[BC] Satellite Sound

[Robert Orban]

At 12:15 PM 1/21/2006, you wrote:
>From: "Steve" <shnewman at alaweb.com>
>Subject: [BC] Satellite Sound
>To: "Broadcast Radio Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
>Message-ID: <000c01c61eb2$8a400060$7402a8c0 at wildblue.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>Something I wanted to point out for sometime. I have Dish Network out 
>here. (my Internet is 2-way satellite from Wildblue). We'll never have 
>cable or DSL where I live BUT that's fine. I, like Beethoven and many 
>other composers, like the peace and quiet of the countryside. (no, I'm not 
>a composer)
>
>To my point. I get the Sirius channels as part of the package. They throw 
>that in me thinks. I crank it up on the big system and it sounds GREAT. 
>Now, I don't know where Dish network is getting their feed. It might be 
>from a DA fed by the Orban units for all I know. No artifacts. Very nice, 
>quiet, clean audio. Sounds very rich and balanced. (this sounds like a 
>commercial for coffee) BTW, I'm talking about the Classical channels where 
>you would really hear the crap when put to the test of larger audio 
>systems. Now, I've not heard XM at all so I can't comment.

I have DirecTV, which just lit up about 70 of the XM channels, replacing 
DirecTV's earlier jukebox music service. I don't know what path they are 
using to get them from XM's studios and how much they are recompressing 
them (probably with MP2, because I believe that is the only audio codec 
available in the current DirecTV boxes), but they sound like the wrath of 
s**t on my high resolution living room system (Levinson amps and Duntech 
Sovereign speakers).

Maybe I should take another look at DISH. However, the problem with both 
satellite services is that they are compromising the resolution of their HD 
channels by losing about 1/3 of the horizontal detail. I am seriously 
thinking about returning to Comcast later this year when they finally have 
an HD TiVo available. So far, what I am hearing is that the cable companies 
are not compromising the bandwidth of their HD services. Of course,this 
could change for the worse at any time.

Bob Orban