Stern the best thing to happen to Satellite (1 Viewer)

[RAF]

Actually, I'm already here. I activated a yearly SIRIUS subscription the day I purchased my Starmate Replay. Based on comparing the two systems, I'm dropping XM in a couple of months when the subscription runs out.

Howard is the main reason, not music. No question about it in my mind.

 

[Tom Brennan]

Yeah, its all about Talk radio for me, especially Howard and there is just no comparison. I actually talked a customer in Best Buy last night out of purchasing XM and going with Sirius as he was interested in talk radio options. It felt good!

 

[Brent T]

My brother and I were talking about how little music we listen to now.

We have ipods, hundreds if not thousands of cds (burned and original) and it comes down to the fact that would I rather listen to Stern, the NFL, Bubba, Maxim, Raw Dog, and Politcal talk or music that I have heard a bizzilion of times anyway.

Ofcourse there are times when you just gotta hear music or a certain tune. However for my day in and day out listening its become mostly all talk.

Maybe I am getting old too... most of the new music sucks

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Truer word's have rarely been uttered.

Today's music is pre-packaged, processed, ready-to-eat, bubble gum poppin', hip-hop bass slammin' dog shit IMO.

There's no more rock n' roll left, except for bands like Green Day who rock. It's to the point now where just about everything is rap and hip-hop.

Anyway, E.T.A. for my tax forms is this Monday, so I should have my return money by Wednesday and then it's off to Best Buy I go or where ever I can find a Sirius available and i'll be surfin' the Stern airways once again, only this time...LIVE from outer space, baby!

 

[Jeff Gatie]

It's funny, but until I got Sirius, my listening was 99.9% talk radio. I too felt that most new music sucks and to get to the few jewels you had to listen to hours and hours of crap. Now that I have Sirius, I can listen to whatever genre I want. At first, I listened to 1st Wave, which was my era. Now I find myself listening to Underground Garage, Standard Time, E Street, Disorder and a few others. There's always quality new/old music on and I don't have to listen to the same stupid ads 10 minutes every hour. Stations like Underground Garage have great "nuggets" that I either forgot about or never heard before (mostly because terrestrial radio watered down the selection to reach the widest demographic). Now that I'm older, I can appreciate the old standards from my parent's time without feeling like a nerd. And I can still switch back to my dear old 80's alternative if I like. It's like having a great college radio station that devotes a show to each genre, but instead of 1 show per genre per week, I get 60 channels 24/7.

 

[Chris_T]

The best thing about Stern's channels is the Pacific Time feed. This way by the time I get to work, I can listen to the entire show. Where as before, I would miss parts due to getting ready for work and commuting. I'm in agreement with Tom and Brent regarding how much Talk radio dominates my listening more than music. I go from Stern, to ESPN radio, to the NFL, to everything and anything. The variety is awesome.

By the way Robert, welcome to the gang!

Chris

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I prefer talk as well, I live in Delaware and it used to be Howard, than The Barsky Show and that's it, now (temporarily anyway) it's David Lee Roth (YUCK! but there's nothing else on) an Barsky, love the Barsky show!

In fact, even after I have Sirius I will still put him on everyday at 10am.

 

[ScottH]

I'd like to know what percentage of the people at these retail outlets really bought their receiver for Stern, but wouldn't admit to it!

Chalk me up as someone who bought it for Stern, but now realize I would want one regardless of Stern. My biggest disappointment is with the sound quality. Sounds like AM radio to me.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I heard that about the sound quality too, Scott, a freind of mine who listens to a lot of Salsa, which has a lot of trumpet instruments in it, had XM and he said the audio sounded really compressed and had a lack of sharpness and fidelity to it, he compared it to listening to an audio cassette tape.

It seems that Sirius has this issue as well.

EDIT: I was wrong, my freind had Sirius and not XM. Regardless, though, I need my Howard so I can live with the quibble of music fidelity, it'll be for casual listening anyway.

 

[Tom Brennan]

John, you bring up a good point and another interesting reason why satellite radio (and Sirius specifically) is better suited for talk programming. The forum description here at the HTF for both Sirius and XM incorrectly state that satellite radio is "high-resolution audio" and "sound quality that is to FM what DVD-Video quality is to standard VHS". This is simply not true and inaccurate. All of the content for satellite is compressed before it even hits the sky. That is how the technology works. The quality you get over the radio is not up to CD standards or even FM standards. It is mp3 standards, and at a lower compression rate. I think the quality difference some people hear when they say satellite is better quality than FM comes from the clarity of the signal, not the quality. That's why I laugh when I hear about the RIAA getting bent out of shape about portable devices recording music content as mp3s. Do you know how crappy that would sound? Archiving a compressed music stream and then recompressing it? No thanks! I'll stick to my mp3 player for archived music.

 

[ScottH]

The other thing I've noticed is that some channels are better than others. The Howard channel espcially doesn't seem to have that warbly compressed sound that a lot of the other channels have. I guess they gave Howard most of the bandwidth.

 

[Jaime J Nubes]

So what did you think of this morning's show? Man, they make a big deal out of Takei's laugh and I could see why.

I wasn't impressed with that Alt-Music channel broad who went into the studio later in the broadcast (I forgot her name).

Other than that, another good show.

 

[Tino]

Regarding the sound:

When I first activated my STARMATE receiver, i was listening to it thru the FM transmitter on 88.1 FM and I thought it sounded like crap, but I could live with it.

I then noticed that it had an FM out line so I hooked up my cassette adapter that I used my IPOD with and voila!, it sounds 100% better!

Try it out. The cassette adapter retail for about $20 at retail outlets. It's a huge difference.

 

[Tom Brennan]

Yes, having the sound hard wired is always the better option and will improve the sound quality you hear. Although the FM transmitter is pretty good, I use it at home.

 

[Brent T]

I have it hooked up to my reciever through the TAPE plugs and it sounds great. It also allows me to hear it on the other radios through out my house on 88.3.

Best of both worlds.

 

[TedT]

AND you can listen to it on the way home from work too! Now I don't mind having to sit in traffic on the way home from work!

 

[Diallo B]

i have had sirius since the beginning and there has not been this much buzz since i had the service.

i occasionally listened to howard on fm before but he really never caught my interest. since he came to sirius i gave it a listen a couple of times and he was pretty funny sometimes.

i agree about getting who ever that was off of the scroll machine. 'tits and news with robin' was just not funny.

regarding the sound quality, in order to get the best sound quality you must have the sirius hardwired. i couldn't tolerate listening to it any other way. i am a car audio person as well as a ht person. so my car set up is my mobile retreat as my ht setup is my home retreat.

after all this is the HTF so fellow HTFers you need to get the best quality sound possible!!!

 

[Curt Luther]

Howard and the crew is the best! I had XM and switched because of him and got a radio for my wife too. We have been without Stern for about 18 months in this area and it was amazing to hear them again. I am so glad Sirius was the smart one to strike the deal with Stern!


Curt

 

[Ralph B]

jeff: whats not funny about that? lol