Gallstaff

iTrader: (1)

Does anybody else with Sirius in their car notice that some stations crackle a bit when compared to others. Maybe it's just me, but some stations come in crystal clear while others, notably stations playing older tunes, sometimes crackle. My girlfriend suggested that maybe it's simply because the songs are old and that's how they sounded, but in this modern age of remastering and whatnot, you'd think this would be eliminated, wouldn't you?

I don't know, maybe it's just me.

02Z28LS1

iTrader: (2)

i just got my Sirius about two weeks ago, and i haven't really noticed any crackling yet....but i have noticed that the volume and sound quality sucks compared to CD's.

i have mine connected (hard-wired) into my AUX RCA inputs on the back of my receiver, and even with my head unit at full volume, i can barely hear the music over my car....and i have stock exhaust. with CD's, i usually only have to turn it up about 2/3 volume, and even then, it's louder than the Sirius at full volume.

also, the sound is kinda "muffled"-sounding, like i'm listening to the music with wet blankets draped over the speakers or something.....

gotta love the howard stern stations, tho.....f'ing hilarious

joepizi

I have had sirius for almost 3 years now and never noticed crackling on any of the stations.

How do you have your Sirius receiver hooked up, are you using the FM transmitter in the sirius radio to broadcast the signal to your head unit? If this is the case then the crackling you are hearing is probably interference from radio stations using a close or the same frequency as your transmitter is using. This happens a lot in urban areas with these radios as there are a lot of FM stations and the transmitters in certain sirius radios are not very strong.

But even when the sirius signal is low or poor, unlike FM radio, you should not hear cracking, you should just hear gaps or moments of silence in the audio.

Hope this helps.

Gallstaff

iTrader: (1)

My unit is hard wired into my Panasonic head unit so I just dont get why SOME stations come in shitty while others come in clear 100% of the time. If you guys don't mind doing an experiment for me, listen to channel 6 and 7, and classic rewind. Those seem to be the worst - tell me what you think

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

Have you tried turning up the output signal from your Sirius receiver? There's an audio output level setting in the main menu.

Sound quality will never be as good as CDs because it's a compressed signal - comparable to MP3s at about 128Kb.

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

Classic rock - especially 60s and early 70s - often has noise from the original recordings including tape hiss and even crackling from vinyl records. Many of the tracks are still in their original mono format. There is only so much one can do with remastering from an analog source so you will notice a definite difference in sound quality between early recordings and those made in the 80s or later (when digital masters became common). Also, many of the early recordings haven't been remastered - they were just copied to digital storage from the original analog recording. Not to mention that the compression used just adds to the loss of clarity.

Danny2tek

iTrader: (1)

Exactly!!

Gallstaff

iTrader: (1)

Well I feel much better now! I was pissed that my Jimi Hendrix and Yardbirds were coming in fuzzy but I'm much more at ease now. That makes sense. Thanks guys!

02Z28LS1

iTrader: (2)

yep, it's all the way up

i know it's going to be not as good as a CD, i do a lot of audio ripping/compression....any idea what bitrate they use to compress the audio? because if it's 128kbps or more, they do any EXTREMELY shitty job of encoding. i can compress MP3's at 128kbps from a CD, then play them in my car, and it still sounds great....you can barely tell a difference between them and the CD. but with the Sirius, i'd swear they were encoding at like 32 or 56 kbps.....

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

Sirius uses a proprietary variable compression scheme that varies from channel to channel, track to track, and even within a track. The idea was to fit as much data (from all channels) into the available bandwidth as possible. This may cause more loss of detail than is usual with something like MP3 encoding so a bitrate comparison doesn't give a true picture of the differences.

I'm at a loss to explain the volume problem. I have my Sirius tuner set at just 3 of 10 for audio output level and it matches the radio/CD output pretty closely when I switch between them.

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

Wow! 34Kbps? No wonder it doesn't sound like a CD! I hadn't heard that before - some salesman gave me the 128Kbps figure a couple of years ago.