Sirius' Stiletto 100 in the wild

See that? No, not the big honkin' speaker dock, but the Stiletto 100 just casually hangin' out in the wild. The dock we already know as the Soloist from Directed Electronics but this is a first live-shot 'round these parts of the WiFi-enabled Stiletto 100 from Sirius. Besides playing live Sirius broadcasts, the $349 device is expected to offer 100 hours of storage and the ability to download and store MP3 and WMA files. If that September launch holds up then we can expect the unboxing rituals to commence any day now.

[Via Orbitcast]

[Michael @ Aug 31st 2006 9:48AM]

Ugly, Ugly, Ugly.

[nak @ Aug 31st 2006 10:20AM]

i agree

[George @ Aug 31st 2006 10:28AM]

As muxh as I loke Sirius for Howard Stern, the music sound quality SUCKS rendering any Sirius music player pointless. Maybe Sirius and XM will merge and increase the bandwidth to provide better than phone quality sound.

[Telly @ Aug 31st 2006 10:56AM]

I subscribe to Sirius and unfortunately, they only produce, I believe around 32 kbps, where XM is producing 64+ kbps. Sirius will charge an additional $2.99 fee and produce up to 48 kbps, but nothing compared to XM's 98 kbps with their additional charges. These apply to mainly online streaming anyway.

[Brian @ Aug 31st 2006 11:17AM]

George,
I agree it's not quite CD-like, but I hardly think the sound quality SUCKS, complete with capitals. It's acceptible to my ears, and I'm fairly picky. It could be the receiver you have SUCKS- I use a Clarion headunit in my car, and it sounds just fine. Sure, I'd like perfection for my $12 a month, but this is still tech in its infancy. I have noticed, though, that certain channels sound better than others do, leading me to believe Sirius opens the pipes more for Howard and Left of Center than say, Kidstuff. Then again, maybe my headunit SUCKS....

[-Scott @ Aug 31st 2006 11:54AM]

Very nice... Not sure about the Soloist, but the Stiletto has some great, industry-first features. I don't care how the thing looks, I care about what it does & how well it does it (which remains to be seen). Save the "pretty" shit for the trendwhores.

Sound quality from the receivers can vary greatly, depending upon your reception. Those who complain about poor sound quality should, instead, complain about poor reception at their locations...

As for the online bitrate, don't believe the nonsense from the idiots who post things they know nothing about, or post false info because they're XM fans and/or Sirius haters... The upgraded bitrates are:
Music channels @ 128kbps
Talk channels @ 48kbps

[John @ Aug 31st 2006 12:45PM]

Are they using the Creative menu system? :-)
(Just a crack to the previous apple patent law suite posts)

[BAMF @ Aug 31st 2006 1:16PM]

Brian-

The reason why some channels sound better than others is because Sirius uses technology that dynamically allocates bandwidth to different channels as needed. There are a few select channels that I listen to every day and I've noticed that one day a channel will sound like poo and the next day the same channel sounds great.

Telly-

I think the extra $2.99 for increased bitrate only applies to online streaming.

[John @ Aug 31st 2006 1:56PM]

Wow this unit looks great! I just bought my s50 about 5 months ago (100 bucks shipped) and love it. I will probley wait a year or so to get this, but it seems like it will be amaazing and kick XMs ass :) I love the sirius music channels and howard is great too!

[George @ Aug 31st 2006 3:46PM]

Scott: As with digital TV, with digital radio you either get clear reception or you get no reception. There is no sound quality variation based on reception, expect for masking, where the unit fills in short amounts of missing data. Digital has a hard cutoff to reception unlike analog where noise gradually overtakes the signal. And BAMF is right, they dynamically allocate bandwidth. Used to work for a vendor of DirecTv and they have a control room in Castle Rock, CO that manages bandwdith for channels, sports get more, slow movie movies, less. I' a fan of iTunes and 128kbps AAC, I think that about covers quality listening, so I'm not a compression snob. In a noisey car, Sirius may sound OK, but at home you notice the warbly sound much more frequently.

[PEZ @ Aug 31st 2006 4:33PM]

To those who think Sirius wuality sucks - yep I am a picky one also, I have a crappy 25x4 watt stereo in my car, and a sirius replay, and the thing sounds SICK.

you guys are either tone death of just plain retarded.

[-Scott @ Aug 31st 2006 8:02PM]

George: you're right about the digital signal (all or nothing). My mind was thinking of the FM transmitters, but my hands were typing otherwise. :o) I think some people use the FM transmitters and think *that's* the extent of the Sirius sound quality.

I have an S50, and using the home dock, I send my audio through my 5.1 speakers; sounds fine to me, but then again, I have tinnitus... ;o)

[TSW @ Sep 1st 2006 4:42PM]

I wonder if Motorola is going to be miffed that another company is naming their new tech product after a sharp object.

Oh well, I guess it's not so bad, it's not like you can condense stiletto into four letters.

STLT SLTO STIL

pity.

[Leper Messiah @ Sep 1st 2006 10:16PM]

I work for Sirius Technical Support (and in fact, I'm on job right now, right in the middle of a call), and I can tell you that as far as sound quality goes, what we were told during training is that the music channels use 128kbps bandwith, and if the data goes beyond that size or whatever, its tacked on to the bandwith of a channel that is currently not being used or runs at a lower bandwith. Something like that, its been while since training. But I do know that Sirius' satellites are set at a 65* angle, while XM's are at 40*, so Sirius has a better chance of getting a signal when driving and when your antenna is near a window.

[Jason @ Oct 10th 2006 12:14PM]

Hey Leper,

How are you suppose to use these dome style headphones while working out. Come on you get absolutely no signals at all. You walk under a tree it bounces out. Sirius should have waited at least a year to get these bugs our. Let's face it the unit was made for indoors only.