As I've mentioned here before, I'm a big fan of XM. I have a portable that docks in either of 2 cars, my studio or my workshop. I also have a portable adaptor that lets me listen to XM untethered, such as while walking. I posted here a month ago that I'm basically living my life to a constant soundtrack now. Very nice.
I also have a Polk XRt12 "Reference" Tuner on my main system with my Axioms and I can't stand the sound quality. XM sounds nasally, metallic and heavily, heavily compressed…..which, of course, it is. But XM sounds fine everywhere else. Obviously, a car or portable or workshop environment is less demanding, but it's really gotten to the point where I can't listen to XM on my main system.
I'm going to temporarily trade locations with my portable unit and the Polk unit back and forth from the studio to my living room to see if it might be the Polk unit itself. The Polk also has analog and digital outs and I just tried both to see if the D/A in the Polk or my Denon receiver might be the difference. It didn't really help.
So, while I'm puttering to rewire these in their swapped locations, I thought I'd post in the meantime. I don't really have another set of decent speakers to try with the Polk, so this "swap" test will be pretty rudimentary….. but we all know that Axioms can be demanding of material, and I'm finding myself thinking this just might not be a good combination. If so, I'm likely looking at selling the Polk or even the Axioms.
So….any other Axiom and XM listeners find that their Axioms just might be too demanding for the XM compression or that there's a problem with their Polk unit in particular?
I'll post again with results when I swap them out…..
