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Audio Quality on Sirius
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| Audio Quality on Sirius
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| WeenFan |
While scanning a few random music channels on Sirius, I came upon a Talking Heads song, Wild Wild Life on the 1st Wave channel. I happened to have a Winamp session running at the same time so I quickly loaded up the MP3 of Wild Wild Life that I ripped myself in order to compare the two. I knew there would be a different order of compression for songs broadcast on Sirius but I never realized how much more it was compressed!
Yikes
I can confidently say that the music fidelity on Sirius is far below CD quality. Consider that my copy of Wild Wild Life was ripped at 192kbps (which sounds pretty good but, technically, below CD quality) and Sirius' broadcast version was clearly compressed more. Let me clarify that I do not FM modulate. I make use of the line out feature on the Sportster Replay and it's connected to the line-in port on my computer sound card. Reception-wise, I always have full bars because my antenna is on the roof and there are no trees or anything blocking the signal.
I was thinking with my recording setup that I could possibly record some cool music off the airwaves (like we used to do as youngsters) but now I don’t think it would be a good idea. Better to continue buying CDs from Amazon or brick & mortar stores and rip them myself.
Is there any information on what the bandwidth limit is for satellite radio? For instance, how many megabits per second are they allowed for all 133 (or whatever the final count is) channels? And how much is allocated to each channel? Do the talk channels get less bandwidth than music?
Otherwise, I'm loving the channel/song variety and Howard, of course! |
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| flowerfeeder |
| I have all of my Sirius radios hardwired as well. I find the quality of the stuff that is taped and rebroadcast (Stern Replays, Marky Ramone's replay on 24, etc.) sounds like CRAP. It almost sounds like they are running everything through a phaser or something when you turn up the volume. |
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| WeenFan |
Yeah, I can hear what you mean about the phaser thing, flower. That might be the compression itself or an effect to add harmonics to compensate for the compression. The net result is the same, I'm afraid.
I, for one, would be willing to forfeit a couple dozen channels in exchange for increasing the fidelity of the remaining channels. The trouble with that approach is, of course, which ones? |
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| donkeyspunk |
I think there 2007 plan is to open the pipe wider which will bring up the quality of the sound.
My wife has Sirius in her new mini van and it sounds awesome. Of course it has like 8 speakers, hi end stereo and a nice amp.
I also heard if you remove the antenna from the back of your car radio, it sounds better if you have interference issues. I am going to try that. |
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| W. Valderama |
| Sure it's not up to CD quality, but not much stuff is. The Sirius signal is still better than your average MP3. |
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