I’m sure there will be a lot of eye rolling about my ignorance here, but:
My car came with a Bang and Olufsen sound system and a subscription to Sirius radio.
I rarely turn the radio on in my car but lately I’ve been listening to the Miles Davis station and a classical station on Sirius. The sound quality is static free but just flat and lifeless. This morning my son switched to FM and the sound quality is wonderful.
Am I the only one who didn’t know to expect this?
2 Likes
I’m not going to answer your question, but FM definitely sounds MUCH better than Sirius, and I’m being serious.
4 Likes
Go on–I can take it. 
1 Like
I’m more interested in your views of FRR versus FR over time.
I’m not surprised you prefer FM. As you’re probably aware, the SXM satellite music channels are highly compressed and are contributing to the flat, lifeless sound you describe. I only listen to SXM when I’m on a roadtrip and don’t want to deal with terrestrial channels fading in and out or if listening to out-of-market sports events.
3 Likes
Sirius has dreadful sound. I never activate the service in a new car
My experience is the classical stations are a bit better than others. I recall reading that they are given a little bit more bandwidth. But I don’t recall where I saw that.
2 Likes
Terrible for music, but great for good variety of news and sports….
3 Likes
Ron
I have a B & O system in my BMW 650 and listen to XM all the time - classical, country and soul. I find the sound quality fine for the auto experience and have never noticed any difference with FM other than XM has much better content. To tell the truth, I have not really listened to FM in the car. I do find however that XM Classical at home can be extremely compressed but then I use the XM App via an iPad and Bluetooth speaker for background ambience .
2 Likes
XM came with our car in 1999, and again in 2012. We typically listened to it on long road trips, and my wife also had a long commute 3 days a week. The sound was flat as you’ve noted, but the availability made up for that. In 2017 we got a car with a much better than average sound system and I found it hard to listen to Sirius any longer, and our local Public Radio station added HD stations and a 24 hour jazz station. So when COVID curtailed our driving we ditched Sirius (a very, very, very painful experience) and have never missed it.
3 Likes
Yes, the better the car stereo, the more compressed Sirius sounds.
2 Likes
Right on!
Prompted by Ron’s question, I turned up the volume on XM in the car - all three genres of music I usually listen to are really compressed - Walk on By by Dionne Warwick has neither bass nor treble - and I thought Amazon/Apple SQ streaming was bad! I’m fortunate that I play at low levels as background in the car and I have a lifetime subscription.
I refuse to activate my Sirius radio in my VW Tiguan. They constantly hound me to do so. I have thousands of songs loaded to USB jump drives that sound great. They can’t get me to waste any money on their subscription.
7 Likes
This is the way.
3 Likes
I use SXM in the car because in my area there are no terrestrial radio stations with music programming that’s worth listening to. Having said that, I don’t find much on SXM that I like, either. The classical content is OK, but its dynamic range is too great to be well-suited to road trip consumption, which is about the only time I use the service. I welcome the ability to hear an NPR feed regardless of where I am, but its programming doesn’t seem to include the usual news shows (Morning Edition and ATC) - at least every time I’ve turned it on, it’s been playing one of their feature programs, which I might or might not be interested in, depending on the topic. “The Bridge” plays about 40% good music and the rest is pablum, plus their playlist is short and repeats far too often. The app version (“The Bridge - Deep Cuts”) is better, but still repeats a lot. Sometimes I give up and leave it on “Classic Vinyl,” but I end up turning it off because they play way too much Led Zeppelin for me. 
And I agree wholeheartedly about the poor sound quality - not necessarily compared to FM (I can’t compare since there’s no FM music around here that I’m willing to listen to), but compared to just a thumb drive of MP3s converted from my own library. They sound great compared to SXM.
1 Like
I found that to be the case on that and other channels on a 25 minute commute. It was exciting at first but I very quickly grew bored.
SQ was never an issue because I have exceptionally low expectations on the road.
2 Likes
I have the streaming subscription to XM and the sound quality is much better than the satellite transmission. It’s still probably mp3 quality but it’s not weirdly compressed/phasey like listening to it via the satellite. I just use the app on my iphone and stream to any one of my vehicles. (It’s not tied to any one vehicle like the sat radio is.)
Plus I think the streaming subscription is cheaper.
I will be honest, there are so many other options for streaming, I don’t listen to it all that much. Grateful Dead channel is kind of good, tho.
1 Like
When I traded my CR-V for a new Accord I was surprised to learn that Honda doesn’t provide satellite radio functionality in the entertainment system on them (weirdly, Civics still have it, I’m told). So we moved that subscription to my wife’s Insight, and now I use the phone app in the Accord, through CarPlay. Works well most of the time.
Possibly.
Joking aside as others have noted Sirius is nothing special. As we have similar vehicles with the same audio I was surprised you were less than happy with the audio performance. When I wish to listen while driving I typically stream Qobuz via Apple CarPlay and enjoy the sound. Is it high end? In a car with road noise and passengers conversing, not likely, but it beats SiriusXM. As far as local FM, it can be reasonably good (Qobuz spanks it), but of late I have given up on FM.
1 Like
I always carry a terrabyte of music with me on my phone. I tend to enjoy my music everywhere I go.
3 Likes