June 2009 Archives

I recently purchased a year subscription to XM Sirius after cancelling my previous service about 6 months ago. The receiver is a stock Nissan unit and stock Bose Infiniti system. I'm not sure if things have changed in 6 months time, but I've noticed quite a bit of compression that impacts the sound quality.

Notice the 's' and 't' sounds in the dj's voice when talking. It's missing quite a bit of high frequencies. It reminds me of low bit-rate 128k mp3's.

Does anyone else notice this as well? Is XM trying to cram more stations into their bandwidth at a cost of sound quality?

To build on my last post, imagine that the windshield in your car is like your computer desktop. Your desktop can display yahoo widgets or apple widgets to show you a calendar, clocks, rss feeds, etc.

Move this idea to your car windshield so you can see texts, maps, traffic updates, etc while you're driving. Of course, it would not obstruct your view but be displayed off to the side for brief glances.

It's a dangerous idea if implemented incorrectly, but I think it could be very helpful.