Review and Measurements of SONOS Amp

[JohnKay]

It is with the amp which is hard wired but I find the Sonos Ones have pretty crappy WiFi or airplay implementation so don’t work as well. I just replaced a set of Sonics ones with two more Homepods for this reason. Plus the Homepods sound a lot better and Siri works very well with amazing microphones on the HomePod. Alexa on the Ones is pretty awful so you are better off using a dot.

Thanks for the feedback. I had a similar experience with airplay 2 to a sonos one and a marantz receiver (airplay 2 enabled). Good wifi at home but the sonos one had some occasional drops on airplay 2.

 

[Darwin]

Thanks for the feedback. I had a similar experience with airplay 2 to a sonos one and a marantz receiver (airplay 2 enabled). Good wifi at home but the sonos one had some occasional drops on airplay 2.

Yeah I think the Sonos implantation of Airplay isn't the greatest and its one of the main reasons I bought them.
Its been fine on the Sonos amp maybe because it's hardwired to ethernet but not so good on the ones.

 

[Darwin]

I've mentioned before i wasn't too impressed with the sonos subwoofer on the sonos amp. It's pretty clearly designed for boom boom home theater and I care more about music quality with my Revel M16 speakers. So I removed the sub and music sounds noticeably better with just the speakers.
I'm rapidly losing reasons to have the sonos amp. It is small, provides a lot of power, does Airplay 2 well and I can use Sonos one rears for sounds which I usually have turned off except for movies. The good thing about Airplay 2 is I can use its with a mix of devices or in my case Sonos and HomePods but the HomePod stereo pair beats the snot out of Sonos One's and even Play 5's which cost more.

 

[pjug]

FWIW I did some simple testing on the Sonos Amp. Streaming a track of silence with the amp at maximum volume, I cannot hear a thing from my speakers. So when streaming there is no noise from a practical point of view. At least nothing is audible with my 15 KHz ears.

I also looked at the output on a scope, and it looks like the modulation frequency is about 800KHz.

 

[billsq]

- Yes, a teardown would be nice. Mainly curious as to what amp module (ICEPower, Hypex or other) and DAC chip it has.

It is Qualcomm DDFA, a real digital amp which means no DAC at all, output stage is PWM driven.

 

[zalive]

For the "truth" look at THD+N. That is the sum of distortion+noise.

No. That is the sum of harmonic distortion + noise. IM distortion is not included in the sum.
Do you perform any measurement which would actually make possible a comparison of THD vs IMD in terms of impact/actual levels?

 

[JohnKay]

For those who own the Sonos amp, how is it working out for you so far? Are you happy? Enjoy it? If so how / why? Would love to hear about your experience so far. Cheers

 

[amirm]

No. That is the sum of harmonic distortion + noise. IM distortion is not included in the sum.

Read my post again. The question was about the noise, not distortion.

Do you perform any measurement which would actually make possible a comparison of THD vs IMD in terms of impact/actual levels?

Not in this review but in more recent reviews there is IMD vs power which you can compare to THD+N versus power. For example:

 

[zalive]

Thanks.
A single graph which directly compares THD to IMD (vs power level is fine) for a given amplifier would be nice to have IMO...

Read my post again. The question was about the noise, not distortion.

I'm aware of what you thought and about the context, but the reason I reacted is that THD is exposed so much in testing that it's easy to lose from sight that it's not the only distortion which happens. In fact, THD is not even likely the dominant distortion which happens in SS amplifiers. In which case drooling over favourable THD measurements might not make much sense, if worse things like IMD are going on all over the spectrum (and they're not even being properly measured across the frequency spectrum).

 

[xarkkon]

It certainly is better with digital input. Unfortunately I cannot test its digital input beyond dashboard so hard to say for sure what the performance is.

While I am bothered by the low switching frequency, same issue with Lyngdorf didn't present problems in subjective listening. So I would say sure, for digital playback it is fine and the power amplifier would be an asset there.

Thanks Amir, this is exactly what I need! Looking to upgrade my TV Sonos Playbar (my hifi's in the study) and felt the first page review didn't address my personal concerns since I don't have vinyl. Understand you've indicated, however, that you couldn't test the HDMI, which is a pity since that's also a big use case for the product.

 

[Darwin]

Too bad. Would’ve looked nice in a simple living room A/V setup.

What Hi-Fi? review:
https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/sonos-amp

It does. I'm using One SL's for rears which i turn off in the Sonos Amp when playing 2.1 music. My only source is Apple TV 4k and those are Revel Concerta 2 speakers that match the Sonos Sub.

 

[Darwin]

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?

I'd say that comparison is Apples and Oranges. Designing your own voice control is not a small matter as you know and for Sonos to do that years before the Echo would not really have occurred to anyone.

 

[Darwin]

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 they 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.

I'm not too impressed with Sonos spending R&D time and $$$ on a $400 bluetooth speaker when so many of their core products, like the Playbar, are in dire need of an upgrade.

 

[dshreter]

My experience with the Sonos Amp has been largely positive. Subjectively I enjoy the sound quality, and it’s super convenient to create a system around a smart television.

I have two significant gripes, and one wish for this product though. For one, the subwoofer implementation is not good. If turning on the sub output, you are forced to use their high pass / low pass. Even if you want to send full range to your speakers you cannot. If you want to use the crossover implementation of your subwoofer, the processing done by the amp is redundant and not designed to work together with your sub.

My other gripe is that it’s really hard to know what’s going on with any given input. HDMI can carry many different audio signal types, and I want to know if I have a PCM stereo, Dolby 5.1, etc. It down mixes everything to stereo, and I just want to know what it’s doing.

On my wish list would be room correction. If it offered room correction then for me it would really be the all in one box solution I want, and I’d be willing to pay extra for that feature.

 

[Gnev0s]

My experience with the Sonos Amp has been largely positive. Subjectively I enjoy the sound quality, and it’s super convenient to create a system around a smart television.

I have two significant gripes, and one wish for this product though. For one, the subwoofer implementation is not good. If turning on the sub output, you are forced to use their high pass / low pass. Even if you want to send full range to your speakers you cannot. If you want to use the crossover implementation of your subwoofer, the processing done by the amp is redundant and not designed to work together with your sub.

My other gripe is that it’s really hard to know what’s going on with any given input. HDMI can carry many different audio signal types, and I want to know if I have a PCM stereo, Dolby 5.1, etc. It down mixes everything to stereo, and I just want to know what it’s doing.

On my wish list would be room correction. If it offered room correction then for me it would really be the all in one box solution I want, and I’d be willing to pay extra for that feature.

For the subwoofer implementation just turn off the subwoofer in the app. It makes all your speakers run at full including the sub. It's by design specifically for the use case you mentioned. Now if you wanted to intentionally clip your main speakers without affecting sub output is another thing.

As for finding out what audio is going into your amp you should be able to see on your tv. Not sure where because it's different on different brands but at least on my Vizio it notifies me when the source changes from stereo to dolby. Since you're using HDMI ARC, the handshake lets your tv know what signal is being fed into your amp. I know there is also a way buried in the app's diagnostic tool but it's much slower than at least on my tv.

Room correction would be really nice and is unfortunate especially since it already is set up to use your phone as the measuring device.

 

[dshreter]

For the subwoofer implementation just turn off the subwoofer in the app. It makes all your speakers run at full including the sub. It's by design specifically for the use case you mentioned. Now if you wanted to intentionally clip your main speakers without affecting sub output is another thing.

As for finding out what audio is going into your amp you should be able to see on your tv. Not sure where because it's different on different brands but at least on my Vizio it notifies me when the source changes from stereo to dolby. Since you're using HDMI ARC, the handshake lets your tv know what signal is being fed into your amp. I know there is also a way buried in the app's diagnostic tool but it's much slower than at least on my tv.

Room correction would be really nice and is unfortunate especially since it already is set up to use your phone as the measuring device.

If I turn off the subwoofer setting in the app, it definitely turns off the subwoofer line out completely and does not run it at full range. I could probably use high level input off of the speaker connection, but it’s definitely less convenient than just running an RCA.

Thanks for the tip to look in TV and app diagnostics, I’ll investigate.

 

[Gnev0s]

If I turn off the subwoofer setting in the app, it definitely turns off the subwoofer line out completely and does not run it at full range. I could probably use high level input off of the speaker connection, but it’s definitely less convenient than just running an RCA.

Thanks for the tip to look in TV and app diagnostics, I’ll investigate.

Huh. I haven't tested turning off the sub in app in a while maybe one of the newer updates took out that feature? I know when I was emailing back and forth with one of the Sonos techs with an issue and he said that was the intended design. I'll check tonight and report back.

 

[Gnev0s]

Huh. I haven't tested turning off the sub in app in a while maybe one of the newer updates took out that feature? I know when I was emailing back and forth with one of the Sonos techs with an issue and he said that was the intended design. I'll check tonight and report back.

Seems like you're correct. I might be partially to blame for it. During my correspondence I asked to have the sub off feature to actually cut the subwoofer signal. It's unfortunate that they don't add a button to run in full. I'll ask about it though.

 

[dshreter]

Seems like you're correct. I might be partially to blame for it. During my correspondence I asked to have the sub off feature to actually cut the subwoofer signal. It's unfortunate that they don't add a button to run in full. I'll ask about it though.

Now that’s pretty funny. I think the simplest implemented would be to have a toggle on/off for the crossover within the subwoofer menu.

 

[mechapreneur]

I have one of these new Amps and it is good for integrating with my Sonos streaming speakers, but not much else. I tried using the line-in to use it like a computer speaker and have the Amp stream to my other Sonos speakers... and while this works well from a latency perspective, it often requires fussing with the output selection on my computer, then opening my Sonos app and selecting my speakers, then browsing to the Amp’s line-in input and setting some volume levels... quite a pain. I suspect this is going to end up driving some in ceiling speakers and just being a streaming target.

When it comes to multi room audio, Sonos is pretty awesome. And since there is usually something else going on like conversation and cooking when I use Sonos, the noise floor isn’t really an issue.