Sirius radio: you guys should anti-alias

My car has a satellite radio. I haven’t paid much attention to that feature since I got it because frankly I don’t want to pay for radio. I have enough music to carry around on a hard drive that plugs directly into my sound system, and I don’t have to worry about commercials, tunnels, weather, or other things disrupting it.

Someone at Sirius marketing had a good idea: give a free preview. It’s going on right now through November 27.

Too bad they didn’t tell the technical guys to ratchet down the compression a few notches so the music actually, you know, sounded good. Man it’s awful. So much aliasing in the higher frequencies, and I’m no audiophile. I was listening to the “Escape to Margaritaville” channel and during one song, a saxophone was turned into something buzzier and more annoying than Fran Drescher playing a kazoo. Even the voice overs sounded like they were being Auto-Tuned. That’s no good.

So thanks, Sirius, for the the free trial. I genuinely appreciate you giving me the opportunity to see how truly bad it sounds. I’m relieved that I am not missing out on anything and $12.95 a month can stay safely in my pocket. I’ll stick to my MP3s for now.

And if you do change things for the better, let me know. I’ll give it another (free) whirl.

2 Comments

  1. The Baroness on November 22, 2012 at 10:14 am

    Right!? First” RADIO that I PAY FOR??? You lost me…. Second, we drove up from Boston to Main and had 5 hours of rental-car Sirius. Aside from the fact that the selection only kept us entertained for about 2 hours, the poor quality of sound disconcerted me. I squirreled with the bass and treble settings but to no avail. Sirius is worse than MP3’s. and I’ve been arguing for a while that MP3s are wrecking the quality of music for a while. Especially if you appreciate jazz or classical. I’ve noticed the kids reverting to vinyl (though this may just be part of the Hipster Old-Stuff-Is-Better mentality). Anyway, nice to be vindicated!
    Cheers,
    /\/\

  2. Chris on November 22, 2012 at 7:34 pm

    I already pay for TV. Paying for radio isn’t much of a stretch. What got me was the terrible sound quality. If you’re going to have a pay service, I understand content is part of the equation, but it’s not the entire thing. If the content is good but it sounds like crap, why bother. I really don’t see how anyone pays for this service. It’s beyond bad, it’s actively annoying to listen to.

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