# Sirius Poor Fidelity



## jh (Jul 15, 2003)

Sirius in my 2013 335is with Premium Sound is simply awful. There's a terrible, very metallic tiny sound. I've had XM for 8 years at home and other cars (including an E46 with an XM unit integrated directly with a Blitzsafe harness). It certainly is not CD quality but it's not as bad as the Sirius performance. I know the companies have merged but they maintain their separate transmission and satellite systems and use different digital compression formulas.

CD and Ipod sound very good in the 335is. Do I have a bad satellite tuner or is this poor fidelity typical for Sirius in a BMW?


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## gpburdell (Sep 23, 2012)

Have your tuner and antenna checked out. I'm no audiophile, so what I think sounds great you might think scks, but my experience in my 335i so far is at least as good as a solid FM radio station, though not perhaps quite as good as CD. That said, some people post about how bad they think SiriusXM is -- but what matters is how it sounds to YOU.

Maybe go to the dealer and listen to your radio side by side with a different car?


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## Orient330iNYC (Jul 30, 2002)

its typical of sirius. sirius and XM are not the same despite the merger.

another user posted a similar complaint... this was my reply



Orient330iNYC said:


> 1) your XMp3i is not getting the same signal as your car. its using the XM frequencies and codecs
> 
> XM runs over 2332.50 through 2345.00 MHz
> 
> ...


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## jh (Jul 15, 2003)

Thanks Orient330iNYC,
Your technical facts explain why Sirius sounds so bad. I plugged my portable XM Roady XT into the 335 aux input and could easily compare Sirius and XM in the same vehicle. XM is superior, though still no comparison to CDs. Too bad BMW went with Sirius. 
Premium Sound is actually quite good with a good source.


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