Overcompressed Sound?

Greetings,

I'm new to Sirius after being an XM subscriber for a number of years. Since they're different brands of the same company with similar programming, I decided to take advantage of the receiver built into my new vehicle (2009 Mazda CX-7).

However, I'm greatly disappointed with the sound quality. The sound is very flat. It reminds me of mediocre Internet streaming audio. I find that the built in quality from the Sirius receiver is much worse than the FM transmitter quality from my XM SkyFi2. I find that the quality is worse than FM radio (I'm in central NJ getting channels out of NYC - crowded airwaves, decent distance away).

Does anyone else find the sound quality to be this bad?

Personally, I don't find the sound great but, there shouldn't be that much of a difference between the two. Maybe you just need to play with your equalizer on your new car. I often use different settings depending on whether I am listening to cd/satellite or music/talk.

You are probably experiencing the differences between the XM AAC plus & Sirius PAC codecs.

Bit Rate. I was told that the bitrate is 64 kbps on Sirius/XM. This is not acceptable if you're listening to anything but talk radio.