HD Radio

[MacNut]

That is the basic problem with digital content in general. The compression and artifacts make it worse then analog in most cases. In theory digital is better but only if they are giving you full quality.

 

[todd2000]

You forgot to mention that satellite radio doesn't play the same crap over and over. That's my favorite part

Yes that too! As for sound quality, It (Sirius) sounds perfectly fine to me, and they even offer a 128K online stream (for a small fee of course )


As a side note for all you Sirius or XM subscribers if you haven't already check out http://www.siriusmac.com. They offer applications to stream Sirius and XM without using the web interfaces. The Sirius one is great because as some of you probably know Sirius's web player sucks for Mac.

 

[Chris from pa]

HD is a waste of radio.

HD Radio is a waste of a thing to buy. The only reason why FM has created it is to keep up with XM and Sirius that more people choose to listen to everyday. They say HD has a better cd like quality , but regular FM dosn't sound much worse unless you hit alot of static. Also you pick up all the same FM Stations and just a little more stations. Like a station called Q102 which is a hit station, I heard that there HD2 station is a Spanish Hit station, 95.1 WZZO a rock station near by just broadcast baseball game sports (Just like my XM),and from what I know my favorite station 100.3 The Beat (Hip-Hop and R&B) dosn't have a HD2 Station and if it did it would be some old skool junk so all the good FM stuff is already on HD 1 stations that come on all radios. The only benifit is that after you pay a fortune for HD Radios no subscription is required. I love my XM though, with all the hit stations, rap stations, rock / alternative stations, and baseball games and stuff and if I had a Sirus I would enjoy listing to Eagles games on NFL stations. So I am Regular FM and Satalite.

 

[tommyz23]

Interesting. That explains why it doesn't sound as good in the car (like 128kbps). A friend of mine has XM in his and it was definitely still better than HD Radio hands down which, like I said, was like 96kbps at best (I'd rather deal with the occasional FM static). I could definitely hear the digital artifacts. I won't be buying one on purpose or at least just for HD Radio.

What my ears hear:

Source: mp3 quality

HD Radio: 96kbps
XM: 128kbps
DirecTV XM: 192kbps

HD Radio uses a more advance compression than MP3 so you can't compare bit rates.

It's kind of like comparing MPEG2 to MPEG4 in video. MPEG4 can get a better picture from less bandwidth.