How to record XM car interface?

If I understand you correctly, you want to make recordings from the XM radio installed in your car. I'm pretty sure you can't do that. I'm pretty certain the car's radio doesn't have line outputs and if it did, you'd have the tear the dash apart to get at them. The only thing you could do would be to attach some wires to the speakers in your car so that you could record the sound going to the speakers, but there are all kinds of reasons why that's not a good idea including the fact that the record level would be affected by the radio's volume control and, theoretically, the quality wouldn't be as good.

You have a couple of options. The best would probably be to buy a new XM radio (with line outputs) that can be moved back and forth between your car and your house. I'm pretty sure they make such things. You could then hook the radio's line outputs to your recorder when the radio is in the house. But you'd have to move the radio back to the car whenever you went for a drive. You'd pay only one monthly XM fee.

You could also buy an XM radio to be used only in the house (some hi-fi tuners already have one built in and all you have to do is pay the monthly fee to activate it). Make sure it has line outputs so that you can connect to the recorder. Then record the programming you want onto CDs and play those CDs in your car. You wouldn't have realtime XM radio in the car, but that's usually not too important, and you'd pay only one monthly XM fee.

Or, you could pay for two XM radios: one in the car and one in the house. I believe (but I'm not positive) that XM will give you a discount on the monthly fee for the second radio.

Finally, you could pay for an XM Internet subscription and record the audio with your computer (I use Total Recorder software to make audio recordings of my computer's audio). Then either play the CD recordings in your car or, if you are wealthy, pay an XM fee for the car's radio as well as for the Internet subscription.

The problem with XM Radio is that their business model is to take as much of your money from you as possible. In my case, they priced me out of their market and they aren't getting any of my money.

Good luck.

 

If you want home distribution, pay the $3 a month for the internet subscription. I have that on one of my radios and I use it everywhere. Kitchen PC, cell phone, garage PC, everywhere other than the cars.

 

The internet streams on select channels are much better than 64kbps. On the 80's station it is not a set bitrate, it is variable. But on my cellphone I can see it pulling on average 200kbps with bursts when the song changes for the artwork and artist info. Also you get channels (like BBC Radio1) that they removed from the normal receivers. It used to be on Channel 15, then moved to Channel 11, and then they took it off completely. Now it is back, but online only. The ability to rewind is also neat, but I ca do that with my external receiver in the car too.

If you are set on doing it by taking the audio out of the car (which still seems silly to me after using the convenience of the internet radio for less than a small cup of coffee a month), you need to know what system you have. What logo do you have on your radio?



You should have the top one. There is usually a tuner that plugs into the magnetic antennas and this is universal. From here it goes into a make-specific unit.

The SCC1 is the universal tuner (I think that is the latest one), and the TOY-SC1 is the part that the SCC1 plugs into and then plugs into the factory headunit allowing the station names and all that to appear on the screen. This will also work if you have the "Sirius Ready" logo (3rd from top). If you have the 2nd or 4th logos, then you need the XM only equivalent.

Even though Sirius and XM merged, they really havent. We have XM in the Lexus, and Sirius elsewhere. We can't migrate the XM onto the same bill. We get a separate bill, and no discount for multiple receivers since it is the "only XM" receiver. It is silly. The merger really sucked. Also channels are not the same. 1-9 are the same on Sirius and XM, but for instance channel 12 on Sirius is 32 on XM... And XM has some commercial supported channels even! But it is possible to switch out the Sirius hardware to XM hardware, but it has a different SID/EAN and is a completely different system. In my opinion the Sirius is better. They had the better satellites in orbit and ground repeaters as well. So you get a better signal if you are in a more urban area. They are not backwards compatible in the slightest.

I think the TOY-SC1 and SCC1 is what you have.

The SCC1 is easily hacked and has been done before. I am not fond of Mitch, but he is a good engineer and he made a USB adapter for it so you can control the stations via a PC, get artist info, all of that. Only $60 (www.rush2112.net • Portal)



However, I do not believe you can parallel the data bus from the SCC1, although I have never tried. I do not think it is open collector, I think it actively drives the signals. So it is 1-to-1 thing. So your 1 SCC1 tuner (the thing you pay for every month) can be connected to the factory TOY-SC1 like it is now, OR to Mitch's box. More than likely not both.

You may have to create a custom bus interface to allow paralleling of the devices so you don't have to plug them in each time and wait the few minutes (sometimes 10-15 minutes) after plugging for it to re-grab the satellites and your activation authenticity. And you would still have a USB cable running from your car to a computer. From there you could share it to anything on your network easily using your favourite streamer.

Just don't drive off without unplugging the cable. And your car would have to be in AUX mode at least, your 12v would run down pretty fast, so you would need to plug in a battery maintainer too.

That's how to do it your way. I still think $3.50/mo for the ability to listen to more channels anywhere on any device, from any computer is much easier. And you can listen to the internet radio while someone drives the car somewhere else since it is a full separate subscription. Another option, if you have satellite TV, just pipe the music channels around. Dish network has Sirius for free, so we listen to that on tv when we are playing a board game or just want background music. No need for a separate music box.