XM Radio and why it sucks
A couple weeks back, someone rudely hit my car as it was parked on the street in front of my house. As a result, I’ve been in rental cars for a couple of weeks now. One of those rental cars was a brand new Cadillac DTS.
That car came with XM Satellite radio, and that gave me about a week to try it out.
Let me tell you, XM Satellite Radio is crap. I’m not even going to say that I think it is crap– I’m going to outright say that it is crap. Let me explain.
First, it just does not work very well here in Downtown Savannah. As I drove through the squares– very common for locals and even more common for tourists– XM cut out every 60 seconds or so, for at least 5-10 seconds at a time.
Now I know that trees block the signal, and I know that we have a lot of trees. But, I also know that local AM and FM radio stations have no signal problems here in Savannah. I also know that XM bills their product as digital radio. Fine, it’s digital. But who cares when it is basically unusable?
Every time the signal dropped, it showed me that XM is really a step backwards.
Another reason: Their music sucks. I basically listened to six or seven stations. Blues, reggae, classic rock, 60s, 70s, CNN, and some talk station.
I heard zero BB King songs on the blues station. I heard zero Buddy Guy songs on the blues station. I heard zero Muddy Waters songs. I heard zero Robert Johnson songs.
I heard many, many “new” blues songs by artists with less soul than the whitest white guy you’ve ever seen. Imagine Larry Bird singing blues. Or maybe Conan O’Brien. I imagine that would sound a lot like the crap XM plays.
Not only did XM play a very crappy selection of blues, but also in a week I heard several songs repeat several times. Blues is a huge genre. Let’s not repeat until we’ve played some of the classics, OK?
Another reason XM sucks: Their DJs suck. I don’t know where they got these guys, but they’re just terrible. They’re annoying, their sound quality is poor, and they fail to provide anything of value to the broadcast.
Here is the main reason XM Radio sucks: XM Radio sucks. OK, to expand: The sound quality sucks.
It really does. If you disagree, that is either because your ear is weak, or you are in denial that you were suckered by a marketing pitch and are paying for less-than-FM quality radio.
I’ve done some research. The research indicates that XM’s average bitrate is 64kbps. Their minimum is 32kbps, and their maximum is 80kbps.
NONE of these equal the quality of FM radio.
This is just like the digital cable myth. Everyone thinks that because it is digital, it must be better. Well, folks, I hate to break it to you but digital cable is actually digitally delivered cable. Basically, it is the cable companies’ way of saying, “Please, pay us more for lower quality.”
Don’t believe me? Fine. Just go ahead and keep watching your crappy digital cable with its poor picture on your overpriced lcd/plasma tv that can’t produce a picture at the same quality of a tube tv.
Ignorance is bliss, and marketing is gospel.
Mike
August 6th, 2006 at 10:44 am
I agree 100% i just got a vw gti w/ 3 months of free xm included. To be honest I wasn’t even gonna give it a chance, but it was good to listen to world cup broadcasts while driving to work or somewhere else.
The quality sucks really bad, it’s staticky like a mis-tuned FM radio station. You can really tell when someone says the letter ‘S’ in a word (e.g. success). It sounds terrible! And you’re supposed to pay for this? There’s apparently XM HD or something which delivers 5.1 sound, which is kinda cool, but it’s still not every station and that makes it not worth it at ALL
128kbps mp3’s sound a lot better than the normal XM stream.
I gotta say i was really dissapointed.
September 28th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
I agree completely. I think that XM overstates the quality but I would comment that it is better that regular FM. My biggest problem with XM (I need to vent right now) is that the music selection sucks. When I first got XM I thought I was going to be enlightened. I thought I would be opened up to a whole world of great music I hadn’t heard before. Well there is a great deal of music I haven’t heard before but for the most part it is crap. Almost all of the stations have very limited play lists that are recycled over and over again. Many times I see the same song being played on 2 or 3 of the same stations at the same time. I stopped listening to xm for a while but when my ipod was stolen I was forced to revisit the hell that is XM. I have found myself driving to and from work (30 min each way) searching for something to listen to, as if I was up at 3 in the morning channel surfing on the tv. Many times now I have considered tossing the f*ing thing out the window and ridding myself of the torment I XM puts me through. I will not be renewing my subscription and I would suggest that anyone interested in XM borrow a friends for a while before purchasing an annual agreement.
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:54 am
Totally agree. Although, I have to disagree with the poster above who thinks the sound quality is better than FM. Its horrible here in Boston. FM sound quality is significantly better than XM.
I had a similar Ipod death experience, and ended up burning 6 cds of songs rather than listen to XM… Hah.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Just another testimonial to the bad sound of XM. On talk channels,every “s” ends up sounding like Stephen Hawking`s speech machine. You can run the treble all the way down,and then you get muffled audio that is over-sibulant! I decided to listen to talk only on AM,because even though treble is low,it at least sounds natural. Music on XM is sometimes passable,depending on the channel and song. But most music sounds watery,like “cooked” MP3s.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
I have had XM for over two years and the sound does suck. (flat, tiny, dull) One reason is becuase they use crappy processing equipment and second the bandwidth is so low. Every new station means less bandwidth for the others. Most FM radio stations use a well known signal processor that begins with an “O” and ends with a “D” XM decided to use a cheaper brand. I hate listening now.. It drives me up the wall. Flat,tincan sounded crap..
April 6th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
I recently re-activated my XM for a road trip. I had a 3 month free trial when I bought my car but didn’t listen to it much. So I got online and it said try it month by month for $12.95 a month. I got my bill and they had charged me $55.00. After calling and waiting forever I got a guy named Jorge in Panama City Panama. Could hardly speak English and kept giving me the run-around and telling me I had signed up for the 3 month plan (even though my XM receipt states clearly MONTHLY. He said he would credit the difference back to my credit card and never did. Called back same story. When I asked the persons name in Panama this time I was told it was Susie. I asked for her last name for my records she said she couldn’t give it to me so I asked for her extension #, empluyee ID, first letter of last name and so on. Nope can give you any of that info. I asked her how many Susie’s worked there and she said a lot. So if I don’t get a credit this time who do I tell them I talked to? Just tell them Susie she said Anyway I’m cancelling as soon as get my credit. Oh by the way when I listen to XM there are commercials galore!! I thought it was supposed to be commercial free?? It’s all crap
May 15th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Yeah I just got a new car with XM factory installed. I’ve had Sirius for years. Sirius is better in every aspect than XM. Reception is improved in large cities with repeater stations that allow to hear uninterrupted signals even in parking garages in downtown Austin. The programing and songs are 100% better and the DJ’s have a real background in music. If ever faced with the option get sirius.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
pretty soon, none of what any of you are talking about will matter when these two join forces.
as a sirius subscriber, i’ll have to pay the price. i’m sure they’ll make everyone buy new equipment that has sirius (being the smaller of the two companies).
i’ll also have to listen to commercials on the xm music stations, where as i didn’t have to with sirius. everyone knows xm’s programming is terrible compared to sirius’.
xm even has their own music in between songs… who the hell wants to hear that? one time listening to it on tv (through direct tv, i believe), the rap station was on and i was listening to a guy rap about xm. you tell me if that’s not the most moronic thing you could possibly hear on a service you’re paying $13 a month for.
as soon as sirius becomes tainted with xm’s crap, that is when i will pull the plug on it and go back to burning cds to play in my vehicle.
June 9th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
I have to agree with you all on the sound,,a freind of mine brought in his sirius for us to listin too,,and my god,,it blew my xm away,,,i was sorry for getting it and listining to it for the last 2 yrs,also i reason i bought it was to here opie and anthony,,and thinking that you could say anything on it,,well,,how wrong was I,,they were suspened for 30 days,,what a bunch of shit,,xm does suck
July 27th, 2007 at 10:28 am
The worst thing about XM is their customer service, or lack thereof. Everytime I call, I get someone in Calctta or Bangladesh who I can barely understand– or who is unkowledgable and/or outright lies to me just to get me off their line. The last time I called, I demanded to speak to someone in the United States and was hung up on. I called back and was finally given a number in Washington, D.C., which was a voice mail. I left a message and no one ever called me back.
I am tied into a contract for one year, and after that I am canceling the service for good.
July 29th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
After my three free months with my new car, I called to sign up for a year. Service lasted about a month, then I kept reactivating my radio online — no luck. I finally called XM and somebody in India told me I had CANCELLED my service when I actually called to START service. I politely said, “no, you’ve made a mistake. I didn’t cancel service, I started service.” And she insisted that “XM radio doesn’t make mistakes!” !!?? What? So she said I needed to pay an activation fee to start service and that it could not be waived. I told her I would not pay an activation fee for their mistake, but she said there was no other way to start service. I told her I would dispute the fee with my credit card company and make sure it was written into my “mistake proof” account that I would not be paying the activation fee because of their mistake. She was absolutely impossible to understand, and when I asked her to repeat things more clearly and slowly, she told me that I was not smart enough to know what was being said. Sorry, I don’t speak Hindi. XM radio is a a customer service nightmare. I never been so rudely treated by a company. My prediction: They will be out of business. There is no way people will put up with this kind of service to simply listen to the radio. My advice: pay for an iPod adapter in your car and listen to your own music without forking over exorbitant fees to a company who couldn’t care less about their customers.
August 8th, 2007 at 1:51 am
I totally agree with this article, or blog entry, whatever you call it. I picked up a Skyfi2 receiver for next to nothing. Signed up for 3 months of service, and got bored of it in about a week. I did discover some good music on it, but I will agree most of it sucks so bad, I find myself turning on FM and finding better tunes. The 80’s station plays the worst tunes of that era, as does the 90’s station. The electronic music selection is really monotonous and could be much more diverse. I also agree about the blues station; they could play much better tunes.
The sound quality is the main reason I lost interest. There is no sound quality. I’m a bit of an audiphile, and I just can’t listen to it. The sound is compressed, often distorted, lacking in dimension, and with the odd digital artifacts every now and then (pops on transients, etc). I honestly prefer the sound of FM; analog still beats digital.
The reception for me also sucks, I get dropouts all the time. As soon as I “use up” my subscription, I am selling this unit.
August 24th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
XM sucks big time! I had it for almost a year both in my car and at home. Today I cancelled my whole account. Since end of July the signal in my car’s radio has been terrible. In fact during one song I lost the signal 5 or more times making it impossible to listen. I have been between the car dealer and on the phone with XM many, many times. The dealer says is XM problem and XM is telling me that it is the unit or antenna. I am tired of paying every month with no signal or a weak signal almost 100% of the times.
I hope many others cancel too.
JAT
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I just subscribed to XM because they were boasting “near CD quality sound”. What a laughable, gigantic crock of S#%*!!! XM’s audio quality sucks donkey schlong. It doesn’t even come close to FM broadcast audio quality and it’s only marginally better than AM radio!!!! What a huge dissapointment.
October 6th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
We have had XM Radio for about 1-1/2 years and have invested in equipment for two cars and a motorcycle. At this point, I have not listened to XM Radio in my car for almost a year! The reception is absolutely terrible! The signal cuts in and out like crazy in northeast Ohio. We have not yet cancelled the service because of all the money we have invested in equipment, but I think we should just make the decision and get rid of this aggravation. We are very unhappy with XM Radio!
October 29th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Just to let everyone know, “built-in” XM radio or “satellite ready” radios also suck. The sound quality isn’t any better than tuning your radio to an FM station. XM advertises itself on every channel which is very annoying.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:22 am
Ok, lets go back to FM and hear the same crap (that is between idiot DJs, commercials, and stupid contest) we have been hearing for the past 30 years! Led Zeplin, ZZ Top and all the rest of the party smoker crap music. I mean give me a break. Is is going to kill u to hear something new? XM is ok with me.
November 23rd, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I have had XM for a number of years now and no problems yet except the radios could be a bit better. I’ve known people that have had sirous and made the jump to xm just because the programming is better but that in itself is a matter of opinion. I do find it annoying to speak to someone in india or wherever their call center is they seem to speak the language pretty good but they definitely don’t understand it!!!!
November 24th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I have had Sirius service with and S50 unit for 2 years now and it is awesome. Great music selection. Great portable unit that looks nice in my Audi. Very little DJ talk. Good reception. However, I recently bought a new car with built in XM radio and it is terrible. I don’t like the talk on the stations. I don’t like the music (I hear one or two good songs in 30 minutes). To top it off, half the time I switch on the sat radio, it says SAT RADIO NOT FOUND or LOADING or I only get the previews. I have tried re-synching the radio 3 times now and it won’t refresh the stations. Tech support is like “I dunno, uh, take it to the dealer”. When I called about the problem, the tech support guy tried to get me to sign up for 3 more years and sell me a new radio!?!? I am like, dude, my radio doesn’t work - DUH!!!!!
Go Sirius - Die XM
December 13th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Had a rental in Las Vegas last weekend. XM sucked enough that I was pretty sure that googling “xm sucks” would find me a web site. Sure enough.
Dull sound. Many song repeats.
And… what’s with the commercials? Their web site states clearly “commercial free”.
December 27th, 2007 at 8:37 am
I am extremly pissed at XM. I bought a RoadyXT 2 years back and the last 6 months their reception has been horrible. Cutting in and out and it said there was a ANTENNA problem. So I bitched to XM about the unit and they said it was my brand new home kit. So after wasting another $80.00 on a home kit guess what, it still sucks. So there was a huge boxing day sale and I got a new Roady for a steel with home kit and car kit, but this new Roady is worse than my old one!! I have Sirus on my satilite at home and seems to be good programming. But I love Opie and Anthony and as long as they are one the air I will support them.
Customer service sucks and the programming and DJ’s are each persons prefferance.
XM blows goats. O&A are keeping XM alive.
January 2nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Lemme tell ya about their customer service: It is in Jamaica mon. How about some gonja mon. You’d have a better chance of scoring it than any satisfaction you will get with this customer service. XM radio’s customer service is in Jamaica. You can barely discern any English word as spoken by this pack of Jackels. XM’s CEO Gary Parsons is the leader of this menagerie and he should be taken to task (fired) for this operational debacle. The service is pathetic to say the least. I had to cancel my credit card because they decided to bill my card quarterly instead of sending me an invoice quarterly. I had my credit card changed to stop its unauthorized use by XM Radio. I told them if they wanted me to continue with their service they need to send me an invoice and I would pay by check. They in poor broken English informed me that that service will require a two dollar a month fee above the cost of the service. I PROMPTLY CANCELLED ANY FURTHER SERVICE. I suspect if this company had its operations and customer service in the United STATES their little extra fee wouldn’t be neccessary.
All customers of any so called United States Companies should demand that the company they are doing business with operate within our own countries borders. Outsourcing customer service outside this country should be outlawed and the least punishment should be a long lasting boycott by everyone bearing citizenship.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I couldn’t agree more with the complaints listed above. That is why I canceled my subscription today. The customer service guy starts asking me questions like, “What stations did you like?” and I tell him I want to cancel and not answer these questions. He asks why I’m canceling so I tell him, “It’s too expensive and your programing sucks.” So he tells me I can have all radios activated for $77 dollars a year. Now I’m mad because I really feel like I’ve ripped off - I’ve been overcharged by more than 100 bucks in the past. He tells me this is a special offer since I can not afford XM anymore. Now I’m angrier, “You have no idea what I can and can’t afford and if you remember I told you your programing sucks.” Nothing stops this guy and I keep telling him I just want to cancel. I’m not kidding when I say it took more than half an hour just to cancel my subscription.
Avoid! Avoid! Do not use XM!!!
April 21st, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Got xm today, thank god I did not activate it. It came with 3 radio stations (Politics, News, and some other channel) the sound quality was HORRIBLE! Also, it would drop out every few seconds, even though I had the home antenna connected to it. I decided not to get xm, stay with FM people!
April 30th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Beware the automatic subscription renewal. When they call you for a renewal, the sales rep cannot take a cancellation no matter how many times you demand it. They will then give you three months automatic at the highest subscription rate. XM marketing is a scam. Any other outfit would have wound up in court already.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:12 am
You do realize that yes it IS digital, but it says right in the documentation you receive when you sign up that you need a clear view of the sky for best service… Just like any other satellite service. Does DirectTV work if you put the dish under a bunch of trees? Nope, it sure doesn’t.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Thanks for the comment, Ryan (and everyone else I haven’t thanked!).
The satellite television analogy doesn’t really apply. Satellite TV is not advertised as a mobile service, nor has the public used it as a mobile service for decades like they have with radio.
I just checked out the XM site. I went through the order process as if I were a customer, right up until the point where I put in a credit card. Nothing about trees, clear view of the sky, or anything of the sort. So I read their FAQ. Surely “how is the reception” has to be a frequently asked question. But no, nothing about it in the FAQ.
As a matter of fact, of all the people I’ve talked to who have XM, more than half are disappointed in the reception of their XM system. I’m yet to have one person say, “But when I signed up they clearly explained to me that the reception might not be that great, so even though my XM doesn’t work as I expected, I’m still a satisfied customer.”
What I did note at the XM website, however, was that the product is called “XM Radio,” and that it is billed as “Beyond AM, Beyond FM.” Well, maybe, just maybe, that slogan could hold true, but only in a very limited scope.
A radio’s primary function is to receive signals, amplify those signals, and output those signals via a speaker. In terms of comparing XM to AM, I can see two advantages that XM might have, only one that takes it “beyond” radio. There is no skywave in XM radio, something that plagues AM radio, particularly at night. That is a benefit. Likewise, AM and big cities don’t mix well. Try picking up the 50,000 watt WLS-AM from a skyscraper in Chicago and you won’t get that great of a signal, especially considering you’d be within 30 miles of the transmitter. Of course, if your window doesn’t face the satellite, reception would likely be negatively impacted. Likewise, if a skyscraper sat between you and the bird, your signal obviously cuts. Sure, they have FM backup in some markets. But receiving my music via FM doesn’t scream “beyond FM” to me.
I’ll stick with my good ol’ trusty AM. I can get local coverage at any time of the day from anywhere in my house and anywhere in the city with no dropouts and, most importantly, no monthly fee. It sounds just about as good as the talk feeds on XM to most people, and to me it sounds better. AM is warmer and softer, while satellite radio is cold, sterile, and fatiguing do to insane over-compression.
Thanks for the comment!
June 25th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Hi folks, Mike here (this is my blog
).
It’s been 22 months since I last tried XM. As you may recall, I had a $40k - $50k Cadillac as a rental for several weeks as my car was being repaired, and it included XM.
Well, I’m trying XM again.
Now, I’m not paying for it, of course. I bought a brand new car, and it includes 3 free months of XM. So, for the next three months, I will reevaluate XM.
So far, after about a week, I am just as disappointed as I was before. I had hoped that their antennas had improved. I had hoped that they had increased their buffers a bit to prevent dropouts. I had hoped that the sound quality had improved. I had hoped that the number of commercials was reduced, or at the very minimum maintained.
My hopes were wrong.
Take, for example, the 2.9 mile ride I made today from home to the dead center of downtown Savannah. In the 2.9 mile ride– 5.8 miles round trip– XM dropped out no less than a dozen times. The dropouts ranged from about one second all the way up to about 20 seconds. That is pretty bad. In the same amount of time, judging from past experience, I would have had zero dropouts for a total of zero seconds with either AM or FM. Beyond radio indeed.
I realized another disappointment with XM, though, that I hadn’t noticed before. I was on the road this morning before six o’clock. I had looked up the programming at that hour, and learned that XM rebroadcasts my favorite radio show, Coast to Coast AM, at that time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember exactly which channel the program was on.
That left me channel-flipping, quite a dangerous proposition while driving. So before I pulled away from my house, I tuned into the talk section. There are four or five channels in a row, all dedicated to talk. This is when I noticed the problem.
When XM goes to commercial– and talk programs do it often– the information provided by XM changes. Hit the info button during a commercial and you’ll likely see the display say “Dinovite,” one of the current products being advertised heavily on syndicated talk radio.
Come on now. These folks can send me audio signals from space, but they can’t realize that when I hit the info button, I want to know which program is running, and not which commercial is currently on? Lame.
If I’m flipping through stations, do I care what commercial is running? I think that is a big, resounding, universal “HELL NO.”
In my eyes, XM still sucks. Sorry. Maybe it’ll improve in the next few years and I’ll try again. But I’m not counting on it.
Mike
July 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I just want to add why I think XM Sucks bigtime. I have tried to cancel my subscription and have been hung up on 4 times. What a great company this is - so professional.
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Hello all. XM Radio is the most unprofessional corporation in the county and I would like to personally put on a campaign to take them down! I have just spent two of the most frustrating days on the phone with these bastards and they are the most crooked individuals I have ever worked with in my 61 years on this planet.
If anyone can give me some pointers on how to irritate them as much as they have irratated me, I would greatly appreciate it. The lied to me several times and transferred my calls over a dozen times to different departments , etc, just wishing that I would give up. It was unbelievable.
Any ideas are appreciated. THEY SUCK!!!
July 24th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Greg,
You are right - of all the companies that have done bad to this nation, the one that messed up your phone transfer is clearly unAmerican. I mean come on! I cannot think of any other company who has lied in the United States PERIOD!
I also think that this is the worst company in the whole country - not just your county.
Big Deal - The real deal in NH!
Go Reagan!