Or just own one period? If so I just want to know what you guys think of it before I purchase one. I saw one at Wal-Mart for $40 something bucks. It seem like a nice thing to have because you get like over 200 stations.
shareThe 200 stations is nice, but the sound quality is below FM radio quality. In fact, a good FM signal can easily have higher fidelity.
It's listenable though.
The bitrate is appallingly low on most satellite channels. If you want nonstop music, find some podcasts and leech a few gigs. The kind of real or streaming radio stations that have shows produced by humans (as opposed to computer programs like most commercial stations now) often have MP3s of past shows to download, if you go to their website.
Load them onto a cheap thumbdrive style MP3 player, hook it up with a patch cord or tape adapter or FM modulator, and press play. Those players usually just play everything in sequence, so no messing around building playlists or navigating folders.
Does*
shareThat smells familiar.
shareWhen I bought my newest car the manufacturer cursed me with a 90 day free trial of Sirius/XM. After 90 days a better sound quality (the factory system was designed and manufactured by Infinity and actually sounds great, especially if the car is turned off in a quiet spot without the intrusion of highway noise, etc.). At the end of the 90 days I bit the bullet and subscribed to the Music and More package which gave me most of what I liked.
If you car is currently a place where you are subject to services of local broadcast radio with a couple of Publicly funded stations and then a hundred stations funded through advertising, XM/Sirius (Sirius/XM) might be a worthy improvement. The Music and More is just over $30 every three months (the over part is your contribution to royalties and taxes).
Seven years later I am ready to shut it down. This is especially difficult as the only way to terminate the subscription is to spend time on hold and then jousting with customer service who will offer you "specials" and incentives to stay with them. The problem is that even through you are bound to find a station that suits you a little better than what you find on the AM/FM/SW dial, there is still someone in an office somewhere determining what you will listen to. Your only control is to mute it or change stations.
Meanwhile my phone now has 128 GB of my favorite evolving playlists in lossless format (that's better than what they transmit because I have a DAC that connects to my USB and gives me 192/24 FLAC without distortion or compression). This connects to the AUX IN which you select by pressing the button right next to XM. On top of that I can stream my entire audio collection in CD quality directly from my media server at home (Note: One album of this may easily be a 500 megabytes to a gigabyte of my data plan). Of course, if I'm driving on the highway with a crowd of diesels around me, I might as well stream Google Play, Spotify or Amazon (256 kpbs) because my car is not soundproofed to the point that I will notice the loss of my audiophile recordings AND T-Mobile doesn't count my music streaming (on most services) against my data allowance.
My feeling is that back when it was a choice between AM/FM/SW, CDs, USB drives, etc or Sirius/XM, I felt that the satellite radio was worth it. Now, I have my whole audio collection at my fingertips 24/7 and it integrates nicely with my hands-free phone accessories. In the same seven years Sirius/XM has deleted one of the two classical stations, changed a couple of Jazz stations to Sonic Prozac (Kenny G, John Tesh, etc. i.e., music that is only called "jazz" because they couldn't figure out what to call it). I've lost some Blues and with only one station for Classical, Opera, Blues and Real Jazz there is always a chance that you're going to get stuck with the DJ that's going to play 4 hours of something that is physically painful.
There are still a few good "Classic Rock" stations and one each of indie, jam, garage, etc. However, if you were thrilled by what you heard on AM/FM up to this point in your life, you will be happy with Sirius/XM. There are multiple POP stations including decade POP so you can listen to the same POP that was on the radio in the 70's in CD quality.
The important thing to remember is that Sirius/XM gives away the razor, but sells the blades (or gives away the ink jet printer, but sales the ink at a 500% markup). The minute you cancel your subscription that fancy piece of electronics and the shark fin antenna you put up become anchors.
I think the best advice is to purchase some really good IEMs that match your phone (in ear monitors aka headphones) and go with that OR integrate your phone into your car sound system.
I have had it in my new car for four months now and it's ok. I subscribed to it after my trial was up. I really only listen to one channel.
I listen to Ozzy's Boneyard and my wife listens to Joel Osteen. She's actually the reason we have the subscription, more so than myself.
It really depends on how important music and musical diversity and discovery are in your life. When I was younger I was a lot more into music and would have valued the product much more highly 30 years ago.
Oh, dang! I just saw this post is three and a half years old. Did you get one?
Ive lived upon the edge of chance for 20 years or more...
Del Rios Song