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...

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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.

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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

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I agree about the SQ!! I bought a Eclipse CD5435 until my AVN5495 comes in and I bought the Eclipse Sirius tuner and the SQ is very horrible...

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Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"

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.

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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!

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Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"

SoundAudio wrote:

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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.

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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:

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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!

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Exactly... That's what I'm sayin' - it ain't the deck.

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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..

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Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"

See lizard, I told you. Different HUs have different SQ.



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I knew that already!! When it comes to SQ Eclipse as I said before is about the best you can get.. I don't think the decks are problem its the Sirius Eclipse Tuner that seems to be the problem and not the decks themselves. If the deck was a Pioneer, Alpine, Sony, or some other brand "store" brand I would believe it could be the deck.. But you never know!

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Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"

I have a Kenwood X889 HU (Sirius ready) w/ Kenwood Sirius tuner SR903 and it sounds GREAT! Sounds like the Sirius tuner to me. uniball

I install for a living, and have done alot of sat. radio. I did read all the other posts but there is a HUGE diffence between the fm mod. units and the dedicated. If you have sat. ready deck buy dedicated, that is better than cd quality. I own sirius and its dedicated and i couldnt be more happy.

349517 wrote:

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I install for a living, and have done alot of sat. radio. I did read all the other posts but there is a HUGE diffence between the fm mod. units and the dedicated. If you have sat. ready deck buy dedicated, that is better than cd quality. I own sirius and its dedicated and i couldnt be more happy.

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Ummm... Did ya READ my post? We DID buy dedicated... This is what I'm saying. Bought a dedicated tuner - the MANUFACTURER supplied Sirius tuner, with a good deck (it was the 5415), and it still sounds like shhh, compared to even a standard FM broadcast.

As far as your comment "...that is better than cd quality...", you can't be more wrong. Technically, and even subjectively, there is NO WAY, EVER, that a compressed audio stream could even THINK about sounding better than a direct playback from the CD...

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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."

Sure there is ham fist. Take a look at the FLAC codec

ANyway, I'm still going to say that the problem is caused by the periphrial interface.

Try this once. Do you have a home receiver? If so hook your sat radio tuner up to it via RCA cables. Of course you'll have to hook up a set of speakers. See if that sounds any better.

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I'm pretty much convinced its the Sirius Tuner and not the deck.. This is Eclipse's first attempt at Sat radio so I guess it could be the software on the decks as well but highly unlikely.. Both haemphyst and myself do have dedicated tuners if you read the post.

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Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"

YEah, I read that.

I just recommended hooking it up to a known good HU(I recommended home receiver) to test the tuner itself

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I might just have to do that!!

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Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"

problem her is there is no RCA output for connecting it to any other device than the Eclipse HU.

BTW, FLAC codec is just a lossless compression of the red-book wav format... It STILL can't sound BETTER than the CD source from which it comes, UNLESS the CD source from which it comes is 24/96 or 24/192. Now we all know there is NOBODY using anything THAT high in the resolution stratosphere...

and even then, it WON'T sound better than the original...

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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."

haemphyst wrote:

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349517 wrote:

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I install for a living, and have done alot of sat. radio. I did read all the other posts but there is a HUGE diffence between the fm mod. units and the dedicated. If you have sat. ready deck buy dedicated, that is better than cd quality. I own sirius and its dedicated and i couldnt be more happy.

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Ummm... Did ya READ my post? We DID buy dedicated... This is what I'm saying. Bought a dedicated tuner - the MANUFACTURER supplied Sirius tuner, with a good deck (it was the 5415), and it still sounds like shhh, compared to even a standard FM broadcast.

As far as your comment "...that is better than cd quality...", you can't be more wrong. Technically, and even subjectively, there is NO WAY, EVER, that a compressed audio stream could even THINK about sounding better than a direct playback from the CD...

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I was giving my two cents. When i said its better than cd quality i was saying that becuase if you throw in a cd and then put on sirius depending on the song i can hear more on sirius than my cds(not burned)

Today my Sirius started making high pitch static and I can barely here the music...What the heck is that all about??  The CD is fine and so is the Radio...

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Eclipse "Approaching Perfection"

Lizardking wrote:

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Today my Sirius started making high pitch static and I can barely here the music...What the heck is that all about??  The CD is fine and so is the Radio...

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Check the cable that connects the two untis, it may be partially unplugged. This has happened with my Clarion unit once.

As far as my experience with Sirius, it sounds better than FM but falls short of CD. (although I have heard some very poor sounding CDs, but that is not the fault of the format, just the recording). I have it for the same reason many people have iPods, just to have convinient access to more music content. In my set-up, the audio is fed into the deck via RCA style interconnects as my deck does not have Sirius control. 

BTW, there are still decks available with digital inputs. My Clarion DRZ9255 has selectable in/out on the digital connection. This is nearly useless unless you are using it for a Clarion DVD player to use the 24bit DACs, as it is the strange Clarion proprietry digital co-ax plug. I really don't believe the DACs in the Sirius tuner are the source of poor SQ, it seems to be more a product of compression.

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