XM Satellite Radio Review

Meet the New Antenna

I am a big fan of radio. In fact, it is primarily what I listen to. I love the variety; tons of great music I've never heard of, and not having to change discs constantly is nice too. Regular old over-the-air radio has been going downhill for me though. In my area we have a few public and college radio stations that I've really loved and donated to in the past. Recently, however, much to my disappointment, these stations have been declining in quality quite a bit, in terms of both programming and reception quality.

So I've moved to internet radio. An even greater selection, I can listen to great stations all over the world. If you find a high bandwidth station and feed that signal through a nice computer sound card or something like the to your stereo you can get pretty good sound quality. Still, it has many drawbacks. Even the most stable internet radio streams are subject to dropouts, and available bandwidth can fluctuate greatly, reducing sound quality. Not to mention you need a computer to play, which introduces a whole new host of issues. Great content, but not a reliable medium.

Early on in its existence, I'd written off the idea of satellite radio. PAY for radio!? No way! I was intrgiued by the possibility of vast selection and a more stable feed than terrestrial analog radio, but the idea of another monthly bill for radio was a real turnoff.

Then this review came along along with a free, limited activation period for XM radio. You know what they say: "the first hit is free". Well, I just might be hooked. There is a long list of stations, in every genre you could want. Is 14 different rock stations enough for you? I don't care how obscure you think your particular genre is; there's a pretty good bet it's here (see a full listing here). I was quite impressed by this. The selection is one thing, but the quality of the music on each channel is another. I'm a fan of many genres: Jazz, Classical, all kinds of Rock, World, Reggae, Hip Hop, Funk, R&B, Blues, Latin/Salsa, you name it. Problem is, I am pretty picky about music within each genre. We all know that within even our most favorite kinds of music there is a lot of garbage. Well, XM left out all the garbage. I could always find something I liked. The quality of the music selection was consistently very good to great.

Sound quality, however, is one area where it doesn't quite live up to the hype. The sound quality is good, but it is not "CD Quality". Marketing types like to throw this line out every chance they get, and it's my job to tell you that at this moment, it's just not there with this particular medium. Don't get me wrong, it sound can very good. It is very clean and clear, and there is no noise. It is very dynamic and lively. All of the elements of the music are well defined. It is on par with typical terrestrial analog radio or higher bandwidth internet radio. It is not "audiophile quality" (as vague a term as that is), and it is not equivalent to CD. Satellite broadcasts are working within similar constraints to internet broadcasts: limited broadcast bandwidth and compressed music files. If you've got a station using highly compressed music files, then music isn't going to sound much better than listening to a highly compressed file on your computer.

This brings up another issue regarding sound quality; I heard a lot of variability in quality between stations, and even from song to song on the same station. I did a little investigating, but wasn't able to get any solid facts on this matter. It appears that stations may be using different compression methods, and bandwidth may vary from station to station.

One caveat about reviewing the sound quality, is that it is stuck in the Yamaha Receiver. While I was impressed with the receiver's overall sound quality, it is still limited, and the XM radio service as I reviewed it could only sound as good as the Yamaha. I kept wishing that I could listen to it through my main stereo system, which consists of a separate pre amp/dac, tube amplifier, etc. I know that my complaints about XM's sound quality are due to compressed broadcasts, which has nothing to do with the stereo, but I am curious nonetheless.

Having lived with the convenience and wonderful programming of XM Radio, it just might be something I can't live without. Selection and content are superb, and I could always find a few things I really wanted to listen to. Sound quality is not the "CD quality" it is hyped up to be, but it is still very enjoyable. The quality of the programming more than makes up for it for me. I guess the next step for me is to start bugging Polk Audio for one of their XM component tuners...