XM or Sirius

make your decision on content and gear; not sound quality.....they both suck from the audiophile perspective. the signal is very compressed, the bass is 'one-note and it lacks depth. the better the gear the worse it will sound. i don't think you would like what a good DAC would tell you about the sound......sometimes it's better not to know.

all that said; satelite radio is a great thing for many situations. about 40% of the cars at the dealership i manage have XM and so most of my demo's have it. when i drive long distances out in the boonies it is great. near home at this latitude i do get lots of 'shadows' from the mountains and hills here in Western Washington State.

I bought Sirius at the end of last year before Howard Stern jumped to satellite. From personal experience and what I've read I agree with what Mikelavigne has said. The sound quality is poor and the signal is finicky. I hear equal complaints from both sides. I can even sometimes hear a "tinny-ness" to the sound through my headphones. The decision really comes down to programming, the features of the unit for your application and subscription packages.

Mikes experience mirrors mine, I chose Sirius for content and I do like the lifetime membership.

In two of my cars, one has XM and the other Sirius integrated into the sound systems. To me the audio quality seem the same. I much prefer the Sirius programming (jazz, sport, rock) although the XM programming also pretty good. My son put an after-market add-on XM unit in his car and the sound quality was not good with spotty coverage. In my experience, it seems that the add-on units are not as good as the integrated units.

Good luck,

Reg

Same as what's already been said. I have Sirius in my car, but have had a large number of rental cars which typically give you XM. IMO XM has better jazz and blues stations, with deeper playlists than Sirius. XM also has deeper punk and alt playlists (again IMO). Sirius may have the edge on pure Rock 'n' Roll. Classical is a toss up so far. They both sound like cr@p compared to a high end system and source (I sometimes bring my radio into the house and hook it into my system).