atomicdog

My Fellow Lexus Owners:

I have the XM satellite radio installed in my 2008 ES 350 UL.

I am somewhat disappointed in the quality of the sound. I thought I would get more sound separation that I'm experiencing. I want to enjoy the ML sound system and don't feel that I am. A local FM station sounds better.

I was just wondering what others have experienced. Pray, tell.

AtomicDog

psp

Hi,

I have Sirius and mine sounds great. Some stations sound better than others, I think it might depend on the quality of the equipment and the recordings they are broadcasting.

FWIW:

My antenna is on the trunk of my car, centered below the brake light.

At first they did not have the connectors quite right and the right front speaker was not working on Sirius only. Have the dealer check the connectors.

I do not know about XM but I am very satisfied with the Sirius product, except for the 10 character flaw.

twister

As Peter suggested, check all the connections first. If some were not mated all the way, it will get loose after going over a few bumps on the road

Another thing if sound quality is bad on all the channels versus some of the channels? I can't speak for XM, but with Sirius you get different sound quality on different channels. A lot of this has to do with the original source of recording: either if its a music, live comedy show, oldies station playing vinyl, or some DJs playing mp3 instead of original CD. I also heard that satellite transmission uses mp3 compression to save the bandwidth.

In general, due to a high SNR (signal to noise ratio) and high fidelity of ML system, you going to hear imperfections easier. I remember some people complained last year about the quality of original Audio CD versus MP3 CDR and how it sounds different on ML system.

Everything comes down to a source of the signal, unless you have a physical problem with cable connections.

....

I could be wrong, but I heard that 10 char limitation hasn't been fixed.

350Dave

My sirius Vais unit sounds good (better than IPod, but not as good as CD or FM) - mine has a 17 character limit. When it was installed, I wondered;

1. Why no scrolling? I hav a 7 inch screen, and get less info than my Sirius Sportster Replay had on a 2 inch screen.

2. Why can't I have a live list of streams, old SSR could list by several choices (artist name, song name, stream name, etc).

While I am here, my VAIS screen never shows more than 2 of the 5 signal strength bars lit, but reception almost never fades. Anyone else?

atomicdog

Thanks to all that responded to my concerns and questions about the sound quality. I will have the dealership check out the connections. My antenna is located inside near the third brake light.

Also, the signal does fade out and I can't figure out why. I live in a small, midwest city of about 70,000 and no tall buildings (none over 10 stories).

psp

In terms of signal reception, trees appear to be a bigger problem than buildings.

warhummer

In general, the sound quality from satellite radio is not as good as from a CD and definitely not a DVD-A. The bit rate gets cut down to accommodate the shear number of channels, and the sound suffers as a result. Some would argue that having access to so many varieties while in the middle of nowhere makes up for the crappy sound. After driving across the USA for the third time, I tend to agree.