steverhode

I am new to XM radio in the car although I do listen to its music on DirectTV at home on various speakers, as well as many of its news stations via DirectTV.

I found the XM content to be as varied as I expected and the music to have the quality I expected -- good, but nothing to write home about.

My one major negative surprise was the compression of the news channels, which sound very tinny and much like earlier digital cell phones, very unnatural. CNN Headline News, for example, sounds great on DirectTV, no matter how poor the quality speakers I pipe it through, but it does not sound natural in the car. On the other, there is a local AM station here that frequently retransmits CNN Headline News and it sounds more natural on the AM station, even if there is a bit of static.

(This is an XM radio issue and not a 2008 GS350 issue.)

If I had it to do again, I would definitely still have the XM installed. It's worth it.

Are others similarly infuriated with the sound quality of the news when listening to it on XM in your car? (And is there any audio setting to make it more tolerable? For the record, I have ML in my new GS.)

rgarjr

iTrader: (1)

I have XM and Sirius and I dont care about the news, talk or sports, I just hear music.

TMaxxTim

XM and Sirius compress their talk-radio signals so that they can allocate more bandwidth to the music channels. Yea they don't sound great...but neither does AM radio, and XM is definately better than AM.