[Steve Daily]

Hey guys, maybe you can help me out. I just bought the Sportster Sirius Tuner which came with a plug and play car kit. Additionally, I also bought a home kit along with the tuner. I am fairly concerned though as I feel the sound quality I am getting from my tuner is really bad.

Right now I have it hooked up to my amp (NAD c340 and a pair of Paradigm Monitor 3s) using a decent Monster cable splitting the line-out jack to RCA outputs. I'm getting a strong signal from the Satellite as well. However, I'm concerned as everything sounds bad. It's clear, and there's no break-up. The sound quality is just nothing near CD-quality. Even FM radio sounds better. There's no bass response or high's from any channel. I'd say it's comparable to about a 64kb mp3. So is this normal? Should I be receiving such bad sound quality from this service? I'm guesing no, and there's hopefully some sort of issue with my Sirius equipment.

Anyway, which of these do you think it is (as I know it's not my amp, speakers, or cable)? Sportster Tuner, Home kit/docking station, or Sirius service, or am I just an idiot?

Thanks for any help/suggestions you might be able to offer as I'd really like to solve this problem.

[Chris]

Quote:

There's no bass response or high's from any channel. I'd say it's comparable to about a 64kb mp3. So is this normal?

No, not normal. Bass response on many stations I listen to is very good; and when pressed to a meter to show the output, it's generally satisfactory; I normally consider it about the equivelent of 128bit AAC.

Realize, if you're splitting the line out, you're getting dual mono, so if you're listening on a receiver in anything but Mono, DPL will cross most of this, out it to the center channel, and you're response will really suck..

[James Edward]

My TOTALLY unscientific findings, which may very well be based on wishful thinking:

I find that keeping the audio output level down on the Sportster(at the 2nd or 3rd level available) seemed to improve the sound slightly. Decent equipment will easily be able to apply the necessary gain.
Secondly, I seem to think that the sound is better with the FM transmitter turned off when I use it in my house system.

Lastly, it still doesn't sound all that great, but I do feel that the music makes up for the sonic shortcomings. I'd like the music AND the sonics- that would be a great thing...