Sirius Poor Fidelity

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?

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?

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

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

Originally Posted by Orient330iNYC

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

Sirius runs over 2320.00 through 2332.50 MHz

2) now that we have that out the the way, sirius uses a crappy codec vs xm. sirius uses PAC vs XM using AAC.

3) IIRC, sirius uses lower bit rates than XM

the poorer codec and the lower bitrates is why your XM radio sounds better than your car. sirius just sucks. years ago, it sounded better, but a few years back they lowered the bitrate of the stations to squeeze more channels in.

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.