Yes, Sirius XM should work in remote areas. In the mountains it will fade out when you dip behind a hill or two. After your 6 month deal is up...they're offering $6 a month deals. Be sure to ask for it.

I like mine, but their service model is very scammy.

I often do 5 hour trips in my car, and like their variety of offerings. The sound is good, I rarely lose them (although I do think just how mountainous it is matters). I often stream music through different sources too, but I'm currently paying $6.06/month (as noted by Nicole), and it's worth $6 a month to me.

Their service model is super scammy. You need to watch when your renewals are due, and you need to call before then to see what "special promotions" they'll offer to keep you. Otherwise they will renew you at much higher rates, the cost of which is usually buried in the fine print in your renewal agreement. I don't have mine in front of me, but I think they quoted me $27/month upon renewal. They are not worth that.

If you want to cancel, you will have to call them. I don't believe they offer a way to cancel online (?), and again, if they have your credit card they will absolutely renew you absent action from you to cancel.

I like Sirius for the variety. I get good reception most if the time unless on the wrong side of a hill or under dense tree cover. I agree about the scammy renewal system. I mark my calendar to cancel before renewal. You have to call and they offer a special deal to keep you, usually close to half off. I just did call as my renewal is next month and the automated system offered me a low price deal without talking to a live person. I almost took it, but noticed they said it would be effective immediately, which would have meant I would lose the last month of my current plan that I’ve already paid for. They give NO Refunds under any circumstances. So I postponed calling until right before my cirrent subscription ends. I will try asking for the $6 deal! Thanks for that.

I've had free Sirius trial periods after buying each of three new cars. I found the sound quality poor, unacceptably so. To use a comparison some may understand, like comparing listening to music on AM in an old car, to listening to the same thing on FM in a car with a decent sound system. It turns out that sat transmissions are often at very low bit rates, often even lower than FM radio broadcasts. I didn't renew or expect to use it anyway because i have high resolution digital copies on SD cards or thumb drives (depends on what a given car will play) from my music collection. Always good sounds, no reception needed.

If your cell phone data plan can handle it, you'll get much better sound streaming Pandora or Slacker and playing that with a bluetooth connection through your car's system. Or, download or record music to your phone and play that when cell reception is sketchy.

Have a nice trip.

I've had it for years in both our vehicles. I really enjoy it and would miss it if I didn't have the service. DH doesn't listen consistently to his when driving.

I should be looking into the pricing and make a call one of these days, it's getting darned expensive. I have mine on auto pay and they alert me they are billing my original credit card - for about the last 15 years or so ;) With DH retired, I don't drive alone as often as I used to and I'm not always in my car. When I with him in his, we seem to talk more than listen to music.

But still - I've been telling him recently I'm about due for a new car, and it must still have heated and now cooled seats, sirius radio. Those aren't negotiable.

(I need an auto button to close the tail gate too. Did I shrink? I find I have to do a little hop to reach and close the tailgate on my SUV these days. Mine is old enough its manual)

Morz8, my auto close button is on the tailgate of my car. I can barely reach it, but I'm only 5' 1". I'm just glad I don't have to pull it down too.

I have Sirius in my car. I always call right before the subscription ends. Only once was I not offered $6/month, and I canceled the service. They called within days to renew for about $5/month. Just don't ever give them a credit card number. Insist on paying by invoice.

We had Sirius for several years, making sure to renegotiate when the subscription was due to end. I finally convinced my husband that we were paying $60+ each year and that we were basically only listening to one music station, that it was time to drop it. Instead, I transferred out favorite music to an old iPod, connected to our car's bluetooth and listen to that. It works for our mostly short trips around town; podcasts would work for longer trips.

Sirius is begging us to come back. We got it in the last three cars for maybe six months. Then we bought it and when I saw how much it cost, I told my husband, we were done. We listened to classic rock mostly and I was sick of the DJs commenting so we stream Pandora and I love it. It's in the car and my Airpods and you get to pick your channel. Sometimes in the hour plus I hike, I get one 30-second ad, sometimes a few more. I can opt to subscribe for $5 a month but I can deal with a few ads.

I should pay more attention to what we pay. Years ago I'd call with each renewal, say I'm dropping and they'd offer me a deal, but the last couple times they called my bluff and just said "ok". I'm no audiophile so I probably don't notice quality issues with the service nearly as much as I notice the difference in systems from car to car. People talk about the sound quality from Bluetooth being inferior to USB, can't say I've noticed that, either.

As with my wine palette, I'm happy for my senses to be less refined, I'd hate not to be able to enjoy something unless it was top quality. The radio in my son's car is just awful but still I prefer listening to music on it than not.

Maybe once a year or so I switch over to terrestrial radio for old times sake. Now THAT I can't deal with, between the few choices, poor reception, and commercials, no way. The one thing I do miss is the switching of stations on road trips, as you move from once city to another. Now everything is the same.

My husband had a freebie after buying his new car last year and has been paying $6/month since. It's about to expire. I really enjoy listening to Classic Vinyl when we're in his car.

No audio quality issues.

We never bothered to activate Sirius when we got new cars but last month my car was at the dealership for annual service and 3 days after that I received another offer in the mail. I have no idea why but this time I signed up for the free trial. No credit card was involved, I just scanned the QR code.

I'm not sure I would bother to pay for the service when this expires. I've been listening to a few channels - 40's, 50's, 60's, Big Band, Seriously Sinatra, Broadway and Classical. The sound quality is inconsistent - the 50's and 60's channels sound like the old, cheap transistor radio I had as a teen. BBC, Sinatra and Classical are better.

Maybe it's the sound system in my car - it's whatever Bose came with my Cayenne - or maybe I need to adjust the settings. The other problem is that I find that I switch channels if I don't like a particular recording and I'd rather not fiddle with controls while driving.

maire cate, you can be sure the poor sound quality is not because of having an inferior sound system in a Cayenne. My most recent experience was in my BMW with an upgraded Harmon Kardon system. The car when new was up and down my coast, nearly from border to border, and nowhere was the sound even reasonably acceptable. With good quality recordings fed from a thumb drive, it's superb.

Thanks Elmer. I am not an audiophile but your description of it sounding like AM in an old car was spot on. The regular FM radio on my car sounds better than most of the Sirius channels. Checking the build sheet my car has the Premium package because I wanted heated and cooled seats and that meant it also came with a

.................." a premium Bose system, complete with 14 high-performance speakers; 5.1 digital signal processing; and AudioPilot, Centerpoint, SoundTrue and SurroundStage technologies."

whatever that means. But it's still possible that the settings could be tweaked. I'll have one of my sons play with it since they're more into quality sound than I am. Pandora might be better.

While CD sound is itself compromised, given that most people listen to substantially more compromised MP3 files (or the Apple equivalent called AAC or MP4), many have gotten accustomed to poor quality as a reference point and can't hear the difference.

When people buy music files online or rip (create a digital file ) from a CD into an MP3 or AAC format file, the depth and detail of the already compromised CD version is lost and the result is of lower quality.

When you want to do an A/B comparison, play a CD as a better source (if your car has a CD player).

After trying to use it yesterday on a trip to Lexington, and reading all your comments, I decided to not subscribe to it after the trial period is over.

I spent a few hours last night making a large playlist on Spotify. It was a lot of fun finding old songs I had long forgotten about.

kathsgrdn, playlists of known past favorites are cool to have. With Pandora or Slacker, you can create your own stations by "seeding" selections with groups you like. Then, the software will play what you've generically selected (and you can highlight favorites and nuke other tracks selected, as you prefer) and in addition, it will play tracks in a similar style or from the same or similar groups, which will expose you to tracks you didn't know but hopefully will like. Again, you can ban songs you don't like. Your likes and dislikes will be factored in to future selections. It can be a useful path to discover new music to enjoy.

Good luck./

" As with my wine palette, I'm happy for my senses to be less refined, I'd hate not to be able to enjoy something unless it was top quality. "

I missed this comment before. I think your comparison is flawed. I'm not suggesting you need to spend $50 instead of $8 on a bottle of wine. What I'm saying is you're spending your $8 on the wrong wine.

Sound quality is not an arbitrary, unimportant thing. A comparison is - for the same cost, most people would prefer a better tasting wine to a bottle of plonk. It's not a matter of being picky. Differences in systems from car to car produce the same effect as differences in quality from one sound source to another.

Smartphones can stream music, and all but older cars have bluetooth connectivity. Spend less money (the streaming sources are free) and get a better result. Or, spend $15 for an SD or thumb drive, transfer music from your own collection or hours of music you choose that you can record for free on your personal computer and transfer to the storage medium or your phone, to play in the car or on your home sound system.

Each of these alternatives offer clearer and more enjoyable sound quality than Sirius, in my experience. Don't spend more money, try doing it a different and sometimes cheaper way to get a better result.

Yeah, Elmer, I just made the mistake of comparing sound sources.

The first was ok. I chose the CD that just happened to be in my truck's changer: the soundtrack from The Producers. I went back and forth through several songs and found CD to be the best, streaming on Apple a close second, and Spotify somewhat dead. I did this for quite a while, Spotify being third was pretty clear but it took more careful listening to differentiate between CD and Apple. Certainly nothing I'd notice over the drone of a V8 at 75.

But then came the big mistake. I switched around channels on Sirius XM, pulled up whatever was playing onto Apple, and OMG the difference! I kinda sorta wish I hadn't done that.

Will I cancel my SiriusXM? Probably not. I do like hearing a bit of the DJ's banter here and there, interviews, hearing about upcoming albums and shows, bits of trivia, etc. And the randomness of switching stations over playlists. But the sound quality, or lack thereof, will likely bother me for a while.

I'm glad you gave it a try. CD sound, while itself compromised, is the best available consolation available at a reasonable price. Downloaded tunes, like from iTunes or Amazon, are themselves already compromised and usually not the highest quality. By ripping CD sound files to high quality formats, and then putting on a device your car will play, you get the quality of CDs without having to juggle the actual disks.

The genie is out of the bottle for you, food. You will hereinafter pay more attention to the quality of sound you hear than you did before. You'll be all the better for it. Enjoy yourself and keep your speed down.

My sister bought a lifetime subscription to Sirius radio many years ago she pays nothing now. They don’t offer it any more.

I'm obsessed witu this now. i picked up my son at his friend's house this morning. When we got home I told him to pay attention to the sound quality of the song on the radio. I pulled up the song on Apple and switched over. Literally on the very first beat he said, "Oh wow, yeah."

Ok I'll stop posting now! 😂

I wouldn't tire of reading about your experiences each day but I understand you may have other things to do.

I'm glad you were open to do the comparison and report your impressions honestly.

Remember the best available sound at a reasonable price is from a CD, and a digital copy ripped to a lossless file (FLAC for the Windows world and Apple Lossless (ALAC) for the Apple world) produces files of slightly reduced size that, when played, reconstitute themselves automatically back exactly bit for bit to CD quality with no sound elements lost. MP3 files and MP4 (AAC) files can't do that.