There's No Substitute for Cubic Decibels

One more time we make the case for satellite radio.

Editor’s Note:
This is the THIRD PIECE we’ve done on satellite radio. The first piece is here, the second here. Why do we keep doing it? (No, we’re not getting any payola.) We keep doing it because we keep running into people who 1) drive a lot, and 2) who love music, but who DON’T KNOW ABOUT SATELLITE RADIO. So here we go again. One more time…

Once upon a time in America, creatures called "muscle cars" ruled the road. They were big, bulky gas guzzlers, and handled like a brontosaurus on wheels. But if you pointed one in a straight line and floor-boarded it, the brontosaurus would let out this tremendous roar, and WHOMPF! next thing you knew you were going 80 or 100 miles per hour. They could accelerate like nothing seen before, and for a very simple reason: They had enormous engines.

The catch-phrase of the day was: If you want to get a big chunk of iron moving very fast, there is no substitute for cubic inches.

Until now.

We are living in a golden age of automotive engineering. The internal combustion engine has been refined, re-refined, and then refined again, so that now a mere two or three liters will do what the Fords, Chevies, and Dodges of the 1960s needed seven liters to do.

The eerie—and wonderful part is: These tiny engines not only accelerate like crazy, they do it SILENTLY. Or almost.

To the miracle of silence and power from tiny engines, add handling, gadgets galore, and reliability, and truly—whatever terrible things our compulsive driving habits are doing to the atmosphere, we are in an automotive golden age.

So what do you do while driving one of these four-wheeled masterpieces? Well, you talk on the phone, you navigate with GPS, you listen to CD’s, maybe your passengers watch a DVD… and if you want to really slum, you turn on the radio.

Oh, the quality of the sound coming out of the radio is very, very good. But the content? Well, you’ve got your traffic report, you’ve got your weather forecast, but after that it’s wall-to-wall schlock 99% of the time.

All is not lost, radio-wise. Because, if:

1. Your drive a lot, and
2. Music is important to you,

an answer is at hand: Satellite radio.

Three to four hundred dollars for equipment and installation, plus around ten dollars a month for the service, and your driving experience in the golden age machinery of your choice will be transformed.

100 channels of digital sound, mostly music (of every imaginable type), but with plenty of talk to (BBC World Service, anyone?), a few commercials on some channels, no commercials on most of the channels.

24 hours a day. Drive anywhere in North America and the signal never fades, never varies.

You will have little reason to ever listen to broadcast radio again (except for traffic and local weather—yes, there is a radio version of the Weather Channel).

Two companies are doing it: XM Radio, and Sirius. This magazine has no experience with Sirius. All we can report is that XM so far has about 20 times as many subscribers as Sirius.

$400 and an hour and a half of your time at Circuit City or Best Buy or wherever, and your driving life will be changed forever.

Decibels of course don’t come in cubic quantities, but if they did, you’ll think that you’ve got an extremely cool seven liters of quality sound hiding in your dashboard.

To read what users have to say:
www.xmfan.com