XM Radio could be better if they killed about half of the channels. It's just a matter of how much sausage they want to cram into the pipe.

When I worked on an XM receiver project, I recall they had about 1.5 mbit of bandwidth to work with. Most stations were 16 or 32Kbit AAC+.

The talk stations used 8kbit AMBE, which is pretty much the same as a vocoder. You weren't far off by calling it robot talk.

It doesn't help that they broadcast everything twice, because some of their older receivers have different frequency ranges from before the merger.

I think they could do a lot better if they used their modern position to their advantage. Most receivers are in cars, and many cars are coming with always on internet. Hook up to that and a) report on coverage deficiencies, b) fill in from internet streaming when in poor coverage areas, c) get metrics on listener numbers so things that nobody hears can be dropped, d) use streaming to boost bitrate.

I have XM for a few years. I don't have any problems with audio quality. Reception can go mute under bridges, tunnels, or other large obstacles, but that's that. Otherwise, is the only thing that works on mountains, remote roads, or anywhere really.

For the sales, I call them every ~5 months, say I will pay $25+tax for 5 months or something like that, I set the next calendar event.

My neighborhood is filled with trees so there is a 5 minute part of my commute that XM can't get a signal for more than 5 seconds in a row. It's as if it only takes a single leaf to block the signal.

Their bit rate is embarrassing. Dither and audio frequency drops so terrible I asked myself "why was I paying for this?"

That was 2005

It's not any better now.

> It's not any better now.

Well, of course. Sirius XM, where's the competition?