XM or Sirius

Jaybo, I completely agree. My wife gave me an XM receiver for Christmas and I had flashbacks to the best radio shows and formats I've listened to over the past 30 years. I'm more than a little bummed that they took the Prog/Jamband channel off the air but I can still get a fix online.

As stated above, XM playlist is deeper. To me, that means listening to pure crap half the time. I have had both and much prefer Sirius. Those who complain about the sound quality are probably using the FM modulator. (antenna) Use the adapter and go straight to the head unit if you have aux. input. VERY close to CD. BEWARE of the lifetime deal....it is for the lifetime of the reciever! When your radio dies your subscription dies with it.

Baffled, I'm running my Sirius directly into my pre/pro so I'm not using an FM modulator. However, it is interesting that the tin can effect I'm hearing is most pronounced through headphones and usually not audible through loudspeakers. And good point on the "lifetime" deal. I now some people that were fooled by that. I just hope these units last long. But they sure get hot! Regardless of sound quality, the programming diversity is fantastic.

This is from WikiPedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xm_radio

"Audio channels on XM are digitally compressed using the aacPlus codec from Coding Technologies for most channels, and the AMBE codec from Digital Voice Systems for some voice channels. Due to bandwidth restrictions and a large channel load, the maximum bitrate XM broadcast from its satellite per music channel is limited to 64kbit/s."

Keep in mind that the 64kbit/s is maximum, so it is unclear from reading this what the actual bitrate is in real-world situations.

Any audiophile who has spent some time learning about digital compression will understand that no matter how good the algorithm, 64kbit/s will have major and unforgivable sonic comprises for serious listening.

Though this data is only for XM, it is pretty clear from reading various peoples' opinions that there is no "clear winner" XM vs Sirius in sound quality, so my assumption is that Sirius is probably as bad with the compression.

So while I have no opinion as to whether or not someone "should" get satellite radio, I will say that if you do decide to go for it, do it for the content, with full knowledge that sound quality will be far less than desirable.

I love Wikipedia. I often go there intent on doing a specific search and end up spending hours getting sidetracked and branching off into completely unrelated topics. A great place to get a primer on something before investigating it further.