Sound Quality

One of the burning issues that I constantly see in satellite radio forums are those aimed at the sound quality of SiriusXM. Many people remember what it was like to have two companies competing for their satellite radio business and thus both companies put 100's of millions of dollars worth of resources competing for the same customer. Although it could be equally debated that all of that one-upping by both Sirius and XM is what lead to the merger of 2008.

No matter how you slice it if you ask anybody who had Sirius or XM, but mostly XM customers, the pre-merger days were much better for a variety of reasons. Normally though the same grievances are written about time and again by devotees of the services. 1) Tight playlists, 2) Reduction in the number of music channels and 3) Sound quality. Now this list could go in any order of what people think is wrong with SiriusXM although I've chosen to write about sound quality today.

A great majority of the millions of SiriusXM subscribers just listen to the service without caring what it sounds like for the most part, except when they compared it a C.D. or FM radio. At best SiriusXM to me sounds like AM radio that has too much bass when I would prefer for it to have more treble so that I could hear the lyrics of songs much clearer.

XM advertised that they had near C.D. quality sound in the early years although that is hard to believe. Having been a XM or Sirius subscriber since 2006  I don't know how people can remember what XM used to sound like before the merger of both Sirius and XM channel lineup happened almost 6 years ago, on November 12, 2008. Of course people have recordings of XM programming although I think everything sounds different once its uploaded to the internet and then I listen to on my computer.

Sure, I believe that XM did sound clearer than SiriusXM sounds today, but comparing the two service in 2008 is a lot different than in 2014.

In my own tests, completely non-scientific  I've found SiriusXM to sound better through a Sirius receiver than through an XM receiver that is built-in to my 2009 Chevy Cobalt. I have two lifetime subscriptions, 1 on a Starmate 4 and the other on a Starmate 5. I've hooked them up through the car dock and run the audio through the aux port on my factory stereo.

The built-in XM receiver sounds much smaller at the same volume as either of the Starmates. Sounds quality to me isn't a make-it or break-it feature on satellite radio for me, so I chose to take the car dock out of my Cobalt and instead use the built-in radio because I don't like wires running all over my dashboard when I can just use the receiver that I purchased with the car. In this test I used the Jazz equalization pre-set on the stereo.

In comparison on the very same pre-set did FM radio sound clear and much brighter than either of the pay services.

Recently I owned a Pioneer Inno and turned it on doing the free two week promo the company ran over Labor Day. In addition to the receiver I used the Inno's antenna headphones so that the signal would be as good as it gets.  Even with the best signal and using an XM receiver the service still sounded like it was underwater. Or a very bassy AM radio station.

Overall, I think XM people are romantic for another time in satellite radio history. When the services were pure. A time when none of their money had to go to Howard Stern, the channel line-up made more sense and it had personality. As a regular guy who listens there is no way of knowing just how bad the audio quality has gotten over the past six years. I know a lot of other things have changed and will continue to change because that is just the nature of the media business.

Channel Takeover Mania

Much of the talk in the music business these days seems to be about streaming music companies such as Pandora, Spotify and iTunes Radio although this hasn't diminished the intensity by which SiriusXM continues to tinker with the company's lineup. Over the last month SiriusXM has had or plans to have at least four channel takeovers varying in times of length, from a weekend to an entire month.  

There was the unannounced weekend takeover of channel 17, “Love” by online-only channel “Elevations” a couple of weeks ago. And “Kenny Chensey's Big Revival Radio” is set to take over channel 57, Y2Kountry September 22 through October 21 which will coincide with the artists new album aptly named The Big Revival, which will be released Tuesday, September 23.

Last week SiriusXM announced that they would preempt “Escape” on Sirius receivers, channel 69 for a month so that they could broadcast the “Barbra Streisand channel”.  And they added a channel to the XM side, channel 73 for all your Barbra Streisand listening needs. If you have a SiriusXM branded radio, those radios run on the XM network and receive the channel on 73 also. Streisand Radio runs from September 12 through October 10 and plays tracks from her catalog of 50 years or performances, both live and studio recorded.  This channel addition(XM) or takeover(Sirius) is also a big promotion for Ms. Streisand’s latest album Partners, which was released earlier this month.

And over Labor Day weekend channel 57, which is normally “Y2Kountry” was transformed into “Brad Paisley Radio” playing the country stars hits and BP’s favorite songs. Of course BP Radio paralleled with the release of Moonshine in the Truck, Paisley's latest album.

It seems that every weekend since “Y2Kountry” was introduced a couple of months ago that SiriusXM is selling out the channel to whatever country artist has an album released that weekend. Or they preempt channel 57 for “Red, White and Booze” which is one of SiriusXM’s 2.0 channels. Although they do a horrible job at the selling the channel when they preempt it for one of their existing channels.

Is preempting normal lineup channels for limited run, single artist/ band channels a good thing for the subscriber?

9 out of 10 times it isn’t. As a subscriber to either Sirius or XM since 2006, or both at one time before the merger, single artist channels or channel takeovers that play a majority of music from one artist or band are not a good thing for the paying customer. The last single artist/band channel that I enjoyed listening to on a consistant basis was two-years ago when the Dave Mathews Band was on their summer tour and had a dedciated channel for two months. In the forums that I read on a daily basis did many people lament why they didn’t believe that DMB was worthy of their own channel for two months. While I enjoyed listening to my favorite band have their own channel on SiriusXM I could understand why many more people did not like it and over time the channel did become very repetitive as the company didn’t update it very often.

In the past Michael Jackson has had his own channel on SiriusXM and while I am a big fan of MJ I couldn’t stand listening to the station that SXM produced. The playlists are very thin, the same popular songs are played over and over and once the station is in on the air you hear the same voice tracked DJs or special guests saying the same thing over and over and over.  In this day and age of Pandora and Slacker, where you can customize any single artist channel to your liking, SiriusXM’s very tight playlists of many of their single artist/band channels aren’t enough when they have the opportunity to play all tracks that encompass the career of the artist or band for the listener who is going to tune in and want to hear for B-side of the “Bad” album.

As for in-house channel takeovers that SiriusXM does from time to time. I think its a smarter idea that SiriusXM takeover existing channels, 1.0 channels with 2.0 channels on a regular basis and perhaps move a lot of their single artist channels such as Barbra Streisand and Kenny Chesney to the 2.0 lineup. SXM could advertise single artist/band channels on 1.0 channels that are available on the 2.0 spectrum. In addition, this would assist in customer migration to XM, 2.0 network where the future of the company is headed.

After following this topic for many years now through XMfan.com and other forums I see that a near majority of the time channel takeovers, regardless of the artist/band is, are usually panned by subscribers. The latest and greatest channel PR nightmare occurred earlier this year when SiriusXM decided that “40’s on 4” was going to be taken over by “Billy Joel Radio”. SiriusXM sees the bottom line first ahead of what their customers think of the company and that was apparent with the “40’s on 4” takeover. “40’s on a 4” in a way is an exclusive type of channel for much of the country, has music from 74 years ago is not normally going to be found on the FM or AM dial in most cities. SiriusXM doesn’t advertise like it is used to when there were two satellite radio companies, advertising the decades channels as playing music only from specific decades, like the 40’s could be a major selling point to those people who like that sound but don’t know there’s a service that offers a channel like “40’s on 4”.

The message is clear out of all of these channel single artist takeovers. SiriusXM will sell-out any channel in order to make money and has no regard for the paying customer or their listening habits. Advertisers and music recording companies are the true program directors at SiriusXM.