Best Sirius/XM sound quality

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While it's impossible to get truly high end sound from Sirius/XM, it is possible to do better than the swishy, swirly, lossy-compressed audio that is so commonly heard from satellite receivers. (To be fair to XM, some of the blame for that bad sound falls to the receivers themselves. Some suck more than others.)

I realize that some just don't care about XM, but if you still enjoy an occasional dose of Earle Bailey or Pat St. John the way I do, you might want to try this method.

I use the XM app on an iPad connected to the Lightning Digital AV Adapter. That gives an HDMI output that connects to my Bryston DAC-3. Of course, the audio isn't really 48K quality, that's just the digital "container" for the XM stream. But it is much, much higher quality than anything I've ever heard that relied on the satellites.

One speed bump that XM designed into the app is that it defaults to a lower sound quality. You'll need to go into the iPad settings to change it to "maximum" SQ. The app may sometimes reset that to a lower quality, but you'll notice that immediately.

The result is very listenable and actually sounds better than many over-processed commercial FM stations.

I realize that this method requires streaming, so it doesn't really belong in the "Tuners" section of AA. But I figured those who would be most interested would find it here.