Surprising Audio Quality

"Digital", in some cases, is not all it's cracked up to be.

The SQ of SiriusXM is just awful. That doesn't keep me from subscribing - just for the car - but it's surely not because of the SQ, which seems to only be getting worse, not better. My iPod sounds better. Much better. Really.

Agree with cleeds 100%.  I can't imagine what the bitrate is, but it has to be super low.  

Sirius XM audio is highly compressed, in the fact that they run all music through a pro-audio compressor/limiter mechanism (I’m sure this is to reduce the amount of data required, since it’s all based on mp3 type audio compression and they need to cram as much audio channels from satellite as possible). The dynamic range is severely limited when compared to CD. The sound is overall somewhat clean, but separation of instruments is not all together that great, and it can sound somewhat harsh. I have not listened to FM in the last 6 years, but the dynamic range is much better. Though, FM has more of a tube-like sound to it - not as crisp as satellite radio. I stopped listening to FM because of lack of local stations with good music and ungodly amount of advertisements and DJ garbage.

For critical listening in the car, or if i'm on a trip I prefer to listen to AIFF files from my AK300 over USB, but for casual listening on the commute to work or the supermarket I like to listen to radio. Though one of the pet gripes of my current Kenwood head unit is I often get poor radio performance using my Camry’s internal aerial. To solve that, and to update to the latest satnav, Apple and bluetooth technology, my next head unit will be a Kenwood DNX8160DABS which has DAB+ radio that should vastly improve the sound, whilst substantially expanding the list of stations I can pick up.