Just put Sirius Radio in my B6, don't know why I didn't get it sooner. It is Fantastic!!!

much stronger. My car originally came with XM but I have since swapped it out for Sirius. no regrets, though

Perhaps my experience was unique, but it took over an hour and three phone calls, burning up cell minutes and repeating my information several times over, just to get my radio activated. After demanding to speak to a manager while on the third call, the response was to put me on "death hold", even though I had told her that overage minutes on my phone cost $0.40 per minute and no one ever came onto the line.

(Plus, it was interesting how the reps claim to be in Dallas, yet the music played while on hold was to a station broadcasting in Hindi and all the reps were Indian. I have no issue with dealing with outsourced customer service, but I don't appreciate being lied to.)

At this point, I'm tempted to switch to XM. If anyone is interested in swapping units, please let me know...

I installed a Sirius ST2 in my Saab via Aux input and it sounds great. My friend has it built into his Bose on his new A4 and it does blow. Audi should address the problem.

the limited bandwidth Sirius is able to use to send the music down. My friend has one in his Ford explorer (whose stock system sucks...) and the Sirius sounds just as "good" as his FM or CD :)

At least for the music stations, I find the sound quality to be on par with FM (although below the level of a CD). The news and traffic stations do have horrendous sound quality -- clearly, not much bandwidth is dedicated to these non-music channels -- but the music stations are fine.

Let's face it, the Bose speaker/amp set-up and/or the Symphony head unit just don't deliver optimal sound quality. It may be better than the systems found in some rival cars, but it's simply not as good as a well-designed aftermarket system. I don't know if I'd blame Sirius for that.

They can delegate the bandwidth... so depending on content as well as popularity I'm sure they'll allocate more for those stations that "need" it. I like to listen to country and those stations sound MUCH worse than others - almost comparable to a news station!

The Pop/Rap/Jazz stations sound very-much the same as FM.

I already had radio service in my previous Audi, but they made me get a new subscription since it was a new receiver, and it took about two hours to get it done. Didn't go smoothly, lots of confusion on their end and frustration on mine...

I have XM with Bose, and FM and CD both sound great, so I don't have a problem with the headunit (though I'm no audiophile). XM is fine, but it isn't in the same league as the other two. Less dynamic range, and just very compressed sounding. Jazz, classical, rock, it doesn't matter. The signal is "clear" (and works in my garage with the door closed, and in the concrete airport parking ramp - someone explain that one to me), but it just doesn't sound crisp and alive. I love the content, but once my three-month free trial is over, I may go back to CDs and I-pod. Very disappointed in the sound quality. --DDD

Pete872 is correct in that the amount of bandwidth can be varied by channel and provider. I can't comment on XM, because I don't have it, or about the Sirius country channels, but only about several of Sirius' rock and jazz stations.

I'm in the school of thought that the Bose system is fairly mediocre, better than the stock system but certainly not audiophile quality. Perhaps a better system would reveal more flaws with Sirius' sound quality, but from what I've heard, Sirius in my car sounds no worse than the FM stations in my area.

And it's simply not possible for an FM signal to deliver the same quality as a CD, the CD should offer more range and less noise. If you find a stereo on which the CD sounds as good as the tuner, then the head unit and/or the speakers are probably pretty bad.