[Darth-Apple]

So I decided to go ahead and get it. They kept calling me trying to get me to sign up. $16 a month is a little outrageous in my opinion but it was pretty easy to talk them down on the price. Apparently if you tell them no enough they eventually offer you $5/month, and to be honest, that actually wasn't a terrible deal.

I love it personally, save for one thing. The audio quality is absolutely horrible. Not sure why. Some people say it's more bearable than others, but apparently that has to do with the receiver. If you have a legacy XM receiver, apparently it pulls from the old XM frequencies where the codecs are a little better and therefore the audio quality is a little better. I wish my car had one because the compression is heavily noticeable. I've heard the bitrates go anywhere from 32-64 kbps or so and that's at the best. 

Other than that it's great. They have plenty of stations and the ones I listen to are pretty good. I just add the music to my library once I find songs I like and listen to them from there.  

Anyone else used it before? What did you think? And the sound quality, was it even remotely bearable?

[SpookyZalost]

hmm I've never used it but I'm aware of it?

as for having an older receiver and such installing one is actually fairly simple, if you've ever installed a CD rom drive in your desktop then you can install/change a radio in your car... worst case you may need to make a custom wire harness adapter.

for car entertainment though I tend to prefer spotify, data plans are so cheap these days y'know?

[Darth-Apple]

I've got spotify and apple music and love both. The only problem is that my data isn't unlimited, and streaming eats that up quick.

I've installed radios before but in my volkswagen it's going to be a bit more of a pain. The radio unit is much larger and more integrated into the dash of the car. Luckily I believe I can just swap out the receiver itself instead. As it turns out, the receiver is in the trunk instead of in the head unit, but from what I can tell the cheapest I've been able to find one is still over $100.

Still considering it tbh...

[Guardian]

Crazy that the newer receivers have bad audio... Let me know how it goes for you longhau and travelling.

[SpookyZalost]

hans: oh those... yeah my car had one of those, let me guess the AC and radio are one unit?

I had to hunt down an aftermarket part that just had the AC and a double din space for my car's radio but... it works

a bit more trouble than it's worth to people who don't enjoy modding things though lol.