i want to get xm on my stock cobalt radio will this set up work? i was told it would but not sure any info would be helpful thanks.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWA%3AIT&rd=1

 

does anyone know????????? bump

 

umm it's better to just go to best buy or anyplace that sells the car kits but that should work all it does is go on a certain radio station and it plays over that.

 

How is that better? Then you have a seperate unit to tune XM with an fm modulator which degrades quality.
The kit bavoose linked should work, check with a GM dealer or XM, that kit was part of a program XM was developing to get dealer installed xm into more cars.

 

the reason why it's better is because he might get it off ebay wich the thing might not even work, so if you go to best buy they will even install it for you and your garantted it will work.

 

i want it to appear stock not to have this little retarded looking adapter thing in my car and why would i want degraded sound quality?????? thats just funny

 

why do you want xm...i have it...it sux

 

just a thought, how do you degrade a digital signal? it's all ones and zero's. the only degrading that would take place is during the digital to analog conversion but if you can hear that you should have some kind of echo location hearing abilities or something and nasa should use you to listen for alien signals.

 

In your opinion it sucks. For many other people, myself included it's excellent.

 

If you use the FM modulator on those car kits, the sound is going to be bad. You will pick up interfernce from outside sources, even power lines can interfere. Unless you use tge included cassette adaptor, or a direct conect XM reciever, the sound will never compare to built in XM.

 

It's not the digital signal being degraded...

Here's the signal path for xm through OEM or aftermarket xm reciever and head unit
Digital (or analog in some cases) source [D/D or A/D] > XM digital sat feed > XM Reciever [D/A] > Head unit > amp/speakers

Now with FM modulator
Digital (or analog in some cases) source [D/D or A/D] > XM digital sat feed > XM Reciever [D/A] > FM Modulator [Analog to RF] > Head unit [RF to Analog] > amp/speakers

It's not even the digital to analog that causes the bigest problem, it's the analog to RF and back, are you saying you can't tell the difference between FM radio and a CD?

And to revisit the other thing I said in the first place, The kit is designed by XM to work with OEM radios in many cars using adaptors specific to each vehicle manufacturer, XM states that the kit is "available only from your local car dealer".

 

hey i got an XM roadie ill sell you.. you just got to get it activated..

 

can you tell the difference? honestly that is a retarded statement(no offense to anyone that is). The human ear can only hear a limited range, from ~15 Hz up to ~18 kHz, depending on age and the person. If you recorded a track in 22khz played it back on a cd then compared it to the same song on an FM signal do you think you would notice the difference? sheesh. We are taling about car stereo's here though which aren't equipped with surround sound capabilities. You have typically 4 speakers 2 pair's each playing 2 channel audio and even if you had 2 tweaters and a subwoofer you aint going to pull a theater like experience from it.

Below is an XM receiver with BUILT IN wireless FM modulator. Good enough for a car on the go? Of course it is. Oh by the way after market cd changers typically use FM modulation ... I have had a pioneer for years. I know it is sent over the air ... but do the people that are in the car with me know? no they don't.

http://www.amazon.com/Delphi-SA10085.../dp/B0002INUIY

 

I got tired if using my XM radio using the FM mod because it was so hard to find a clear unused freq in my area. If I did find one, other people in my area found it too and often I would suddenly hear someone elses radio playing over mine. The more popular sat radio becomes, the more people will be using the FM modulater and the more you will hear other peoples radios on yours.

I was so happy when I got my Cobalt with built in XM, I had clear XM 100% of the time.

 

still no advantage when you will have horrible reception when if you just have a stock unit it will sound ten times better then those dumb portable ones

 

lol first of all the human hearing spectrum is from 20hz to 20khz. and the reason you wouldnt be able to hear the full range would be either birth defect, old age, or from hearing loud noises for extended periods... also i dont know what your talking about but all the cd changers ive seen were hard wired. problem with fm modulation is to get a good signal you need a strong modulator or you signal will get trashed up. and to be honest your whole cd fm compairison was totally off bc you are talking about compression (as in mp3, wma ect) and that has nothing to do with a fm modulator whatsoever but anyway i wouldnt go that route due to old technology. sure its probably the cheapest and easiest but if you want it to be 100% i would go to your local chevy dealer and have them hook it up. but the other option would be to get a xm ready aftermarket hu and get it all intalled professionally.

 

darn I was off by only a few numbers for the range of human hearing curses I say curses. The range in which you need to transmit the signal is very small (ie you and the unit are both within the car) so technically you don't need that strong of a transmitter in order for good sound to come out. The problem with these cars is that once they are sent out from the factory they are pretty much stuck with what they have unless you go with a complete aftermarket unit cus some people have gone and got xm installed and it doesn't work correctly if at all. the cd fm comparrison wasn't started by me.

 

It kind of was.
I agree that nobody should be able to tell a digital to analog conversion (well technically there's no way to compare bacause you can't listen to a digital signal). However, you aren't talking about digital to analog, you specifically said using an FM modulator, which would be digital to analog to RF to analog. Most people should be able to hear the diference between that and a cd.

 

im sure with enough training the subtle differences can be noticed no doubt there so I agree but that then goes down to the hz rating of the audio source which since the signal is being transmitted over an FM frequency would be roughly 20-22khz. Without being able to hear the original uncompressed 44.4khz audio at the same time as the 22.2khz audio you would naturally not notice any difference at all since you are roughly within the audio range of the human ear. I can see where you are getting that you would easily hear the differences and that would be due to the modulation itself so as long as the transmitter can put out a strong signal there shouldn't be an issue.

 

thats the problem you cant be sure on either the signal strength or the availablity of signals... i live in new mexico where there is nothing whatsoever and i did have a fm modulator (im sure it was cheap bc it came in a mp3 player package free from my work) and it would go out sometimes even thou the mp3 player, fm mod was in the cup holders litterally less then a foot from the hu... now will fm modulation work, yes very well too but if everything isnt perfect all the time then forget about it.... i dont read up on xm radio bc radio in general doesnt intrest me much so im not sure about the whole installing it on stock radio thing but i know it will work on an aftermarket xm ready unit with a tuner... infact im pretty sure theres an xm tuner in the classifieds for 50 bucks

 

im from new mexico too and literally 98% of my family still live there mostly in grant county. In new mexico you got guys with multiple FRS, GMRS's driving around so there can easily be an issue with signal if you come too close to one of those guys.

 

Ok, we're close enough to being in agreement here, one quick note about sampling frequency and audable frequency is that the highest sound that can be produced is half the smapling frequency. In otherwords @ cd 44.1khz the highest frequency is 22khz, just outside of the generally considdered standard for human hearing, hence why this sampling rate was chosen long ago. If you drop the sampling rate to 22khz you can only produce sound as high as 11khz, now in the range of 10-20khz you're not likely to be missing any primary notes, however what does go away is alot of the upper harmonics, making things sound rather dull and dead.

I think I'm done beating a dead horse here, this isn't a music or science forum so I'm just going to stop now.

 

I agree with everything you have mentioned here though this debate was fun we ultimately would have had to agree to disagree.

 

Refreshing to see an arguement stay civil to the end around here
Feel a little bad for jacking the thread a bit, but at least it was somewhat on topic.

 

!@#$ you ... LOL jk jk jk