Ariel69

I normally use Sirius to listen to music and thought it sounded OK. For the first time, I decided to stream Pandora over my BT connection. What a difference! Streaming music from my phone just blew the sound quality that Sirius could generate. Does anyone know the specs as to what bitrate is being sent from Sirius? I'm sure any of the other streaming services such as Apple Music, Spotify, etc. would be close or even better than Pandora but I have not tested it.

hayde_bre

Sirius/XM always had low bitrate (although they claim 128kbps, it might depend on channels) that can't even compete with analog FM. So what you are hearing is garbage in, garbage out. I'll admit that if we had an equalizer on Bose 3D (if that's what you have) we could at least modify the sound a bit to make it more pleasing to the ear, but even with that, no amount of tweaking will get rid of the compression related issues that Satellite radio will suffer from. If you have a good data connection and if you really want to listen to those XM channels, use your cellphone and XM app, and stream at full quality.

I don't know if it's due to variable bitrate or just the way they compress the music, XM always sounds bad for me, I cannot stand it more than a few songs, this is why I never pay for it. I am sure sat radio is worth in certain areas of the country, but if you live in a big city, mobile streaming apps will be more suitable and better quality. I'd say stay with FM but the amount of commercial on FM drives one into madness, especially when they all agree to have commercials at the same time, which is why some people pay for subscription services.

PS: Try Amazon Prime Music or Google Play Music, they sound amazing too.

AudiFanFL

This is another example where my 'integrated' Amazon Alexa comes into play. Amazon Prime Music and basically everything else that is streamed simply sounds amazing. The radio-station I'm streaming from Bavaria/Germany over TuneIn sounds just as good as my local HD-radio sources.

And of course, the same applies to SiriusXM which can be streamed over Alexa as well...

Eppieguy

I second that, Alexa plays some amazing quality music in my Q7. I have not yet been able to stream via Bluetooth yet though.