Show us your car audio receiver

[tamo3]

Thanks all for sharing your experience.

Mike,

It looks really nice! Love it.

Wade,

I used to use FM transmitter with my iPod. It was horrible sound. I rather buy like your system...

Does anyone install twitter on the door?

[Kurbycar32]

I have SatRadio in all of my cars. It's much better then FM broadcast, but is transferred at a lesser quality then a CD or most MP3's recording. If I'd had to guess I'd say the bit rate is in the 96 range. It's not 128 quality. Not a big deal for Opie and Anthony, but a little less then desirable for quality listening. FOr "just in the background" it's great.

Nailed it. If you have a quality sound system (not a punk arse kid with a douchebag hat vibrating 30 feet around him and his eBay fiberglass wing rattling even louder) the satellite radio sounds terrible above low volume. The compression breaks the sound separation so your tweeters and mids and subs all overlap into a symphony of distortion. I dumped my satellite radio after 9 years of use, it just got progressively worse over the years.

[ninjazombiemaster]

I had the Retrosound and was very satisfied with it, until it broke rather recently. I typically streamed Pandora over my phone into the Aux. Retrosound also has a new model with built in bluetooth and other goodies, but for the tune of $400, I'd rather just reinstall another basic unit. You can always do external bluetooth like Mike suggested. I have a Kenwood sound system and rear speaker box installed, and when it worked, it sounded fantastic. Very loud and good quality. I'll definitely try to fix it, or replace it if I can't.

[Travel'n Man]

Nailed it. If you have a quality sound system (not a punk arse kid with a douchebag hat vibrating 30 feet around him and his eBay fiberglass wing rattling even louder) the satellite radio sounds terrible above low volume. The compression breaks the sound separation so your tweeters and mids and subs all overlap into a symphony of distortion. I dumped my satellite radio after 9 years of use, it just got progressively worse over the years.

Jason -

Evidently you have not been inside many new cars recently with satellite radio. The higher quality cars don't stream via a bluetooth connection - the iPhone plugs into the car - sound quality is excellent. I would have a hard time turning Pandora off at this point. Unlimited selections of custom music stations - great sound quality - no commercials............

[Kurbycar32]

Jason -

Evidently you have not been inside many new cars recently with satellite radio. The higher quality cars don't stream via a bluetooth connection - the iPhone plugs into the car - sound quality is excellent. I would have a hard time turning Pandora off at this point. Unlimited selections of custom music stations - great sound quality - no commercials............

Pandora isn't satellite (its internet streaming) and does indeed have good sound quality, even the free one sounds better than XM/Sirius and the premium version sounds close to CD quality. The real problem with XM/Sirius is they have a finite amount of bandwidth coming from that satellite and they keep cramming in more channels expecting us "mindless consumers" to not notice they reduce the quality of existing stations to make new stations fit. If they cut their channel list in half they could increase the quality of their stream to match their 384k source files and double the quality of Pandora One's 192k stream (which sound good). I guess not enough people notice and complain so they keep making it worse..

[ninjazombiemaster]

Pandora isn't satellite (its internet streaming) and does indeed have good sound quality, even the free one sounds better than XM/Sirius and the premium version sounds close to CD quality. The real problem with XM/Sirius is they have a finite amount of bandwidth coming from that satellite and they keep cramming in more channels expecting us "mindless consumers" to not notice they reduce the quality of existing stations to make new stations fit. If they cut their channel list in half they could increase the quality of their stream to match their 384k source files and double the quality of Pandora One's 192k stream (which sound good). I guess not enough people notice and complain so they keep making it worse..

Exactly. I could turn my volume pretty loud even on the free Pandora and it still sounds good. My parent's have satellite in their car and its quality was acceptable. But if it loses signal for even a second the sound totally cuts out. That being said, it has better signal than most alternatives. Pandora on my phone can stream with even my slow internet (Edge) with brief delays between songs. 4G loads the song instantly, and it buffers enough that if my signal fades, the song keeps playing. I'm considering going pro after my radio is fixed. Better quality and more skipping of bad songs. Plus its nice to be able to mold your station than be stuck listening to things you don't like. Definitely the way to go. The internet is expensive, but if you have it anyway, why not?

[kjohnson2444]

I have had XM for several years and I like it for the content. I don't listen to it very loud, so I don't really notice any quality problem. Besides, it is in my car with lots of exhaust, wind, and road noise. Like I said, I listen for the content, not the quality. If XM 30 The Loft, and a couple other stations were broadcast on Pandora, I would drop my XM subscription and listen on Pandora. There are XM radio apps for iOS and Android devices now. I wonder if the quality is any better than the satellite broadcast? My 240z has the original AM radio which is useless for music. I am thinking about a couple of small Bluetooth speakers and just streaming from my phone.