Kamakiri
The New Dynamic
As some of you may know, I got this from the wife for a Christmas present . The model I got is the Delphi SkyFi, shown below. It's about the size of a large pager, and comes with a remote. You must purchase either a home install kit (consisting of a stand, antenna, cables, and power supply), or an in-car kit. If you have both kits, you can move it from home to car simply by taking out of one holder and popping it into another. Pretty neat!
The XM service comes with 60 music channels, and 40 news/talk/sports channels for only 9.99 a month. The comedy channels are hilarious! There is a music channel for every taste that you can imagine, from trance to Latin, from musical soundtracks to heavy metal, it's all there.
The best part of the home installation is that you only have to point the antenna out a window....a small square device, no alignment necessary as with DirecTV. Hooking it up took a total of a minute.
Now, for the sound.....
I hooked it up to my Fisher 500C and Altec A7 VOTs, and thought the sound quality was pretty impressive, but then did a simple A/B with my Rega CD player. All I can say is that with XM on that particular system, there's something missing. Highs are muted, bass isn't well defined, almost as if the music were somehow compressed.....almost like hooking the inputs of a Fisher to a cheap cassette player.....or maybe a kid's record player with a cheap sapphire needle. The music was there, for sure, very clear reception, but the feeling was gone. That's the best way to describe it.
I'm going to try it out on some of my SS gear, hoping that it will be more forgiving, which I'll do this weekend. The news/talk and comedy channels make this unit well worth the price of admission, and this would be outstanding in the car, especially on long trips, but thus far it doesn't seem to be a medium up to par with what we expect out of vinyl and CD on our systems. More to come.
The XM service comes with 60 music channels, and 40 news/talk/sports channels for only 9.99 a month. The comedy channels are hilarious! There is a music channel for every taste that you can imagine, from trance to Latin, from musical soundtracks to heavy metal, it's all there.
The best part of the home installation is that you only have to point the antenna out a window....a small square device, no alignment necessary as with DirecTV. Hooking it up took a total of a minute.
Now, for the sound.....
I hooked it up to my Fisher 500C and Altec A7 VOTs, and thought the sound quality was pretty impressive, but then did a simple A/B with my Rega CD player. All I can say is that with XM on that particular system, there's something missing. Highs are muted, bass isn't well defined, almost as if the music were somehow compressed.....almost like hooking the inputs of a Fisher to a cheap cassette player.....or maybe a kid's record player with a cheap sapphire needle. The music was there, for sure, very clear reception, but the feeling was gone. That's the best way to describe it.
I'm going to try it out on some of my SS gear, hoping that it will be more forgiving, which I'll do this weekend. The news/talk and comedy channels make this unit well worth the price of admission, and this would be outstanding in the car, especially on long trips, but thus far it doesn't seem to be a medium up to par with what we expect out of vinyl and CD on our systems. More to come.