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I just read an article of interest that said Sirius has better reception in the mountains but the clarity is not as good as XM. Its an older article but interesting just the same, any comments?
Sirius should perform better than XM anywere that there isn't a repeater present because of the high angle of the Satellites overhead.
The keyword here being SHOULD! But that is not always the case. Its sort of strange, because I've had situations and been in places where XM reception was better than SIRIUS and others where SIRIUS was better than XM. I am speaking of area where there were no repeaters for either. At home I have a tougher time getting XM, but in other locations I've had a harder time getting a steady SIRIUS signal. It would seem to me though in mountanous areas that SIRIUS would have an advantage with the higher elevations of the sats. I am sure everyone has a varying degree of difference in their reception depending on which service. One thing for sure, it seems XM has better home reception due to its stationary sats.
Dabster, can you be more specific about what conditions Sirius seemed to have problems? I've never had any significant reception problem with Sirius unless I was driving in a tree canopy.
As far as XM being better reception at home, I think in reality, it might be "easier" but not necessarily better. For anyone that is willing to mount an antenna externally it should be perfect for either service. I haven't had a single dropout with my AudioVox PNP in my home once I found the best window to mount it to. For XM if you dont' have a south facing window you will have a tough time unless there's a repeater.
Dabster, can you be more specific about what conditions Sirius seemed to have problems?
As far as XM being better reception at home, I think in reality, it might be "easier" but not necessarily better.
Let me just say that I personally find now that I have the XM Roady and the SIRIUS Audiovox running in my truck together. I get drop outs much more frequently with SIRIUS. It all depends on the time of the day. But better yet probably where theose sats are at that particular time. For example close to my house I can go under these little short overpasses and it will not drop out at all, but an hour or two later or earlier and it will do it every single time. XM never drops out there ever.
My experience has been in varying wooded areas, because here in La we have many national forest. I found that if its a really thick forest that blocks out most of the sky, then both services will drop out, but SIRIUS drop out seem to last longer and are more frequent. It also depends on the direction of the roadway too.
I do agree with you that reception at home just takes much more effort in order to get a signal and maintain it. In most cases if you mount your antenna outdoors you will get good reception with SIRIUS. But I have that same issue here with XM. Now at my office, I can just sit the antenna on the window seal with XM, but SIRIUS requires the antenna be outdoors on the roof or you can forget getting a signal. What is strange is we have this huge court house across the street that totally blocks the southern sky, yet XM has perfect reception and SIRIUS which has a clear northern sky gives me fits. It even drops out sometimes with the antenna on the roof. So those are my experiences and differences. I have others I can tell just in traveling around too. It is my opinion that for my area that I get good reception with both services, but its just a tad bit better with XM for whatever reason.
Its certainly not that SIRIUS reception is so bad that its not tolerable because that is not the case at all. For me its well within my tolerable range.
It sure sounds like you have an XM repeater in the vicinity.
No, I've had the Skifi and now the Roady, both have those diagnostic screens that break it down. I get one sat much stronger than the other and there is definately NO repeaters in this area. I also know this because if I am under a canapy at the gas station I loose the signal. If I got under larger overpasses, I loose the signal. But these are normal. I have noticed that if you do loose the XM signal that it will take at least 5 seconds for it to drop-out and when it does the second you get signal again it comes back on immediately. SIRIUS tends to drop-out immediately and then take 5 seconds to come back on after it gets signal again. Of course this isn't everytime, because as I said, it varies from day to day all depending on what time of the day it is. Its almost like the XM equipment has a better buffer, though I know SIRIUS has buffers on its equipment too. So, I honestly can't explain the difference. Maybe interference vs loss of actual signal causes the buffer to work differently, I don't know, cause I have seen when the signal would be lost that SIRIUS did keep playing about 5 seconds, but it then took another 5 or so seconds for it to start playing again once the signal was restored, so therefore you get a drop out. XM doesn't seem to have this issue from what I can tell.
Sirius buffers the data differently than XM. In Sirius's system, one satellite transmits the same data 4 seconds apart from the 1st, and the radio will extract data from either sat stream to recover the signal. This is a patented method of buffering, and is more complicated than XM. As such, it will exhibit different behaviors than XM. Buffering cannot solve complete signal loss unless the data is time interleaved and has error correction. This is what Sirius does, time interleave the data and that's why many times overpasses won't cause any apparent loss of signal.
Well I don't know about the technical aspects of it, but I do know the practical aspects of it and while it works a lot of the time, it does not other times.
Seems to me if I can go under and overpass today at noon and it work, but go under that same over pass at 3pm and it not work, then its not very reliable, but I think that has more to do with where those sats are than anything else. The technology works, if the birds are in the right place.
Dabster, I agree with you because there apears to be times during the day that the satellites are at a less than optimum angle to where I am located and the signal has more problems than at other times in the day.
I just have not figured out if it is that birds are at a more pupendicular angle to the earth or more parallel.
And on I91 south several weeks ago, I noticed that the dropouts were as if the satellite was sitting over the northern end of Canada. I guess the satellites were north while the car was traveling south making for some strange dropouts.
I have had a few problems with tree cover on some of the roads that I travel, but is a very unpredictable pattern. One "kiss your ass" heavily tree canopied hill side turn in particle sometimes has a dropout and other times it does not. I would expect that it would drop out every time as dense as the cover is, but it does not.
Also, my Audiovox PNP does best when inside the soft top on my Wrangler and attached magnetically to the rollbar (through the padding.) Sounds funny, but I have had almost perfect reception in it versus drop outs with the antenna on the top of my Cherokee in which I have occassional drop outs.
KYJ, thank you, fantastic job of saying what I was trying to convey and did a crappy job and it took three messages to do it.
Yes, that is exactly what I meant and I want to clarify that I get GREAT reception about 98 percent of the time, so don't think by my saying what I did that I am just having terrible reception problems, cause that is not at all the case. There are just those issues where sometimes it will drop and other times it will not yet you go through the same area every day.
Back here in CT, XM seems to, on average have slightly better signal. The strength of the satellites (The most powerful ones ever made) definitely help it penetrate trees here in the constitution state. But when the Sirius satellites are in the loop where they are closest to us, XM can't even compete. At certain times of day, that Sirius signal will NOT cut out, I mean, lead box on top of it and all, and it's still gonna get a signal, but at other times of the day, you definitely wish you had XM. It's never really unliveable (Unless you are in a really forrested in area), but it has it moments.
I have the Audiovox SRS and have noticed that a canopy of trees do seem to be Satellite radio's worst enemy, even more so if the leaves are wet from rain. I'm not surprised too much by this due to the nature of the beast...
But, I am surprised by how a 1 second drive under an overpass kills the signal briefly. Isn't the 4-second diversity thing supposed to prevent short interruptions? It reminds me of AM radio dropouts years ago in the same situation.
DABster, you mentioned having "diagnostic screens". Does the Audiovox have any kind of "hidden" screen that would give us more than the uninformative 3-bars?
But, I am surprised by how a 1 second drive under an overpass kills the signal briefly. Isn't the 4-second diversity thing supposed to prevent short interruptions? It reminds me of AM radio dropouts years ago in the same situation.
See this is the way I see it too. I find that there are times the 5 second buffer seems to prevent an interruption, but then there are other times when after just a second it will drop and then take another 5 seconds to recover from it. Just today for example, I went under a little small underpass, I noticed the reception meter drop down to one bar, then several seconds after I passed under it, there is a drop out. So, there could not have been an interuption in signal for more than 1 second and yet, I still lost the signal for over 5 seconds. I don't get it, I really don't.
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DABster, you mentioned having "diagnostic screens". Does the Audiovox have any kind of "hidden" screen that would give us more than the uninformative 3-bars?
I have searched high and low for such a diagnostics screen and I have yet to find one. If anyone has any insiders at Audiovox perhaps they can find this info out for us. You are right Sam, that reception meter don't do much for you really.
XM vs Sirius on wooded area reception
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