"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Lucky wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
David wrote:
On 3 Aug 2005 06:53:07 -0700, wrote:
In that case, all they'd need to get rid of is the interface to
the uP
and a mini-USB jack.
Steve
Not going to happen Fetish Boy. People want freedom of choice.
What do you have against a hi-fi feed of the BBC World Service 24
hours a day?
XM's feed of BBCWS is hardly Hi-Fi. In many cases it sounds
more like a
low bit MP3 with shaped response to filter out the higher levelss
of in
spectrum aliasing noise. More refined than 5975, lower noise for
sure. And
more detailed, perhaps.
Talk channels are more bandwidth limited than the music
channels on XM.
Most aren't stereo, either.
XM is a lot of things, but one thing it's never going to be is
Hi-fi.
I once called up Siri's sales dept and asked them if they
broadcast their
music in stereo. The first guy said yes, then when I said if he's
sure and
can I have his name, he told me to hold on. He switched me to
someone else.
This person said as far as he knows, it's in stereo but he can't
be 100%
sure.
How can a company not know if their music signals are broadcast in
stereo or
not? A poster in a group showed me pictures of Siri's receivers,
and a few
said "stereo" on them so I guess it is in stereo. I don't know
about XM. I
know at one time Siri had more sats in space then XM but they
launched a new
sat like 4-6 months ago.
I won't pay for the service either. I can find all the music I
want on FM or
on the net. Radio waves were meant to be free for listeners with
commercials
supporting the station. To me, this sat radio business is a
created
offspring of radio that has been hyped too much. But from many
people who
have the service, they say they'll never go back to "old style FM"
again.
I surely won't pay $13 or $15 a month for it. If it was like $3 a
month, I'd
try it.
Lucky
The music channels are in stereo. The talk channels, most but
not
all, are not.
Is that for both main flavors of satellite radio?
As for whether the goof in the phone center actually knows what's
being broadcast...they know what the cards, or the monitor in front
of
them says. Whether music is in stereo is not a question that comes
up
very often. Many of the phone monkeys don't subscribe. Many for the
samee reasons you don't.
Could also be that the guy doesn't want to lose
his job or be reprimanded by something like
answering this sort of question.
There was a discussion here a couple of years ago about stereo vs
mono broadcast and public perception. Most listeners don't really
understand stereo. Audiophiles obviously don't fall into this class,
but
the rank and file don't really understand what differientiates a
stereo
signal from monaural sound. For them, as long as the pilot is lit,
its
stereo. For some, even, if there are two speakers, it's stereo. No
matter what's actually coming out of them.
Considering some of the "Stereo" radios that are on
the market (the clock radio varieties, namely), the
radio itself isn't good enough to let people notice.
And receiver manufacturers haven't really helped this. In order
to
keep fringe signal noise down, most receivers have a blend circuit
that
slowly combines the left and the right channels according to signal
strength, or in some cases, strenght of the difference subcarrier.
In
many markets even the best stereo signals are heard by more than
half of
listeners at any given moment in varying degrees of mono, due to
the
blend circuit in their receivers. Listeners rarely notice and never
complain. Actual stereo audio is just not on their radar.
Using a Delco radio in a GM car in the 90's, you could
hear the difference if you paid attention. In Cincy, given
the hills and everything else, there are a lot of locations
where the FM signal will fade, and you could hear the
signal trend toward mono if you were listening, even
though the Stereo pilot was lit. The aftermarket Kenwood
in my current car doesn't have that to such an extreme;
it'll simply kick to mono. Just like the old Sears that I had
in the Volare I cut my driving teeth on in the 80s.
When AM stereo was new, a number of stations I was involved in
actually broadcast mono audio, but lit the pilot for it's cool
factor.
No one ever noticed.
WHAS, by any chance??
So don't be surprised if someone at the phone hole can't answer
your
question. They've not been briefed, because the question almost
never
comes up.
It's such a non priority, that my XM receiver, while being a
stereo
receiver, doesn't have a stereo annunciator. When it is you can hear
it.
When it isn't you don't.
Usually, unless there's something dramatically wide, you don't
notice
it one way or the other.
A nice way of finding the difference between FM,
satellite radio (or in my case, the Music Choice channels
from DirecTV) and regular CDs is to have them all run
through the same receiver. Switching back and
forth is very educational to how good the sound is
on each format.
This may be part of the reason that DRM doesn't generate more
buzz
than it does. If stereo audio was such a priority, most SW
broadcasters
would embrace it, promote it, shout it from the mountaintops, and
DRM
would be standard on radios worldwide.
So far, like AM stereo, and IBOC here, there are more stations
transmitting DRM for no apparent reason than there are listeners
clamoring for radios to hear it.
I suspect that the people for whom DRM was designed
for would be more likely to go and use an internet stream
or satellite radio solution than use DRM. YMMV, of
course.
--Mike L.