Hey, I've had my Sirius for about 2 months now and was wondering if anyone knew the difference between just mounting the unit (Sporster) in my car, and playing it through an Fm station with the ciggerette liter and hardwiring it.

I've been getting a lot of static and like humming through the fms no matter what station i have it on, and also the volume seems to only go so high.. and then it like plateuas and any louder it just gets distorted.
Will hardwire affect any of these promblems? I've been told yes by some no by others
Thanks

I dont know anything about hardwire stuff, maybe some grounding issues?

How are you hooking it up at home exactly? Seems like you may need to avoid FM at your place. How many signal bars do you get at home?

In my car I use the tape deck and it's great quality. I had tested my Sportster IR unit in a friends car though FM and it was great perfect quality. The Bass for his system was really booming.

For home I just leave it docked and have it hooked up to the Logitech 4.1 THX Speakers. Got 'em about 3 years ago or so.
They are really friggin loud

Review- http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/z560/4.1thx.htm

Ive been waiting the longest time, but just last week I heard Bose and other companies are comming out with Wireless 5.1 speaker setups. KICK ASS!

what kind of car do you have? Stock headunit? if not, what head? The best solution is something called a PIE adapter, if your head unit has an aux input. Many late model factory stereos do, many don't. That is the best solution. Hardwiring a modulator will be much better than beaming wirlessly. Will fix some of your problems, but not all of them. Static will go away. Not sure of the humming you're talking about, if you mean like a low frequency hiss in the backround during silence (like when you play a cassette tape from the beginning until the music kicks in), that is a side affect of the fm modulation and is unavoidable without something like a cassette adapter or an aux input.

The volume is from having your modulator's output level too high. Turn it down a little bit, and use the stereo's volume to get it where you want. Unfortunately, this will increase the backround hiss a little bit untill you get a better connection.

go to www.siriusbackstage.com and checkout the install garage forum. they list installs with pics of many cars and you can at least get an idea of how to hook it up. as far as hardwiring it, that's the only way to do it if you want quality.

Im using a sporster in a 2003 Honda Crv.
The humming im talking about i guess is like a hissing, but more of a low freq constant beeping of humming.

Ive been getting mixed reports still about the hardwiring. I kinda agree that it wont do anything, bc when i think about it all it's changing is how it's getting the power right?
Right now I'm doing it from the ciggerrette liter and using Fm stations.

you mean just hardwiring the power, or hardwiring everything?

hardwiring the power will make no effect. Get rid of fm modulation though, and that will make a huge difference.

a humming sound could be a bad ground in your lighter and in the options on the seirrus reciver there is a volumn option where you can turn it up or down but for the humming in my work truck i have kinda the same problem with our dispatch radio which is powered through the lighter :D <------ baba booie