I see all of this info about tuning Sirius to an FM frequency in a car. Is it possible to tune my home docked Sirius to an FM frequency on the radios throughout my house?
Why would you want to? The sound quality suffers a good bit. If you want the sound all over your house there are better options.
If it’s a home-only receiver it probably doesn’t have an FM transmitter. If it’s a car and home one, you might be able to turn on the FM transmitter while it’s docked, but I suspect not (you couldn’t on the last home-docking one I had).
The home setup I’ve got right now is I got a spare antenna and a 12v power supply to run my cheapo car receiver in my house. The sound quality is usually pretty good, but this is the absolute cheapest one and it’s a little static-y even in the car. Before this, I had a really sweet Audiovox receiver that had a transmitter that was powerful enough that I could just turn it on in my car while it was parked in the garage and it would still come in pretty well inside.
Well I’m trying to use the Sirius home unit I have now and not invest more cashola to be able to hear Sirius throughout the house without moving it and my bose sounddock (which I already had) every time I go from one end of the house to another. It’d be awesome to tune it on every radio…
Car electronics installer here. Yes you can, with a few details. I’ve done this in my home, and I’ve worked at two places that have had the same setup.
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You obviously need a working and correctly set-up home satellite radio system. Sounds like you already have this.
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You need a wireless FM transmitter. These are widely available, but see my additional comments to follow.
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You need to feed the audio output from your Sirius tuner to the FM transmitter, as well as supply power to the transmitter.
Your Sirius tuner has a 3.5mm “headphone” style output. Some FM transmitters have the same connector, while others have RCA connectors. However, 3.5mm to RCA adapters are inexpensive and widely available.
Some FM transmitters run on a pair of AA or AAA batteries. Others are designed to be installed in a car, and require 12 volts DC—maybe you have a “wall wart” from some old discarded appliance that you’ve saved; you could use it for this.
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In the early days of XM and Sirius, the units came with poweful, clean-sounding FM transmitters that worked well, but were more powerful than the FCC limits.
As you may or may not know, they usually transmit at low frequencies, in the 88-90 range. This is also where most college, public, and religious stations broadcast.
The story goes that enough people got irritated at the Howard Stern signal from the adjacent car on the highway cutting into the sermon or NPR broadcast that people were listening to, that they complained about it. See here:
After that fiasco, almost all FM transmitters on the market (including the ones built into car satellite radio tuners) were made legal, but the result was that they were so weak as to be useless.
Anecdotally, the satellite radio manufacturers did nothing to inform the car-audio installation industry, so we ended up installing a lot of product that essentially didn’t work as expected; angry dealers, installers, and customers was the result.
Anyway, what I’m getting to is this:
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You’ll see all kinds of wireless FM transmitters on the market, even at your local Target or Wal Mart or Best Buy, that work on batteries. You’ll find them with the iPod and MP3 player accessories. This won’t work for your needs; they have a range of only a few feet.
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Your best bet, in my opinion, is to buy an older, stronger automotive FM transmitter, and power it with a “wall wart.” The Farenheit FMT-3 was a piece that I remember as being particularly strong. It’s still on the market today, but I have no idea if it’s been crippled like the others. Try to buy a used one; the older the better.
Here’s an example of the FMT-3:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Farenheit-Wireless-FM-Transmitter-FMT-3-NEW_W0QQitemZ260535470911QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_2?hash=item3ca91fcb3f#ht_4416wt_1165
- www.wholehousefmtransmitter.com has a good story, and it looks like it would be just what you need, but it’s pricey and I have no experience whatsoever with them. Maybe do a little research and see if they have a good reputation.
It’s the Stratus 6 which originally came with the car kit, but I got a home dock to plug it into my Bose speakers inside the house. It does have FM tuning capability, but I don’t know if this = FM transmitter…
Thanks for confirming what I was trying to say, while being less wordy.
I perform my installations on the road, out of my station wagon.
I also had an older Audiovox Sirius receiver, and I would leave it in my car, switched on, and I would tune the radio in my customer’s car to the same station, and was able to listen to satellite radio while working.
With a good FM transmitter, it doesn’t have to suffer much.
Also, it’s not just for music. If one were listening to a sports event, religious programming, comedy, news, or talk radio, the sound quality becomes much less important.