Satellite radio - time travel?

[Prattguy1]

Someone tell me what the heck is going on with my satellite radio.

If I'm flipping through the presets and say, on station "A" the beginning of a song comes on, then I flip to station "B" but immediately decide I want to hear the song on station "A" after all, if I go back to station "A", the song is about 30 seconds further than it was when I heard the beginning of it 3-4 seconds prior. It's the strangest thing. I feel like I'm traveling in time every time it happens.

If this doesn't make sense, I'll try to post some video of it happening.

 

[Farmer Fran]

Sounds like something is up with the buffering.

 

[Plankton]

Sirius uses a proximity type of buffering. It'll start you off on the beginning of a song if you change to a station after a period of time, even though in real-time the song had already started. When you change to another station and back, it'll then set you to the real-time point in the song.

 

[Travelin Ram]

Buffering is how they keep from dropping out every time you drive under a bridge or any other momentary signal loss. The radio is playing stuff that was transmitted earlier. And newer radios use it to start at the beginning of a song when you channel surf.

When you switch away from a channel and swap back to it will skip ahead in the buffer. Not sure why, but mine all do the same.

 

[Neil E]

When you change to a Sirius radio station, it starts at the beginning of whatever song is playing, if you change stations and go back, it is live.

 

[Plankton]

^that^

 

[RodeoRam]

When you change to a Sirius radio station, it starts at the beginning of whatever song is playing, if you change stations and go back, it is live.

^This^

Keep in mind, this only applies to stations you've saved as presets. This is from my 2018 UConnect 4C/4C Nav with 8.4 Inch Screen manual:

Tune Start

Tune Start begins playing the current song from the
beginning when you tune to a music channel using one of
the twelve presets, so you can enjoy the complete song.
This feature occurs the first time the preset is selected
during that current song. Tune Start works in the background,
so you will not even realize it’s on, except that you
will miss the experience of joining your favorite song with
only a few seconds left to play. Refer to “Uconnect Settings”
in your Owner’s Manual for further information.

This works hand-in-hand with the replay function:

Replay

The replay function provides a means to store and replay
up to 22 minutes of music audio and 48 minutes of talk
radio. Once the channel is switched, content in replay
memory is lost.