Time to get Sirius

…that’s right, bitches.

Got this as a birthday gift from my brother (thanks again) along with a year’s subscription. My primary reason for getting it is so I can listen to Stern after he leaves FM this Friday. The content on Sirius is great, the music stations play stuff you rarely hear on the radio (old school, new stuff, underground, etc.) not just a bunch of washed down top-40 stations like FM has recently turned into. That and most the hip-hop channels are uncensored like Stern will be when he begins his show. Although they can, not all stations play uncensored music. No commercials either which is a definite plus. Anyway my only gripe, and its kind of a big one, is the sound quality of the stations. The talk channels come in fine since they’re, well, only talk (voice) but the music stations come in at what seems to be a very highly compressed, flat and monotone broadcast. This completely caught me off guard as I assumed everything would be digital, satellite, blah blah blah and therefore super-duper clear & crystal quality. The truth is that the FCC only allows a certain amount of bandwidth to Sat. providers (Sirius & XM share this problem equally) to broadcast their signals, therefore the more channels you have the more you need to compress your audio to make them all fit into your allotted space. I’m sure that this issue will be resolved within a short period of time with a new codec or new stream method but for the moment it is definitely a nuisance.

Edited 12/14/05:
It turns out Sirius does have commercials. All music is commercial free however some of the talk/entertainment stations play ads occasionally. They don’t play anywhere near the amount of ads on FM but more like a 20 second (I counted) ad per ~15 minutes.

Signal. It’s not an issue for me in NYC but apparently a problem for people located outside of large cities, like my brother. This is for home-connections only btw because if you’re in a car you should in theory have no problems connecting to the satellites. Sirius receivers run off two types of signals: satellite or terrestrial. Sat signal indicates the level of connectivity to the sat(s). in orbit whereas terrestrial indicates the level of connectivity to broadcast towers which repeat the sat. signal. These repeaters (re-broadcast towers) prove to be very helpful for people in cities lucky enough to have them because users at home are then not required to mount antennas outside for reception; often, like in my case, simply placing the antenna near a window is enough to pick up perfect terrestrial connection. For those without the benefit of repeaters in their towns they most likely need to mount their antennas outside and point them upwards to connect directly to the satellites. Note that there is no difference in quality between having a connection to repeaters only or satellites only (sometimes you can have connection to both), also since the broadcast is “digital” a slightly weaker signal doesn’t affect your reception quality as opposed to a stronger one; It’s an all or nothing type service. You either have enough signal to receive the audio or you don’t.

I give Sirius a 7.5 out of 10. As with all new technologies this one needs a little time to grow up before it can reach its full potential and when it does I’ll be the first to raise the rating to a 9 or higher but for now the poor sound quality is to big a downside to overlook. Below are some pics of my receiver and my car install. Click to enlarge the pictures below of my Starmate Replay.