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Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 2003 12:45:55 -0400
Reply-To:     caverat <caverat@ATTBI.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         caverat <caverat@ATTBI.COM>
Subject:      Re: free satelite radio?
Comments: To: Kevin Barry <krbarry@bellatlantic.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> Regarding Sirius's programming: as I mentioned before their sound quality > is abysmal. they are compressing the signal so much (and so poorly) that > for someone like me who wants quality sound Sirius is not acceptable. In > truth, I'd rather listen to nothing than terrible sound. Sirius claims to > have fixed this problem a few months ago but they didn't. they don't tell > you what method they use for compression but I imagine to fix the problem > would require a complete replacement of the installed base of users' > equipment and maybe even the sats. On top of that both Sirius and XM > engage in dynamic compression which is another nonstarter for me. > As I said, the idea is great, the problem is the way it was implemented here.

Hi Kevin,

I'm not an audiophile, and I am very impressed with the sound compared to normal FM, especially on their music channels. I'd read about other people making remarks about compression artifacts, but by far most people seem to be very pleased with the sound, don't even notice these audiophile issues, and consider it almost as good as a CD. I have noticed a difference in the sound between the music and non-music channels, since the Sirius S-Plex technology is supposed to dynamically allocate bandwidth to those channels that need it more like the music channels. However, the music channels sound very good IMO and I don't have any issues with the sound on the non-music channels. From my understanding, the Sirius compression technology (something called PAC developed by iBiquity) is handled at the broadcast end and can (and has been) changed/upgraded without modification to end user equipment. That being said, as with all consumer electronic products, it is likely that new and better features will become available in future generations of equipment. For example, the 2nd generation equipment coming out now offers instant channel changes and the display will show you the song/artist playing on several channels at the same time, while the 1st generation equipment has a 1-3 second delay between channel changes and will only show you what is playing on your current channel. As you know, I'm pretty pleased with the 1st generation equipment and see no reason to upgrade, especially since I got the equipment for free.

caverat


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