[indigodaddy]

I just started a siriusxm trial (never used before) on a new truck and the audio quality is so atrocious that I can’t bear to listen to it. Maybe for like sports talk it might be tolerable but definitely it’s so much worse than even radio (seems like 4x worse than terrestrial radio) for the audio quality that how can anyone pay for this service?

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I use it to listen to listen to talk radio, which does not have to be great quality. Business news/talk are also somewhat interesting. In other words, it has moments. It is ok for music if you are half deaf like me:D

[TylerE]

Because it existed for 15 years before data roaming existed.

[mikestew]

No, it’s because the audio quality used to be good, before they tried to see how many channels they could ram in there. Must have been going on 20 years now since we first got XM. When Sirius and XM merged,that’s about the time I recall the quality going way down.

And good luck to OP in cancelling that trial. We bought a new car, too, and I didn’t even bother to activate satellite radio.

[TylerE]

It was never good. Maximum bittate per channel was something like 48kbps.

[jrnichols]

it seems like they gave a bunch of satellite bandwidth to the stupid Howard Stern channels and cut back on the music ones. at least some of them.

[TylerE]

That happened in 2008. Relatively ancient history. Getting Howard was the entire reason they bought out Sirius