I've always appreciated satellite radio and have had both services since their infancy, but usually two or three times a year I do a road trip and become more appreciative. After a 1,500+ miles in the beginning of October, I felt no different. The sound quality doesn't bother me that much. The channels I listen to sound decent in my car, could be much better, but I will take the nearly interference free reception, with no commercials on the music channels, and no censored music any day over the audio quality of Hybrid Digital radio and its CD quality 10 minute non stop block of commercials multiple times an hour. Terrestrial radio only exists to play songs to fill the air time the stations sales staff can't sell ads for. My buddy that I took my most recent trip with wanted to listen to our local classic rock station when we first got on the road, so for the first time in about a year I flipped over to FM, the audio quality on the commercials was awesome! After about 15 minutes (two or so songs) I switched over to Sirius XM and put on Classic Rewind, my buddy who is not technologically inclined whatsoever, and as no idea what satellite radio is didn't even really notice until we stopped for gas about 300 miles later and he said 'I haven't head a commercial on this station yet'. Grand total of two service outages. Once when going through a tunnel, and a momentary blip going through a non EZPass Express toll barrier.
As we got closer, I flipped over to NASCAR Radio, which was a HUGE plus when wanting up to the second weather info for the race to plan for the landfall of the potential hurricane.
We went through some very rural areas with no or poor cell phone reception, so I'm not sure how internet radio would have been a benefit.
It may just be me, but the Sirius radio in my 2011 Ford Fusion sounds so much clearer and fuller than the XM radio in my 2014 RAV4. The RAV does have the prettier display however.
Does the Fusion have the Sony system?
I haven't heard XM in a long time, but I find the sound quality on Sirius in my wife's Expedition one of the better sounding systems for Sirius and it's the Sony set up. Most of the cars I've been in with friends/relatives who have satellite radio built in either drive Ford or Chrysler products, so I've only heard Sirius recently and while all close, my wife's is a tad better. Whatever I have in my Navigator is the best sounding Sirius feed I've heard. Not sure who makes the speakers, (used to be JBL, not sure if Ford still uses them or not) but the system is THX II cert.
