Polk Audio XM Radio Reciever A Winner

The Polk tuner is nothing more than a repackaged Delphi Skyfi, with a better output stage. It's got the same buggy menu, the same quirky channel list, and the same remote. It also fails to respond to "learnable" remotes in the same way the Delphi fails.

The analog section of the Polk is dramatically superior to that of the Delphi (obviously), and if you can connect the Polk to your TV, it's a wonderful thing to see the song titles. (The Polk's builtin display is too small to read across the room.) I really liked routing the display to my TV.

Unfortunately, my Polk went totally dead last night, after it had been giving me green screens on my TV since I got it. I'm sending it back to Crutchfield, and I'm NOT replacing it. I'm pretty disppointed that something sold as a "reference" tuner doesn't even come close to a reference product, and goes so far as to have its core made by a car parts company (Delphi). I won't touch it again.

I like it. Sound quality using external DAC is good. I use the DAC in my Krell CD player and the sound is dynamic and detailed with good soundstaging. Compared to FM, I'd say much better than the Revox 760 tuner I have been using but that's not a great sounding FM tuner.Program choice is good and I particularly like the world music channels which have opened up some new listening for me. At the price, compared to what we all spend on interconnects and power conditioners, I can't see why you wouldn't buy it given the amount of music it provides. Of course if Krell make a higher quality unit, we'll all be off on another roller coaster ride to audio perfection and impending bankrupcy.

I see the most improtant attribute of this receiver as the digital out which allows you to use an outboard dac, like Custodian uses. It is much improved over the Delphi models but the big bump will be using a high-end dac. I will be adding an Opus 21 to my system later this week and will post the results running the XM through that dac.

Running the optical output from the Polk XM to my Levinson 360s smokes the Delphi SkyFI (analog only outputs), as well as the analog outputs from the Polk XM (as one would expect). I've been using my Polk XM for almost 6 months without any problems.

I recently ran a signal from the Polk receiver's digital out to the DAC in my new Resolution Audio Opus CDP and the improvement was dramatic. It sounded as good as a cd, that is a cd in my old cd player. Then I compared it to a cd played through the Opus and it came up short, by a lot. Great for casual listening but it is not a high-end piece, at least compared to my new CDP. I will be adding a Monarchy DIP and will see if that improves it. I would not be without an XM radio. It is a huge blessing for the variety of music it offers and there are no commercials which is a big bonus for me.