• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Review and Measurements of SONOS Amp

Darwin

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2017
Messages
304
Likes
139
I praised such detail when I commented on the nice feel of the power cord. I question the management decision to spend a lot of money on that, when they could have better engineered the core product. It is a sign of a company not using its resources wisely.

This is a company I have known since inception since my team at Microsoft worked with them to implement our audio formats in their products. We used to hold them up as a great example of how to do computer audio right when talking to just about any small and large audio company. It is under that light that I critique where they have landed where they missed the most important innovation in streaming content to a speaker at home.

When I look at this amplifier and its software, little of that excitement is there anymore that existed when I looked at their first generation product with that very nice, flashy controller.

When I lived in silicon valley, the moment we saw a company started to construct fancy buildings instead of putting the money towards product development, we would joke that their stock would tank and in almost every case it did! Same here. When I look at attention put in a power cord instead of internal design, features and usability of software, I worry about the company.

Looks are part of the Sonos brand and one of the reasons I Iike them. It makes sense for them to spend money on it.
So is how their buildings look.
I certainly don’t agree with everything thing they do but think they are on the right track now. Supporting the top three with Alexa, Siri, and soon Google assistant sounds really smart and attractive to consumers.
They should have added voice control years before Amazon did with Echo. Any focus group testing would have shown the difficulty of trying to find and play music with a smartphone.
This is no different on all the mobile phone companies that missed the boat on smartphones and app stores, letting Apple eat their lunch with iPhone. Where is Nokia now?

You seriously think Sonos should have spend the money to create their own voice control? Very costly to create and support. What about all the devices and various software actions the others support. Sonos would have to do that too to be relevant so they would spend a ton of money that doesn’t help sell their devices. It also would not have stopped Apple, Amazon, and Google coming out with their own voice control.
 

PierreV

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Nov 6, 2018
Messages
1,437
Likes
4,686
I hate those power cords, but they are fairly standard and were common 20 years ago, where they started to feel "cheap" compared to the 3 pins standard the world gets now. I still end up in situations where I need such a power cord and it is always a "where did I put those darned things?" moment. The only advantage they had (imho) was that they made clear they weren't actually grounded. It seems to be more of a cheap detail to make the device feel more refined and sophisticated...

And I have worse... (although I guess this must be someone's normal plug ;))

IMG_20190303_210119.jpg
 

RayDunzl

Grand Contributor
Central Scrutinizer
Joined
Mar 9, 2016
Messages
13,198
Likes
16,981
Location
Riverview FL
You are :). It is a common mistake. The FFT does indeed show a noise floor of -100 dB. But that is NOT the actual noise floor.

Is it possible to show the "actual" noise floor in comparison?

What would you do - something like a 1/6 octave equivalent FFT, or what?
 

PuX

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2018
Messages
324
Likes
203
The amplifiers measured here so far have exhibited less than "near perfect" measurements.

First example I found:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...easurements-of-dayton-audio-apa-150-amp.6571/
well that one is under $200 and made by a company I haven't heard of.
generally traditional high quality hi-fi components are priced at $1000 or more.
I can't be sure that price and reputable brand give any guarantee that it will perform well, but that's what you expect at that level.

but yeah, the ones that we measured so far were no good.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,385
Location
Seattle Area
You seriously think Sonos should have spend the money to create their own voice control? Very costly to create and support.
Not at all. The core signal processing is licensable. And they could have gone to a company like MIcrosoft and used theirs. Or Google's. They could have also acquired a company as Apple did with Siri.

At the time of their IPO the market valued the company at $1.95 billion. Billion! You are telling me a company at that type of valuation couldn't have afforded to put in voice recognition in their product?

Bottom line is this: the next revolution in smart consumer speakers arrived and SONOS was nowhere to be found. It is not my problem to feel sorry for them for their size, difficulty of getting there, etc. My job is to observe what has happened.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,385
Location
Seattle Area
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,385
Location
Seattle Area
Is it possible to show the "actual" noise floor in comparison?

What would you do - something like a 1/6 octave equivalent FFT, or what?
I showed that indirectly in these graphs:

index.php


I can measure it again and show the noise level directly.
 

Darwin

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2017
Messages
304
Likes
139
Not at all. The core signal processing is licensable. And they could have gone to a company like MIcrosoft and used theirs. Or Google's. They could have also acquired a company as Apple did with Siri.
At the time of their IPO the market valued the company at $1.95 billion. Billion! You are telling me a company at that type of valuation couldn't have afforded to put in voice recognition in their product?
Bottom line is this: the next revolution in smart consumer speakers arrived and SONOS was nowhere to be found. It is not my problem to feel sorry for them for their size, difficulty of getting there, etc. My job is to observe what has happened.

I don't think it would have made sense for Sonos to spend the revenue to create and support an entire smart assistant infrastructure supporting thousands of devices they don't sell. Their revenue story hasn't been that great. I think the main reason they went public is to finance R&D which is expensive.
I think it makes much more sense for them to tell consumers they can support their favorite voice assistant or at least the top three. (Google is in beta).
 

Darwin

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2017
Messages
304
Likes
139
You are :). It is a common mistake. The FFT does indeed show a noise floor of -100 dB. But that is NOT the actual noise floor. When performing an FFT, you tell it how many audio samples it should use to determine the frequency spectrum. In this case, I am using 32K or 32,000 points. What happens then is that the noise of the product gets spread across 32,000 points. In other words, the noise in each point of the graph is 1/32000 of what it actually is. This is called "FFT gain" and results in some 42 dB of noise reduction!

We use larger FFTs like this so that we can see the distortion products that lie within. It is a powerful technique to find distortion at very, very low levels.

For the "truth" look at THD+N. That is the sum of distortion+noise. Looking at the FFT graph, we see almost no distortion spikes for line in. As such, what is there is dominated by +N or noise. So the noise level is what the SINAD indicates or about -70 dB or so, not -100.


I don't know what that means. Can you state it in laymen terms?
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,385
Location
Seattle Area
I don't know what that means. Can you state it in laymen terms?
I plan to do a video on it as it is hard to explain in words. Take a look at the FFT gain in this FAQ: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/understanding-audio-measurements.2351/

And this graph in the specific:

index.php


If it is still hard to understand just accept this: the noise floor show in FFTs is NOT real. Don't rely on it for anything. The level of any spikes however, *is* real. Use it for that.
 

Audioagnostic

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2018
Messages
88
Likes
115
I plan to do a video on it as it is hard to explain in words. Take a look at the FFT gain in this FAQ: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/understanding-audio-measurements.2351/

And this graph in the specific:

index.php


If it is still hard to understand just accept this: the noise floor show in FFTs is NOT real. Don't rely on it for anything. The level of any spikes however, *is* real. Use it for that.


Thanks! I get what you are saying but do not grasp the underlying math...
 

pjug

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 2, 2019
Messages
1,775
Likes
1,561
Maybe it would be useful to describe the effect of the analog input noise issue in practical terms: if you play something though speakers using the analog input at normal listening levels, is there noticeable background hiss between tracks like with a cassette deck? Also, is it possible to get comment from Sonos, especially with regard to the SNR measurements and the analog input volume issue?
 

andreasmaaan

Master Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jun 19, 2018
Messages
6,652
Likes
9,399
Maybe it would be useful to describe the effect of the analog input noise issue in practical terms: if you play something though speakers using the analog input at normal listening levels, is there noticeable background hiss between tracks like with a cassette deck? Also, is it possible to get comment from Sonos, especially with regard to the SNR measurements and the analog input volume issue?

According to the graph in Amir's post #29, the noise is about 70dB below a full-scale signal. In many typical listening rooms and at normal listening levels, this is unlikely to produce any audible hiss at the listening position (the noise will be masked by the ambient noise of the room). However, -70dB is quite close to the threshold of audibility for most rooms/listeners/listening levels. So it's conceivable that for some situations, this would be an unacceptable level of noise.

I'm also not sure if the noise is attenuated with the volume control. I assume it is (as it appears to be on the input), but if it isn't everything I've just said is wrong - the noise will likely be a problem.
 

Gyroscopics

Active Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2019
Messages
105
Likes
71
It seems to me that SONOS has partially lost its way, overspending on mechanical engineering, and underspending on features people really wanted (e.g. voice control). Usability of the software is worse than I expected just the same.

So true. I hate the current tablet interface of Sonos. The old layout was much better. Good thing Sonos left the PC/Mac interface unchanged and that's all I use now to operate my Sonos Connects. The last time I bought a Sonos device was more than a ~decade ago. My Sonos Play-1 stopped working and I don't plan to replace it with another Sonos. The Amazon/Google devices are more functional and cheaper for garage duty.
 

pjug

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 2, 2019
Messages
1,775
Likes
1,561
Looking at photos of the old sonos connect amp, and even older ZP120, it looks like the same power connector. So maybe Sonos was in fact trying to save money by not changing it. The speaker connectors are new for sure, though. I kind of like what they did with those.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,385
Location
Seattle Area
The Amazon/Google devices are more functional and cheaper for garage duty.
My situation exactly. I have left behind the Sonos and switched to Amazon for my woodshop.
 

pjug

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 2, 2019
Messages
1,775
Likes
1,561
Oh now I see what you mean on the power connector. I wonder how Sonos justifies their 116 SNR spec. Although I am only seeing this in (pretty much all) early reviews, but not on the Sonos site.
 
Top Bottom