Siruis Radio and CD Quality Sound

I have a question... What the HELL??? What is meant by the commercial statement "CD Quality Sound"? I just installed a Sirius in my brothers car today, and I gotta say, it's "CD Quality Sound" SUCKED. I have MP3's that sound better. If Sirius and XM want me to buy one of these things, they're gonna have to do better than they are. Regular FM sounded better, and the actual CD player was MILES ahead of the "Digital Radio". What kind of compression scheme do they use, and/or what kind of bit-rate? Can't be very good or very high... All this and the differences in sound quality were OBVIOUS - Sirius still sounded like CRAP in the system which is nothing but a deck-and-four. Ten bucks a month to listen to that kind of garbage is REDICULOUS. I know this is just a re-hash of the old MP3 debate, but I guess I just needed to vent...It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

Out curiousity how are you getting the sound from the sirius unit to go through your cd player? If your using a built in wireless fm modulator, it will sound like hell. If your using a normal fm modulator, it will sound a little better, but still not very good. An aux in interface or direct connect type would be your best bet. Mike

If you buy a Sirius ready Eclipse head unit, it is a plug-in module that plugs directly into the line, between (where you would install) the changer and the radio. Ya just hit a button, and that source is selected, just like it was a CD changer or any other AUX device in the Eclipse line. It is a DIRECT line level input into the radio's line-level inputs, so it is as good as it can get on this particular unit.It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

Over all, i think the sound quality is pretty good from Sirius, some of the older songs sound better on Sirius then they do when listening to them on my CD player. Some songs do have poor sound quality to though. Jazzy

I have a sirius portable connected to the aux input of my kenwood cd player and I think the sound quality is good.  Of course the digital sound is truned into an analog signal to be carried from the tuner to the cd player.  You can't expect digital quality sound when it is converted to analog then back to digital, if it is converted back at all. 

Different HUs will give you different SQ from sat radio. This is mostly caused by the difference in DACs. I personally have noticed that using the standard RCA conectors to connect the tuner to the HU usually sounds better then using a periphrial connection.

Eclipse makes one of the if not the best SQ decks out there.. I don't think the deck is the cause in this case!Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"

SoundAudio wrote: I have a sirius portable connected to the aux input of my kenwood cd player and I think the sound quality is good. Of course the digital sound is truned into an analog signal to be carried from the tuner to the cd player. You can't expect digital quality sound when it is converted to analog then back to digital, if it is converted back at all.

ALL digital is converted to analog before it is carried to the HU. With the exception with some old school VERY high end units from Nakamichi, there aren't any heads available today with digital inputs. Or if there are, there aren't any digital external components to plug into it... I might be wrong on this... I'll accept that if I am, but what I am basically saying is EVEN IF this were the case (and it ISN'T) it woould still not be an excuse for the crappy sound provided by this particular Sirius tuner. I can GUARANTEE you, that if I had hooked a CD changer onto this cable (in place of the Sirius tuner), I would not have heard the poor audio I did from the TEN DOLLAR A MONTH Sirius. And CDs are free... Again, why should I pay fro a completely inferior format? Convenience? Not me... I pay for audio quality, not quantity.

Lizardking wrote: Eclipse makes one of the if not the best SQ decks out there.. I don't think the deck is the cause in this case!

Exactly... That's what I'm sayin' - it ain't the deck.It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

I have read other posts of people complaining of poor performance with Sirius on Eclipse decks...I wonder if something is up!! I hope when the release the software update for my long and still waiting AVN5495 they will have this improved if the Eclipse decks are the problem. But like haemphyst said I'm pretty darn sure it's not the deck but the fault of the Eclipse Sirius Tuner..Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"