Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Ideas on 31'L x 23'W room for fronts, 7.1 backs

Do you have XM now? Can you stand to listen to it?

When I got my new receiver it was XM/Sirius ready. I mentioned to one of my friends that I was considering subscribing to one of those services. He said to me, "you have better ears than me, and I can't even stand to listen to music on XM. You should go over to John's [a mutual friend] house and see what it sounds like." So I did; John doesn't even have that great of a stereo system--just slightly above average, but the quality of the music channels sounded like 64 kbps MP3s (I've heard that is a 32 kbps AAC stream, but XM/Sirius don't release that information).

Now, I like highs, I like them to be crisp and clear. There is so much detail in that part of the musical spectrum. As an example, my receiver has X-curve compensation for movie soundtracks which are mixed bright for theatrical presentation (more than likely most movies are remixed for home release these days, so it isn't needed). Applying a small 0.5 dB/octave slope made me ask, "where'd the treble go?" So you get my point, I notice highs. Ride cymbals have a particular timbre, you hear the impact and then they continue to ring, usually they are struck again before they stop ringing, but you hear that impact too. I forget what song it was on XM, but it was supposed to have a ride being struck through the whole chorus. Instead of individual strikes and rings, all I could hear was modulating hiss.

So will XM have harsh highs? Probably not, it doesn't have any highs at all, just violet noise. But if you don't notice anything wrong now, it'll just be more of the same.