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Car Forum / Driving, Maintenance, Tuning / Car Audio / July 2009Just got Sirius....
Was at a garage sale yesterday and someone was selling a Sirus device and car kit, magnetic antenna, mounting cradle, cigarrette adaptor (which, of course, I didn't use as I loped the cigarette plug off, run 12 volts through it, and hid that and the antenna wire behind the dash coming out right behind the device, making those wires invisable) ect. Anyway, they wanted 2 FRIKKIN' DOLLARS for EVERYTHING!!!!! I could NOT say no, even though I really had no plans of getting Sirus in the near future though I have FLIRTED with the idea as I get no clear stations where I live about 70 miles north of Seattle. It was remarkeably easy to install, took me no more than about 15 minutes, just stuck that magnetic antenna outside right next to the front door, the wire snaked inside and immediately behind the dash. Used velcro to mount it on the dash (with a little spray of quick-dry glue on the back of the velcro as I always do when I use that stuff), and the audio input was simply the same input I use for my MP3 player and DVD player, so it LOOKS like there is only one wire going to that thing as the antenna and power wire are hidden comming out right behind the unit. All I had to do to activate it was go to the Sirus site and give them my Visa and device serial number. I just subcribed to the $12.95 a month package. Like I said, I have flirted with the idea of getting sat radio for years but it was always the cost of the gear (unit and car adaptor kit) that diswayed me, I just didn't feel like I needed it that much. This thing basically FELL into my lap as it cost no more than pocket change. Anyway, I've been having a blast with it for the last 24 hours. SOOOOO many stations I haven't even explored yet, but the stations I have found and aready programmed as presets are TONS of fun. The quality is as billed, certainly as good as MP3's (perhaps not CD quality, but to my ears they all sound fantastic, especially considering what I have had to put up with when I OCCASIONALLY listen to the radio). Anyway, I certainly would recommend Sirus to anyone. Easy to install, cheap, and SOOO MUCH MUSIC. As I get older it can get harder to find new music (I use on-line streaming stations now and then and the 40 some odd stations I have on my cable system, but really not that often as I don't listen to music really anywhere except my car). So this is a great way for me to hear new techno and hip-hop I currently miss. Tons of fun. Cheap. Works like a charm. Easy to install. Sounds great. No complaints. Sirus rocks! MOSFET BTW, the actual Sirus unit I now know is the Sportster 5, THE LATEST MODEL!!! And, again, EVERYTHING for $2.00!!!!! Who couldn't say no to that? I again spent a good part of the day yesterday driving and playing with the absolute myriad of stations. Fun, fun, and more fun. And soooooo cheap. Though I did notice that every so often I would lose signal for a second or two. Obviously going under a bridge or something I expected that. But I was finding that for no explicable reason I would lose signal for just a second, never more than two seconds, and this was a rare occurance happening perhaps once every hour of listening. Keep in mind I don't live in the city where buildings, I've heard, can often interfere with the signal, but in very rural farm and grazing country. And my antenna is flat on the car facing up. It's not on the ROOF, however, where I imagine I might not have these occasional blackouts if it were seated on the roof (and, just to be clear, these momentary blackouts are SO rare and SO short as to not be a bother or anoyance really at all, I just bring it up in the interest of full disclosure). I may try puting it on the roof and snaking the antenna wire behind the insulation/molding that runs along the inside of the car at the door seal. That should be a fairly easy switch and still keep the antenna wire hidden (in fact it might prevent theives from stealing my antenna as it is clearly visable where it is now, basically on the hood very close to the front door with the wire going quickly into the window wiper recess. It's black, my car's black, so it certainly doesn't stick out, but as it is not attached to the car (just magnetically attached), it would pose no problem for a theif or trouble maker to simply rip it off and out. ON THE ROOF, however, it would be much less visable (INVISABLE prety much unless you're 6'8"). I think I'll try that today. I'm quite sure it would alleviate these occasional blackouts AND be less prone to theivery. MOSFET > Was at a garage sale yesterday and someone was selling a Sirus device and > car kit, magnetic antenna, mounting cradle, cigarrette adaptor (which, of [quoted text clipped - 42 lines] > > MOSFET Hehe - Congratulations on the find!! :-) ~Mister.Lull > BTW, the actual Sirus unit I now know is the Sportster 5, THE LATEST > MODEL!!! And, again, EVERYTHING for $2.00!!!!! Who couldn't say no to [quoted text clipped - 74 lines] > > - Show quoted text - Thanks man. That same day I also scored a Technics turntable, model SL-B2 in a "FREE" box you often find at garage sales so I grabbed it fully intending it not to work, or need a new belt, ect. I thought it might be fun to try to get it working if, as I suspected at the time, it was broken. To my utter AMAZEMENT, it works perfectly (it has a strobe and adjustable pitch and the speed stays right on the nose, indicating a decent belt with no slippage). It's simply missing a headshell (and, of course, all the things that go into a headshell namely cartride and sylus). It's NOT a P-mount style but the more common 1/2" style. So I've ALREADY ordered a new headshell from Ebay and am in the process right now of selecting a cartridge/sylus. I haven't owned a turntable in close to 20 YEARS (I figured it out yesterday and couldn't believe it)!!!! Yet I own nearly 300 LP's and EP's that I would like to hear again and try to make MP3's out of them by sending them into the microphone jack of my computer (I may have to run it through my Denon AVR-3600 first as my trusty home-theater amp has a built-in pre-amp for the low output of magnetic, I THINK that's the term, style turntables). Hopefully my microphone input on the computer will give me nice clean copies. I know there are some turntables now (Ion makes a couple) that actually have USB outputs for DRIECT TO MP3 recording of LP's. They, however, are not free like my Technics so I want to give this a try first. Nick Hehe - Congratulations on the find!! :-) ~Mister.Lull On Jun 15, 11:11 am, "MOSFET" <ntan...@wavecable.com> wrote: > BTW, the actual Sirus unit I now know is the Sportster 5, THE LATEST > MODEL!!! And, again, EVERYTHING for $2.00!!!!! Who couldn't say no to [quoted text clipped - 91 lines] > > - Show quoted text - Should keep in mind that Sirius advises that the antenna be placed either on the roof, or trunk lid and not at the edge. Your dropouts are typical of a less than ideal mounting location. A lot of people do the same thing but the reality is it works very well when the antenna is up where it should be. If it's below the roofline, you can get some masking of the line of sight caused by the pillar or roof, usually in one direction. Sportster 5 has been out for awhile, with the Stiletto 2 being slightly newer as was the Starmate 5 a la carte radio and more recently the dual band XM+Sirius unit (I forget the model # on that thing) are the newest. The economic bind those guys are in and the miserable CE economy have largely put the dampers on them developing sexy new hardware. JD > BTW, the actual Sirus unit I now know is the Sportster 5, THE LATEST > MODEL!!! And, again, EVERYTHING for $2.00!!!!! Who couldn't say no to [quoted text clipped - 72 lines] >> >>MOSFET Well, I assumed it was a recent model as when I went to their website the Sportster 5 was the model first shown. I natually assumed it must be the current model. Before this, I really didn't know jack about Sirius or the hardware other than the basics. MOSFET > Should keep in mind that Sirius advises that the antenna be placed either > on the roof, or trunk lid and not at the edge. Your dropouts are typical [quoted text clipped - 89 lines] >>> >>>MOSFET What? Is it still 2003? I think you overpaid for your Sirius radio because I find them in dumpsters that you can obviously pull out of for free. Satellite radio is a lot like Cable T.V. They overcharge you for every little thing and what do they offer in return? Low picture/ sound quality and the same repeats of the same sh.t. In stead of paying $12.95 a month for what they offer, I can go to thrift stores and buy a boat load of tapes and listen to what I want when I want and not Donna Summer played to death. On Jun 29, 12:15 am, "---> SiTrE JoSEphEnnE MaGAnA <---" <foodadd...@hotpop.com> wrote: > What? Is it still 2003? ....... I can go to thrift stores > and buy a boat load of tapes ...... What? Is it still 1981? Tapes?? And you think sat radio sounds bad? And Nick, I know you care about SQ, and I promise you - if you run a turntable into your line-in on your PC, you will NOT be happy with the sound.. A PC sound card has the best AD converters you can buy for 28¢ Yes, even the 'good' sound cards.. They're all geared towards playback and have little to no regard to sq on the input side. You can get a decent 2-channel usb audio interface, designed for recording, for well under a hundred bucks. Something like: http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/Lexicon-Alpha-USB-Audio-Interface?s ku=245507 is in the sweet spot in the price/performance curve. They're simple, plug it into the usb and it shows up as a soundcard to your OS. I'd disable my soundcard in bios, (or pull it out if it's not integrated) and use something like this exclusively. Like I said, it's a sound card as far as your PC is concerned, so games / winamp / everything will play back thru it too. It's gonna be a long process to record lp's and make mp3's out of em, I think you'll be pissed to spend all that time and end up with trashy sounding tracks. Thank you for the advice. I believe you are absolutely right as I have produced some Techno with a Yamaha Keyboard and a midi card I bought that connects via USB. However, when I went to make some recordings using my computer, the SQ was ABSOLTELY TERRIBLE. So I knew this would be an issue I would have to deal with as I do not have anymore than the cheap-a.s soundcard pre-installed on my 3 year old AMD 2800+. So your advice is actually VERY welcomed. My new Audio Technica cartridge arrived last week and the sound quality over my stereo is excellent EXCEPT for an incredible amount of wow-and-flutter due to an ancient belt, which I have oredered and am currently waiting for. The thing was when it was not playing anything, the speed seemed to not waver by close scrutiny of the strobe dots, but once a record was played, the added "drag" brought home a problem that is not surprising as I don't think this 30+ year old turntable has EVER had it's belt changed. So once that has been done I will need some type of high-quality analog RCA stereo to MP3 converter. Your post was right on track. MOSFET On Jun 29, 12:15 am, "---> SiTrE JoSEphEnnE MaGAnA <---" <foodadd...@hotpop.com> wrote: > On Jun 14, 11:45 am, "MOSFET" <ntan...@wavecable.com> wrote: > > What? Is it still 2003? ....... I can go to thrift stores > and buy a boat load of tapes ...... What? Is it still 1981? Tapes?? And you think sat radio sounds bad? And Nick, I know you care about SQ, and I promise you - if you run a turntable into your line-in on your PC, you will NOT be happy with the sound.. A PC sound card has the best AD converters you can buy for 28¢ Yes, even the 'good' sound cards.. They're all geared towards playback and have little to no regard to sq on the input side. You can get a decent 2-channel usb audio interface, designed for recording, for well under a hundred bucks. Something like: http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/Lexicon-Alpha-USB-Audio-Interface?s ku=245507 is in the sweet spot in the price/performance curve. They're simple, plug it into the usb and it shows up as a soundcard to your OS. I'd disable my soundcard in bios, (or pull it out if it's not integrated) and use something like this exclusively. Like I said, it's a sound card as far as your PC is concerned, so games / winamp / everything will play back thru it too. It's gonna be a long process to record lp's and make mp3's out of em, I think you'll be pissed to spend all that time and end up with trashy sounding tracks. Welcome to the 21st century shitbrick. >Was at a garage sale yesterday and someone was selling a Sirus device and >car kit, magnetic antenna, mounting cradle, cigarrette adaptor (which, of [quoted text clipped - 42 lines] > >MOSFET Hi Howdy. As usual, I welcome your cheerful and friendly greeting. It's people like you that make this an upbeat, positive, friendly, newsgroup. MOSFET > Welcome to the 21st century shitbrick. > [quoted text clipped - 57 lines] >> >>MOSFET Are you not the one that didnt want Sirius due to its SQ you silly shitbrick. >Hi Howdy. As usual, I welcome your cheerful and friendly greeting. It's >people like you that make this an upbeat, positive, friendly, newsgroup. [quoted text clipped - 62 lines] >>> >>>MOSFET |
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