Toys4RJill

I haven’t listened to AM in a long long time. Years. Interesting I accidentally I hit the screen icon today lol. Anyways, isn’t AM for emergencies? Wouldn’t it be needed during a hurricane? Or other emergency?

FrankReynoldsCPA

IDK about the airwaves up in Canada but down here AM is also home to a lot of talk radio, sports etc.

It's a terrible listening experience because of all the interference.

LH1

Huh? SiriusXM has great quality. It's crystal clear.

geko29

If by "crystal clear" you mean "has no static" than yes, that's an automatic outcome of digital transmission. Either you get what was broadcast or you don't. That's why you get dropouts instead of artifacting when you drive under a bridge.

But the actual quality of the sound itself is abysmal. All music channels have a bitrate of 32kbps or 24kbps. Premier talk stations are at 24kbps, while most are at 16 and things like the weather and some news channels are 8kbps (and basically unintelligible) Now, this is a more efficient codec than MP3, so bitrates are not directly comparable. But the better option, 32kpbs, is roughly equivalent to an 80 or 96kbps MP3, while the lower is more like 64kbps. For reference, the "low-end" MP3 bitrate we used to use 20+ years ago when storage was a problem, now pretty much everything is 320kbps, and there are far higher-quality codecs in widesepread use.

Their satellite platform has a hard limit of 64kbps, and with the relatively efficient codec, when they used to use that bitrate for a few flagship music stations back prior to 2008, it actually sounded fairly decent in the car. But we are 15+ years past their decision to trade quality for quantity.

Now, there is a caveat. Streaming XM via the mobile app with quality set to high nets you 256kbps, which is more than adequate for a noisy car environment. But to bring things back on topic after the above diatribe, using that in an integrated fashion in the car and actually taking advantage of that higher-quality audio requires CarPlay or Android Auto, which is one of the things GM has been moving away from in favor of their own rubbish. There's a good chance that at least some of the hundreds of software developers who were just laid off are responsible for maintenance and improvement of this infotainment platform, which would mean it will only get worse.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

great post geko. i guess streaming siriusxm from the phone app to the car is using terrestrial data source and not the satellite which is why it can be higher bit rate.
it's not only the archaic format, interruptions, forced content choices, etc, that make sirius a loser, it's also their customer 'service' where if you want to cancel they will keep you on the phone for ages offering different deals so you don't walk. i did that for a few years caving in to their very low offers but eventually i realized i was going to call and do whatever it took to cancel. probably still took over half an hour and eventually being uh, very blunt with the poor person on the other end. but then it was over.... aaaahhhhh

i still get a postal mail offer from them probably every other week which goes straight in the garbage.

Allen K

iTrader: (4)

Misread by me. They provide an OnStar trial when you first get the car. Once that trial runs out, the options are Android Auto / CarPlay, tether your phone to the car, or subscribe to OnStar. You lose all data to the car so even built-in Google Maps doesn't work for anything but the basics I believe. Connected vehicle plan is below

https://www.onstar.com/plans/connected-vehicle

Striker223

I guess the mass data collection and selling of all customer driving and location habits will be taking up the majority of the remaining team members time and effort then!