Gear, I think Pandora's sound quality is vastly better than Siruius/XM. I dropped them many years ago when they kept degrading their audio quality in favor of more channels with the bandwidth they were allotted.

My guess is that there is not a problem with the connection, it's simply that your better system allows you to hear more of the artifacting.

Of course, there's no reason NOT to try a TOSLINK connection just to see.

::::::: No disrespect to Axiom, but my favorite woofer is my yellow lab :::::::