Is it possible to make the crappy XM tuner sound better?
All,
I swapped my XM tuner for Sirius and it didn't help AT ALL (if you have XM then you know exactly what I'm talking about!). Some folks seemed to think it was better clarity - I did it simply because I think Sirius's channel line-up is superior. I digress.
The sounds quality is unchanged. I know the stock speakers/head unit are capable of playing great sound (for a stock system) as evidenced by the fact that CD's sound good and so does FM stereo radio.
I'd say the difference when listening to satellite is comparable to the difference between FM mono and stereo. It's like listening to tunes in an aluminum can. Awful.
Obviously it's not Sirius or XM service (again, they both equally suck through the stock system) problem because I have both in other vehicles and it's quite crisp and sharp. Sounds great. Just something about the setup in the C6 NAV equipped cars (and maybe non-NAV equipped cars too- I don't know because I haven't listened to it in a non-NAV car).
GM let us down on this one.
SO.... Has anyone figured out a way to enhance the sound quality? A filter of some sort? Anything? I'd hate to scrap the whole damn system (NAV head unit, speakers, etc...) just to get satellite music that doesn't sound like teh suck!!!? Help?
Sometimes a system better details the flaws of XM, which, mho, sounds like utter and complete garbage, and only sounds worse the better system you connect it to.
Its just.. on some systems you dont notice it as much. Sort of like, you dont notice a cute girl's zits and skin problems on a regular TV like you do a HD television.
Obviously it's not Sirius or XM service (again, they both equally suck through the stock system) problem because I have both in other vehicles and it's quite crisp and sharp. Sounds great. Just something about the setup in the C6 NAV equipped cars (and maybe non-NAV equipped cars too- I don't know because I haven't listened to it in a non-NAV car).
GM let us down on this one.
Your statement should stop with "they both equally suck." They sound different, but it's just two different forms of suck. Most people will say Sirius sounds better because XM's compression creates a more flat sound where Sirius has a sound that is equalized to emphasize highs & lows. But to my ear, XM sounds muffled and Sirius sounds tinny.
As Kale said, the better the system sounds overall the more apparent the poor quality sound of Sirius or XM will be. So in that respect, GM didn't let us down with god-awful Bose system and the marginally better Delco system (still bad) they actually help XM and Sirius only sound bad instead of awful!
Sorry there's no useful info here, but the reality is the signal source is a turd and any effort to make it sound better is to just polish that turd. If you want better, convenient sound then I suggest you rip your CD's with a high quality MP3 encoder like LAME using a high variable bit rate and hook up an iPod. It would be time, effort and money far better spent.
I have , with a lot of help from the guys on this forum, a really nice system. It seems that nothing compares to a well recorded CD. Ipod would be next. XM and FM just suck, and it becomes more apparent , the better your system. I was thinking of switching to
Sirius for better sound quality, but now I don't think I'll bother.
Thanks
I second the opinion that it sounds even worse on a good system. My inno sounds ok on my cheap pioneer deck in my work van, xm on my sat ready alpine system is a joke. As I've said before, the bit rate has been cut in half from the old days, used to be you couldn't tell the difference between cd and xm. Really. I can't believe how they have ruined it, it makes me sick.
Last edited by boardroomjimmy; 04-26-2008 at 08:27 PM.
Reason: sp.
It's not the compression algorithm (at least in this case).
I have several other XM and Sirius systems that are crystal clear and sound great! And it's certainly not the "superior" Bose system in our cars making the flaws more evident. Our OEM radio system is a joke when compared to the after market goodies out there.
There is absolutely something wrong either with the stock head unit input design, or the SIR-GM1, or the stock XM receiver module (Again I say Sirius and XM because the sound is of equal suck from both modules).
When folks splice in the Ipod into the factory head unit, do they use the sat radio input? If so, I'm guessing it sounds spectacular (because of all the reports I've read/heard of people saying that their Ipods sound great on the stock system). If this is the case, then it leads me to believe that the stock head unit is not to blame and it is, in fact, the output from the aforementioned sat receiver modules just suck.
Again, I can't pin this on the XM or Sirius services because I have other [separate] receivers that pickup both XM and Sirius and they sound spectacular (including my home theater system which IS a far superior sound system that does amplify the flaws of the compression algorithms that both Sirius and XM utilize but still sounds 20 times better than when I listen to sat radio in my C6!!!
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Is it possible to make the crappy XM tuner sound better?
