mistermike

While the "digital compression" of MP3, AC3, etc. is not quite the same animal as conventional analog compression, it still does a great disservice to the music. Theoretically, analog compression can be undone if your expansion exactly mirrors the compression. This was the basic principle of DBX and Dolby "A" noise reduction. Digital data compression involves eliminating redundant bits with a mathematical algorithm. Nothing wrong with that as long as it's of the lossless variety. However, the abovementioned techniques, along with proprietary techniques used by satellite radio and TV, digital cable, and even DVDs are "lossy" compression. That is, some bits are discarded on the basis of a theoretical perceptual model that says that you either can't hear the loss, or it's annoyance value is minimal. Well, the theoreticians almost always get it wrong. Having been a lifelong musician and involved with high end analog audio for a good bit of that time, most of my crowd, upon hearing the first commercial CD's and players back in the early 80's, broke out in uncontrolled laughter at just how bad this "theoretically perfect" storage medium sounded compared to analog audio properly done, let alone live instruments. While well done digital recording has at least the capability to be tolerable 25 years later, the sound quality broadcast by Sirius SM is a bad joke.

farmer52

Thanks for the explanation (I think ).

c2vette

I think if more folks really understood how much better music could be with proper recording and playback media, they would be less tolerant of the current "convenient" means of distribution. Seemed like there was a lot more emphasis on true high fidelity in the "old days". Of course a lot of us are half-deaf anyway these days for a variety of well understood reasons. Applies to phone service too, remember the old "you can hear a pin drop" ads for AT&T?

I keep XM for CNBC and BBC news, pretty much stopped listening to the music stations and rely on CD's. Probably won't renew.

PhatBob

I like bass. Music sucks without it. I also need music to sound great. This is why I can't listen to music on FM, and why I didn't subscribe to XM when my subscription ended. For talk shows or news it's fine, but for music, nothing beats CDs, and to me, even MP3's at 192 are better than FM or XM.

You can get free CD music to copy from a lot of places, library, friends, your own CD collection, etc., and what I can't get for free, I download.

I also had to turn the bass up quite a bit. I have the EQ on manual, the treble all the way up, and the bass up about 85%. Even without the subwoofer the music sounds good.

mistermike

I bought one of the first digital answering machines made in the early 90's. It was a Panasonic unit and cost nearly $200. The sound quality was quite good because digital audio compression hadn't really trickled down to the consumer level. They hadn't learned how to cheapen it yet. A few years later, the $39 units sounded like you were talking into a fan with marbles in your mouth.