Category: music

Metal on Sirius Radio

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I wrote to some of my metalhead-friends about the metal available on Sirius Radio. In case it’d interest other metalheads, I thought I’d post it here as an open letter as well.

Hey guys,

As you may have read on my blog, I’ve recently upgraded my car audio, including Sirius Radio.

In case you’ve been living under a rock ;), satellite radio is similar in some ways to satellite tv: I have a satellite radio compatible head unit in my car, along with a small antenna on my roof (about the size of a 2-pack of Twinkies). I pay about $12/month and, in return, I get 100 channels including 60 commercial-free music stations.

There’re all kinds of genres: 70s, 80s, jazz, classic rock, and so on. I signed up because they had content that I just couldn’t hear on the radio including electronica/techno and extensive news coverage (NPR, BBC News, and others).

Specifically, I wanted to write to you about the metal on Sirius Radio. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. Their metal station is channel 29, “Hard Attack”, and its description listed bands such as Slipknot and Korn (bleh).

But I soon discovered: it’s the real deal. They may only list some lame nu-metal bands in the description, but that was probably what their marketdroids thought would work best (heh).

I’ve been making notes of just some of the bands that I’ve heard so far. Sure, there’re the “expected” metal bands such as Rammstein and Metallica. But, it gets better :).

Lacuna Coil and Hammerfall? Yeah, got that.
Meshuggah and Opeth? Got that.

Dark Tranquillity? Sure.

In Flames and Nevermore? Oh yeah.

And, last but not least…
King Diamond? Yes!

For the price of about one CD a month, you can get all kinds of metal. If you’ve been thinking about satellite radio, I urge you to give it a try.

But, in due fairness, I’ll include one caveat. Sirius Radio does use psychoacoustic (mp3-like) compression and I have been able to detect artifacts. From time to time, I’ll notice the characteristic spwish-spwish of overcompressed cymbals or the fwuth-fwuth of an overcompressed bass drum.

In fact, I’ll say this right off the bat: Josh, you probably don’t have the stomach for Sirius Radio (at least not in its present state of compression). Then again, maybe I’m wrong (you’d have to listen to it to be sure).

Matt and Mike: if you can stand listening to mp3s on a regular basis (and I think you can), you'll probably get much enjoyment out of Sirius Radio (especially since a moving automobile — road noise and all — is not exactly a critical-listening environment).

If you go to a car audio store to evaluate Sirius Radio, just be sure to flip through various stations — some are compressed more than others.

The bottom line: would I buy Sirius Radio again? Definitely.

Clear Channel

Ashley Bischoff8 Comments

In response to my post about Sirius Radio, Jon Chan asks “why did you pick sirius over xm?”. I was going to post a reply as a comment, but it got a bit long so I decided to post it here.

The choice was easy :).

Firstly, if I’m going to be paying for radio, the last thing I want is commercials interrupting my music. (XM has commercials while Sirius’ music channels are commercial-free)

Secondly, and most importantly, Clear Channel is a major investor in XM radio — and I want nothing to do with Clear Channel. In case you're not familiar with them, Clear Channel owns nearly 1,200 stations nationwide and they’ve virtually single-handedly responsible for ruining commercial radio.

In DFW alone, Clear Channel owns several stations. 92.5, 97.1, 102.1, 102.9 — all Clear Channel. Worst of all, Clear Channel supports pay-for-play where record companies simply bribe stations to play their songs. That’s one of the reasons why Britney Spears gets her songs plastered all over the airwaves but yet yourFavoriteLocalBand never gets heard.

Clear Channel is evil, and the less money I can send in their direction, the better.

Sirius Radio

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

Over the past two weekends, I’ve had my car audio reworked, including Sirius Radio. In all:

Though I’ve only had it for a day and a half, I’m very pleased with it so far. Of all the features, I’ve been most excited about Sirius Radio. For those not aware, Sirius Radio offers 100 radio channels, delivered by satellite, including 60 commercial-free music channels.

There’re all kinds of genres including classic rock, electronica, jazz, and decade-based channels such as 70s and 80s. In particular interest to me, there’s also a Metal channel. Initially, I didn’t have my hopes up, as their description made it seem a bit lame (Korn? bleh.).

However, in the past day-and-a-half I’ve already heard Hammerfall, Dark Tranquillity, and Meshuggah (!). All right, so Meshuggah is listed in the channel’s description, but Hammerfall and Dark Tranquillity are two bands that I thought I’d never hear other than on CD.

Sirius Radio’s tagline says “You’ll never want to leave your car”, and it’s true. I’m actually contemplating whether there might more longer and more scenic routes I could take to work (HHOS).

Weird Al New Album Progress

Ashley Bischoff28 Comments

Weird Al is apparently working on his 11th album, and he linked to some studio-session photos from his site. As with most pictures from a band’s studio-time, they were probably taken by one of the band members (my hunch is that it was Bermuda, in this case).

Band-pictures are cool and all, but I’m struck by their low quality. I mean, the lighting is all wrong on the left-side picture on this page. And, the picture on the left side here is too dark. And, that doesn’t even go into the framing issues.

As the Weird Al Band is successful, I would think they could at least afford a better camera for themselves :-/.