Is it just me, or is the sound from the Navi voice and XM supposed to have a little static, crackle, or fuzzy distortion. The volume is set to normal, it's not cranked up loud, but sounds pretty bad to me all the time.

XM sounds like a super low quality MP3 file to me. All the high notes have distortion.
I think the car has a broken tweeter.

Just got the '06, it came in five-days after our new-born baby and I really don't have time to go to the dealer, and I have barely spent any time in the car so far, ~300 miles total. To be honest, I am a little picky about sound. I have a lot invested in my home stereo, but I just don't now if this is normal.

 

I haven't noticed any problems like that, but I keep my stereo's volume low (around 10 or 11).

Perhaps you have a blown speaker, or it came defective?

 

I have an XM radio in my car (SKYFi2...I have an '04 so it's not integrated). It also sounds like crap. I'm kinda pissed, actually, because I didn't know it would sound like this. Maybe it shouldn't, I don't know, but it's like the OP stated...sounds like a low quality mp3 file. I'm rather disappointed.

 

My friend and I (we both bought new TSXs at the same time 2 weeks ago) both noticed that the female nav voice does sound like it has some artifacts in it. We both think the bluetooth voice is much better.

As for the XM, the music stations I listen to sound great (channel 20, 21, 22 for example) - the talk stations (like MSNBC, Fox, CNN, E!) sound like they are squeezing a lot into that bandwith and are not full quality.

Dave

 

I would play an audio CD and see if the problem persists. If you hear the same static then you know its the speaker. I have an 06 and I've found the XM sound quality to be poor when directly compared to an Audio CD. In fact FM Radio sounds better.

 

I think the XM sound quality is all over the board. The basic music stations are mediocre. The old songs from the 80's sound as pure as the new ones from today, which leads me to believe they're really compressing them. However, I listened to a baseball game and could hear the crack of a bat--much better than crystal clear AM. I find the audio system to be very good. Try a good CD and vary the bass, treble and fader. It made a difference for me.

Oh, great color selection

 

i have sirius hardwired to mine and dont care for the sound quality either, if i want to listen to quality sounding music i pop in a CD, i mainly have sirius for howard stern though and he sounds fine on Sat radio

 

just got my 06' a week ago..i too am dissapointed in the XM sound quality..anybody hook up an mp3 to the aux input? curious about the sound quality on that...i'm gonna put in my infinity 6.5's and alpine 6x9's i took out from my 04'' ...

 

Thanks for the responses. Glad to hear that the Navi lady sounds kind of funny to others too.

Yeah, I gotta spend some time going between audio CDs and XM, to double check. I was trying to pick out which driver it could be, but I think it is just XM (those people want us to pay for crappy sound?). The little time I have been in the car (new baby came one-week earlier, no time for fun in car) the XM sound irritated me, FM sounds like...FM, and CDs sounded okay. It kept me trying to pick out problems instead of enjoying the engine.

One of the first impressions, when the engine turns over and starts, the TSX sounds like a really hot car. I'm really impressed.

Yeah, the Milano Red w/ebony is really sweet. So glad I waited...so long, I ended up with an '06 instead of '05! Gotta take some decent pics.

 

Just got my 08 TSX and I too found the Navi lady voice has some static.. FM reception is not good either... Both CD and AM are fine... AM has better reception than my 02 TL-S that really surprised me...

-- william