We just picked up a new vehicle the other day. A silver Hyundai Santa Fe… but that’s not the point of this post.

The Santa Fe came with a three month trial subscription to XM Radio… which is the point of this post.

There are something like 200 channels on XM Radio as near as I can figure, some of them even worth listening to. But I don’t think I’ll be subscribing. For one thing, I’m perfectly happy with Q-107 and CBC Radio One and Two and the handful of other radio stations we generally have programmed into our car radio.

But the kicker came tonight, when I was listening to Channel 7, or maybe it was channel 6, and one of my favourite songs came on, an old Gerry Rafferty classic called Right Down the Line.

It just so happens that I have that song on my laptop’s iTunes, and it comes on every now and then when I’m riding the GO Train working on the Great Canadian Science Fiction Novel (page 292 right now, thanks for asking). So I know what the song is supposed to sound like.

I swear the song had been pitch shifted, as if compressed for time, to make it shorter.

I was appalled.

I had got in the car only moments before, when The Eagles’ Peaceful Easy Feeling had been playing, and it had sounded fine. But the instant Right Down the Line came on I knew something was wrong. It was like Right Down the Line by Alvin and the Chipmunks.

I know a little something about time compressing sound files, having used it frequently back in my sound design days. We did a little experiment with ProTools one day where we calculated you could compress a half hour file about a maximum of 7.5% before the listener could tell you’d done anything, maybe a little less if the voices were familiar to the audience. But I hated doing it at all, and usually reserved that sort of thing for tweaking sound effects. Like creating giant screaming desert scorpions out of elephant cries.

I would never, ever do it to a piece of music. Not even 1.5 percent. Not even to a country tune. Especially not to a classic Gerry Rafferty tune.

I’m sure it was a one time fluke. Maybe just that once they really needed to shave off thirty seconds to get the cut in before the news. But even so the damage has been done. From now on every tune I hear on XM I’ll be wondering, fearing that it’s been time compressed. “Is the guitar solo supposed to sound like that? Is that a man or a woman singing?”

And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll not be subscribing to XM Radio when the three months is up.

Um, that and the fact that we can’t really afford it.