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#14
August 3rd 05, 09:28 PM
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"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. |
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