I am trying to help someone hook up an XM radio receive on a car that did not come with XM from the factory. The car also has the factory head unit and it does not have an AUX input. Basically his CD player quit working and has been listening to FM for months now, and wants to go with XM service.

I have seen on the XM Sirius site that that they sell XM receivers that will work without an AUX input. You have to tune the XM radio receiver and the FM radio in the car to the same channel.

Has anyone ever used this type of receive before, or has heard the quality of it in person? I have a feeling that the audio quality is going to suck, but he doesn't want to put a whole lot of money into this setup since he plans to have a different car in 6 months. This is just something to get by without having to be forced to listen to horrible FM radio.

 

I always preferred the aftermarket units. You can stop and rewind and save songs/artists so it will alert you if your fav songs are playing on any station. My stock ss unit will not do any of the extra's my old aftermarket one had. It ran off tuning the FM radio frequency, sounded decent but never the quality of a cd.

 

Well if the car is gone shortly then just get a Spotify subscription or similar. Then just stream through aux input.

 

his radio has no aux. the xm transmitters are so so. some of them will connect directly to the stock antenna instead of completely wireless and work a little better but even those arent awesome. some members have been able to tap the stock xm inputs to the stock radio and use those for an "aux in" which might be the cheapest option if it works.