Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio Sirius Sound Quality

Just picked up a Sirius tuner for my Kenwood Sirius ready receiver over the weekend and I am quite disappointed in the sound quality. Doesn't even come close to either my radio (FM) or CD source in terms of quality. There is no way in the world Sirius is CD quality and to me the compression rate sounds somewhere in the lower 60's. What's up with that?! The number of channels and music selection is nice but quality (fidelity) of the muisc leaves much to be desired.

all satellite radio is a compressed format, so there will always be real SQ issues with it. relatively speaking, however, (for me) it's still better than local FM. some areas of the US have pretty high quality fm broadcasts, but locally here... not so much.

It's understood that it's compressed but it's to a point that the loss in quality is very noticeable. I never expected to be of poorer quality than the local FM broadcasts. Too me, it sounds like a recording of a recording of an original tape.

I have a Sirius tuner that is fed into my head unit via line level (not fm modulated) and it sounds really good. It is definitely better than FM and close to CD for me. What channels are you listening to? There are one or two that sound pretty bad (Swing Street comes to mind) simply because they are playing really old recordings. But almost all of the other music channels (1-99) sound really good. The higher number channels (100+) are basically talk and don't have the greatest fidelity, but they don't need it. The one exception is Radio Disney (130) that plays a lot of music but doesn't sound that great because it is in the "talk" section since they play commercials.

I listen mainly to the R&B and Hiphop stations.

Also, if it's not clear, I'm not using an FM modulator. It's direct connect from a Kenwood Sirius tuner to a Kenwood Sirius ready head unit.

I wonder what the average bit rate is of the music they're streaming? Anything less than about 96kbps can't be considered anything close to CD quality.

"some areas of the US have pretty high quality fm broadcasts"

cannot wait for HD radio to hit NYC.

I have mine hooked into my Kenwood HU.....sounds WAY better than FM......

from what i've heard, satellite radio is encoded @ 128kbps...which is the norm for mostly all mp3 encoding (Itunes, napster, etc.). Definitley not "cd" quality, but better than FM. You sure all your connections are good?

Positive all connections are seated. There's only one connection to the radio from the tuner. Perhaps it's the channels I listen to (40-45 and 50-55) that don't sound all that great. I heard a few songs on Sirius that I play on the norm from a CD in MP3 format encoded at 128kbps that sounds ten times better. The songs from the sirius just sounds muffled and not as clean. The bass doesn't hit as hard and I have to turn the HU up past the 30 mark for it to be heard over the D-tec (w/the windows down). I do that when playing an MP3 CD and I won't have my hearing for very long.