I listened to Sirius directly through the head unit of my 2014 for 10 years - it sounded fantastic to me. I almost never listed to music from my phone or any app while in the truck. My 2014 Alpine sounded better than the Harman Kardon system in my wife's 2016 Jeep GC Overland.
I know what you referring to... but this is far, far beyond the quality differences between Satellite vs Streaming. My truck sounds like a poor man's boom box from the 80's. Like a little Panasonic AM/FM Cassette with one speaker. I am not exaggerating.
Ram Cares was supposed to call yesterday and talk about speakers.
Agreed that the stock speakers sound like a boom box. Its heavy on mid and mid base, so the stock system has little definition and is muffled and rough to my ears to the point that being heavy on mid and mid base tones fatigues my ears.
This is due to the way the amp combines and cross over the channels to make the crappy speakers sound acceptable but they are really bad.
There is much info on the alpine system in this forum and diymobile and other forums.
I did replace all 3 speakers in the dash after trying just the corners without center and with center. I found the range was better with the center speaker using wide bands as they reflect off the windscreen and the center is no longer dominating the sound stage like before. The CDT speakers have crazy wide band tones even at low volume. The rear headliners pop now, if you sit back there its plenty loud now.
I went with 4 ohm because ill be adding an amp and dsp to really bring it together. Even at 4 ohms for the replacement doors and dash the highest volume I use is half to 3/4.
That said, I do stream spotify via USB cable plugged into a $15 DAC which outputs to the AUX cable. This sounds better than blutooth , especially the base, I can feel it in the floorboard!
I also increase the aux gain in the head unit settings which helps overdrive the output quite a lot.
When it comes to satellite radio, the compression will always make the music sound like low definition, which is why I stream, I want to hear the music and yes, Tidal is great.