XM Radio music better sounding than Bluetooth / ipod via USB

[morvegil]

Anyone else notice this? My XM has good bass and sound, compared to my Streaming Spotify, Pandora, or my IPOD connected via USB

 

[chris41]

I get enhanced bass too, but not in a good way. The bass sounds muddy and not tight. The sound quality of my satellite radio is OK but far from spectacular.

 

[MikeyTG]

The opposite for me. Bluetooth music via my Android phone sounds better than XM.

 

[xsolara]

Just about anything sounds better..... not satisfied with XM at all

 

[ksoze]

With BT, make source the source (iPhone, etc.) has it's volume up, almost to top. Then use the cars volume control to raise or lower to your taste. When the phone volume is set low and you crank up the cars volume, it will get muddy. Always better to raise the devices volume up near top and use the cars volume.

 

[AustinTX]

Anyone else notice this? My XM has good bass and sound, compared to my Streaming Spotify, Pandora, or my IPOD connected via USB

Hello morvegil,

That's an interesting phenomenon you are describing, and it sounds odd that compressed satellite radio yields better quality sound than other sound sources. A few things may influence the quality of the music you feed into the system, and you should start by checking on these.

The Pandora streaming app has a setting for "Higher quality audio" - under "Settings > Advanced" on my Android phone - please make sure that's checked. This setting will use less compression (and higher bandwidth, so this might impact your data plan on your phone) to get music from the Pandora servers. Spotify probably has the same ability, I don't use that service though. The iPOD sound quality issue sounds odd - can you check what bit-rate was used to compress the music on there? Lower bit-rate will use less memory on the iPOD, but it also compresses the music by removing highs and lows and making it sound more muddy. I always use the highest bit-rate available when storing data (I mostly use streaming now though).

Some channels on SiriusXM radio have great sound, I wrote about their technology in this tread: http://genesisowners.com/hyundai-genesis-forum/showthread.php?18680-Sirius-Sound-Quality-vs-Bluetooth-Streaming&highlight=siriusxm

Overall, music from Pandora, Spotify and especially connected devices such as phones and iPODs should sound as good, if not better than Satellite Radio if high quality streaming is enabled. The suggestion of suing the highest possible sound output level on your device is definitely good, I can confirm that making the Genesis radio louder vs. the output device yields less quality results.

Let us know if any of this works for you.

 

[RyanB]

I only listened to XM a few times since buying the car and to me it sounds really bad. Very muddy and no bass. I use an Android and with all the enhancements turned off and the eq set to normal on my phone the sound quality on from the phone sounds way better.

 

[MikeyTG]

With BT, make source the source (iPhone, etc.) has it's volume up, almost to top. Then use the cars volume control to raise or lower to your taste. When the phone volume is set low and you crank up the cars volume, it will get muddy. Always better to raise the devices volume up near top and use the cars volume.

I also run my phone's volume all the way up as you describe, maybe that's the secret to getting good BT sound. Be sure to turn it up after you start BT playing - on my phone BT has its own volume that only shows up when BT is playing.

 

[Seejay]

USB MP3 keys or discs are the best for a lot of reasons. If XM had a higher bit rate it would be better, but there is a lot of latency in satellite radio digital streaming. Using the phone involves at least two, if not more, digital to analog and analog to digital conversions and high latency. The conversions are the reason that the volume knob on the source has to be maxed out, so that you get all the bits.

I use three 32GB USB keys with 320kb MP3s (there are approximately 2600 songs per key) on a keyring that stays plugged into the audio system. About every couple months, I rotate them. My Miles Davis discography takes about 4-5 days to go through, gotta love it.