Sound quality of XM radio Direct TV vs standalone

Bmatth:

I can not comment on the difference between Direct TV and full subscription sound, but I have a Polk XM Receiver in my home system and am very pleased. I first used the RCA connectors on the Polk unit but now have the Polk receiver routed through a Benchmark DAC. Sound quality on Jazz, Instrumental and Classical stations I find to be very good; good soundstage and clairity, above FM quality but somewhat below CD's. On Rock and similar types of music XM has the same problem (or same theory) as FM as the sound quality is compressed and not very appealing. You could try a Polk unit and full subscription and if you are not pleased return the unit / cancel the service.

This past Christmas holiday I bought a Sirius Starmate Plug n Play Radio only because Howard Stern will begin braodcasting there.

I play it through my home theater at home and directly into a pair of Swan powered speakers at work. The sound reproduction is good enough for what I'm using it for. That is, not nearly as good as my 2 channel rig, but good enough to make the music and comedy listening very enjoyable when I'm getting ready for work, slaving away on the job, and when I'm unwinding at home.

I also have DirecTivo running through my home theater and have enjoyed those music channels as well. And a good dose of Ancient Almanac too!

To be honest, the sound is better than I expected. Initially, I didn't have any confidence in the sound quality with either satellite technologies, but surprisingly, it's good enough that I almost never think about it.

One thing though, it seems at least to me so far, that getting a decent signal through Sirius is more difficult than with DirecTV. DirecTV gives you exact coordinates to align your dish, but Sirius only tells me [zone 2] to point it east or northeast. I get good reception at home pointing it southeast, so I don't know what to make of that.

I haven't hooked it up in my car yet, and I've read a lot of war stories in different audio and car forums for both XM and Sirius regarding this issue, so we'll see. Many people say satellite radio reception is very similar to AM reception quality. I'm talking signal and the ability to capture it by maintaining line of sight, not the sound quality. But I don't want to put that little black Silly Putty looking thing on top of my car, maybe I'll get a factory BMW fin instead. However, I did read about one guy in the BMW forums that was able to get great reception by mounting his Sirius antenna UNDER his rear deck lid.

At work, my reception is pretty spotty. I have an east facing window, but finding the sweet spot took some experimenting, and even with that the signal seems to drop out at certain times of the day. It's almost as if the satellites are orbiting the earth at a different rate than the earth is rotating and therefore have to hand off signal broadcast from one to another in my zone. Luckily, so far the drop off periods don't coincide with the broadcast hours of The King Of All Media, so I was able to catch both his live and impromptu equipment checks this week. At the beginning of testing on Tuesday it was funny to hear Howard asking his team not to disparage David Lee Roth or Adam Carola - the guys that replaced him in the New York and LA markets - when they did go live on-air. He didn't know they were already live.

Reception obstacles aside, I'm pretty pleased with the sound quality of my Sirius. I bought it to continue listening to Howard Stern, but I find myself listening to a lot of the classical music stations during the day when I get tired of hearing his Wack Packers. The nice thing about Sirius music channels is that you do have live DJs, but they aren't intrusive at all like on many terrestrial radio broadcasts. And it's nice hearing a human voice now and then giving some background to what I just heard, unlike DirecTV which almost seems like a sterile robotic musical loop. But on the otherhand, having an endless stream of ethereal emanations on DirecTV's new age channel is nice as well.

Have fun!

Anyone have experience with the Delphi XM SKYFi2? I would mostly want XM at home, as I'm only in the car too and from work. This radio model supposedly works well with stereo system and in car.

And the only reason I now want XM is for Dylan's new show that starts in March.

I run my Dishnet feed through my Audio Aero Capitole and the quility is really nice. The Blues programming is really good. Any drop in quality is more than matched by the fact that there are no DJs and no Commercials.

Anyone have experience with the Delphi XM SKYFi2? I would mostly want XM at home, as I'm only in the car too and from work. This radio model supposedly works well with stereo system and in car.

You'd have to buy the optional home kit for that radio. Another optino is one of the XM2Go models which come with both a home and a car kit, and can digitally store up to 5 hours of programming for you to listen back through. I got one of these for my Wife this Xmas. As I said earlier, it works OK, but it's nothing I'd want to count on to actually sit down an listen to music. For walking around, and music in the car, or news, comedy, talk shows, it's just fine. It also can be listened to like a walkman, but in that respect it does not work well - there it depends on its internal antenna and it will cut in and out depending on where you are. In a car the you can either use it with the line-output, or using the FM modulator, or it also comes with one of those cassete tape substitutes to play it through the cassette. The Delphi you mention looks allot better, IMO, uses an FM modulator and external antenna. They were all on heavy sale around Xmas...may still be. Can't really comment on the Delphi reception except to say that it seemed to have very good reviews when I researched it. The advantages of the XM2Go, were the much longer recording time (handy if you can't be there for your Dylan show - though I'm sure that quality goes down even further), and that the kit had everything you need in it for what came to less money. Also it seemed easier (bulkier) to manipulate all the controls.

Marco