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SiriusXm

Snake Doctor

Snake Doctor

Active Member
When I first got SiriusXM for my car back in 2011 I was very excited, news, sports and most of all music! Since I keep a car for a long period of time I signed up for the lifetime program so I have been listening on their dollar for a couple of years.

It seems as if the signal isn't as strong as it once was, up until the last two years it didn't matter where I was the stations came in loud and strong. Now stations cut in and out similar to what AM stations use to do. Remember when you were stopped and the cool station you were listening to went away, but move your car up ten feet and it came back loud and clear?

Has anyone else experienced the same problem? I read, heard, saw a small blurb that SiriusXM was talking about cutting back on the signal strength, has anyone heard anything about this? Just color me pissed.

If I posted this in the incorrect category please move it, but General Audio Discussions seamed logical.
 
I do get cutouts. IMO it's line of site. Going to my son in VT., the terrain where the interstate is in between where they cut threw mountains to build the road. Plus Trees are an issue Winter no problem In same place leaves in full bloom cutout. Sat's loose line of site. Same as Direct TV. The dish has to see the sat. The other factor, radio says "lost signal".
 
I'm not sure- we were customers until early this year, but then it was pretty strong. Used to be, if you had clear line of sight to the sky (or at least nothing like a tall building or mountain next to you), you got a good signal.

But given what they charge, they don't really have a lot of room to dink around with things and cut back. We finally realized it cost one whole hell of a lot for three vehicles.
 
I'm still on my free trial after buying the suburban, and I've noticed cutouts as well. Even one place where it cuts out and it shouldn't. But for the most part, it's been pretty reliable. Bigger problem for me is normal radio doesn't come in so well with the new fangled antennae that they have on them now. Both the Traverse and the Suburban had issues pulling in a station that I could easily pick up in my old suburban.
 
I feel like the dropouts come from satellite positioning. We don’t use them anymore, hated calling every 6 months to renew the pricing.
 
My issue is with the actual device being used. I also have the lifetime plan and for ten years used the XM Roadie plug in device that could be hooked up via a cable or wireless. No matter what I used I'd lose signal going under a bridge for like one second. Seems the signal with those roadies has to be ever constant with the sat in the sky. Then when I bought my new car with a built in XM radio I never had any dropouts again. Maybe it has a stronger antenna then the roadie had. My main issue is that Sirius/XM keep adding more and more channels and that takes away the signal from the already established channels. From research it appears most channels are running at between 32 and 64kbps which sounds horrible and gets even worse when they play football games as they place more signal strength on those channels during the games which decreases the strength from other channels even further. Most people only listen to about ten channels on average. I feel they should decrease the channels to fifty tops instead of the over 200 channels and increase the sound quality of each of each of those fifty channels to at least 128 - 256 Kbps per channel. Seriously we don't need traffic channels for each major city your in traffic already and stuck eat with it. We don't need religious or comedy channels. We don't need special one band only channels like The Beatles, Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen only channels. Use those fifty channels to get a wide variety of music channels only increase the bandwidth to each channel and let us enjoy the music. I have lifetime for the last fifteen years and barely listen in my car as the music is horrible sounding. I even got the free internet with my lifetime so I let my mother use that. She plays it over her iPhone and Bluetooth it to her car radio and uses it on her Amazon echo in the morning. She uses it way way more than me. I just hate the sound quality
 
I agree the bandwidth is really bad. It reminds me of the old AM/FM stations, where you lose the channel, but move your car up three feet and the channel returns. This is something new for me within the last two years. Also, in the beginning there were no advertisments, now not so much, someone is hawking their .... whatever.

It is very disappointing because I want to listen to music of all kinds, sometimes oldies, country, jazz, classical, news, but as you said fifty channels would be plenty. I was beginning to believe no one else had this problem, I don't believe is the device, it happens in my car all of the time.
 
FYI...

You can choose the quality for streaming. Streaming or downloaded in high quality sounds really good. But satellite does sound pretty bad.

Mr.6
 
My free trial ends this month, and I'm on the fence on whether to keep it or not. Best I'll do is the $50 they want for a year though, although at times I think that is even too much. It's not as convenient, but my phone hooked by bluetooth and streaming Alexa sounds way better than Sirius.
 
Huey said:
My free trial ends this month, and I'm on the fence on whether to keep it or not. Best I'll do is the $50 they want for a year though, although at times I think that is even too much. It's not as convenient, but my phone hooked by bluetooth and streaming Alexa sounds way better than Sirius.
Click to expand...
Do like I do. Everytime it is up for renewal I call them and satmybi want to cancel. They offer so so deals until they finally offer $25 for 5 months. In your case $50 is better so each time it comes up ask for that or you'll cancel. They'll fold everytime
 
I've heard they are easy to work over, just not sure I'd use it enough to justify even $5 a month.
 
Hmmm, I really don't have any complaints about the sound quality. I don't think its all that bad, or I guess I have had really good luck.

But then again, it seems all I listen to lately is Volume (talk radio about music) so sound quality is probably not critical.
 
I spend on average 4 hours a WEEK in my car, especially since retiring so they would have to pay me to make it worth it. :bouncygrin:
 
Randy said:
Hmmm, I really don't have any complaints about the sound quality. I don't think its all that bad, or I guess I have had really good luck.

But then again, it seems all I listen to lately is Volume (talk radio about music) so sound quality is probably not critical.
Click to expand...
If you Alexa on your phone, bleutooth it to your truck and stream some music on the app. I was surprised at the difference in sound quality between Alexa and Sirius.
 
Huey said:
If you Alexa on your phone, bleutooth it to your truck and stream some music on the app. I was surprised at the difference in sound quality between Alexa and Sirius.
Click to expand...

I do not have. I will look into it.
 
I have it for my car and the online streaming version in my home, I like the variety of music I get. Have been listening to a lot MSNBC and NPR, I kind of lost interest in Howard Stern show. So I should probably change that preset to something I would listen to more, maybe the sports channel for MMA.

FYI, I don't have unlimited streaming that so that limits my listening with that.
 
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