
Im using silver rca's out for audio and stock dtv hdmi cable for video.