Hi,

Yesterday I had a chance to listen to a system which included one of these:

http://www.magnumdynalab.com/xmtuners-overview.htm

I'm sure there are many choices, in terms of products.

My question is: do any of you have experience with satellite radio and, if so, how do you like it, do you think it's a worth while investment?

thanks,

John

I have Directv, which includes some XM channels. I dont listen to them very often though, just periodically.

The sound is good, but I have no experience in something like this.

I just hooked up a syrius tuner to my 990 because I coould not get fm reception, sounds great to me, I also have it in my car so for about 20 bucks a mmonth for the 2 hook ups isnt bad

Hey Dr_JB,

I have a Sirius "Sportster", which is one of the portable receivers. I bought it about 2.5 years ago, and I only use it in my home system. Sound quality is OK, but you can tell it's lossy. We primarily use it for background music in the house when we don't feel like making a playlist. It's on a lot of the time.

Sometimes we complain that the music is repetetive. Of course, that goes for terrestrial radio as well, and perhaps we don't notice the repetition there because we simply don't listen for long periods. Fortunately, when you get tired of one format on XM, you can switch to something totally different.

Between Sirius and my Dish DVR, I really can't tolerate all the commercials on "regular" TV and radio. That's definitely a huge benefit for me and my wife; we just don't do commercials anymore.

So, if you're looking for high-quality audio, XM probably isn't the best choice. I'm sure that the device you pointed to in your original post has better processing and DACs, so I would expect to see an improvement there, but you're still dealing with a compressed format from the beginning. If you are looking for background music and a large selection of formats and tracks, give it a shot. If you don't want to make the initial investment for a receiver, I'm sure you could pick one up on eBay for a reasonable price and just give it a try. Then, if you like it, upgrade the receiver.

Bottom line -- we've been paying $11 a month (or whatever) for quite a while, and never really consider getting rid of it.

We have XM and the Polk XRT12 tuner, plus XM in one car. I agree with Otto that for background music it is good (and I think with the Polk it sounds about as good as it is going to get) and near-CD in most cases, but it is not lossless. The plus side is the huge seletion of music played. A downside is that XM continues to adjust its channel and music mix, and has eliminated some channels (such as a Latin jazz one) that were our favorites. We now tend to use our Sonos system more (lossless recordings) for critical listening at home and the XM in the car.

I will also add that I just use it for backround music and also in the backyard for bbq's

I wouldn't spend that much on a tuner since you are starting with about a 128k bit stream. I have Sirius and I think it is actually less than 128k. It is good for background music but that is about it.

Coming somewhat out of left field, IMHO, if you like the concept of commercial free radio, you can get a lot off the Internet. And unlike XM or Sirius, it's subscription free. There are literally hundreds of stations out there, with every genre and sub-genre you can think of.

I recently added a Squeezebox to my system. It will stream Internet radio as well as your CD collection. And there is a plug-in available that allows you to stream XM stations.

If you're sold on the Dynalab, I can tell you they have a solid, longstanding reputation in the tuner market.

On the other hand, if you're looking for more versatility, the SB offers more options and will also stream lossless formats, making it a good background music and critical listening solution.