I’m no audiophile, so this announcement doesn’t do much for me. However, those of you who enjoy fully immersive music are in for a treat. Beginning in March, XM subscriptions will include two “XM HD Surround” stations and special hi-def programming. Obviously, you’ll need some new hardware to handle the 5.1 audio… but why let money prevent you from achieving auditory bliss?
XM says: The new offering of 5.1 Surround on XM is called XM HD Surround, which provides content with six discrete channels of digital full fidelity audio powered by Neural Audio technology. Beginning in March 2006, XM will broadcast the free-form music channel Fine Tuning (XM Channel 76) and the classical pops music channel XM Pops (XM Channel 113) in XM HD Surround. XM will also broadcast a variety of special shows and live music performances at the XM studios in XM HD Surround. XM manufacturing partners such as Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., and Yamaha will introduce home audio systems capable of playing XM HD Surround powered by Neural Audio in 2006.
so will they actually broadcast each discrete channel in something better than 56kbps crappy audio like the rest of the channels? Please tell me HD radio is better than 128kbps.