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Review and Measurements of SONOS Connect Streamer

KenG

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I don’t understand the criticism of the Sonos App. It works intuitively and smooth and never fails and also integrates well with Tidal. Setup was automatic and worked without hiccups when I last did it say 5 years ago, running ever since
I agree with this. It works great in the apple ecosystem but perhaps not as well with Android. IOS remote app is more intuitive than many of the others that I've used including iPeng and Audirvana remote. Roon is a step above though.

If you are just using Sonos for streaming, I'm fairly certain that all of the services (including Qobuz or Tidal) are limited to 16bit/44.1 khz so the sound conversion shouldn't be an issue. However for an audiophile with a large hi-res library, Sonos probably isn't for you.

I know it isn't addressed in the review (and not really applicable for it) but I think the biggest selling point for Sonos is the multi-speaker/zone Network connection. I've had it for over a year and NEVER had a dropped connection or a synchronization issue with the 5 zones I run. Prior to this, I used airplay and it was a nightmare (drops all the time). No other system that I tried including Roon, airfoil and Squeezebox could even come close to the reliability of the connection between speakers. All of those had both synchronization and drop issues.

Amir, thanks for reviewing as I've often wondered how good the toslink out connection is for Redbook music and I got my answer. I've seen other reviewers crap on the Sonos toslink and recommend using the iFI spdif iPurifier or the vendor you mentioned. Good to see the actual measurements behind it.
 

BDWoody

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If you are just using Sonos for streaming, I'm fairly certain that all of the services (including Qobuz or Tidal) are limited to 16bit/44.1 khz so the sound conversion shouldn't be an issue.
.

What makes you say that?
 

KenG

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What makes you say that?
I believe the ecosystem limits you to Redbook for streaming. For instance the Tidal Master designation does not appear within any of the Sonos apps/interfaces.

Here is a link to information on Qobuz in Sonos - https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1782?language=en_US

Key part:

What features are available on Qobuz?
  • The highest sound quality on a SONOS device (16-Bit/44.1 kHz FLAC)
 

BDWoody

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I believe the ecosystem limits you to Redbook for streaming. For instance the Tidal Master designation does not appear within any of the Sonos apps/interfaces.

Here is a link to information on Qobuz in Sonos - https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1782?language=en_US

Key part:

What features are available on Qobuz?
  • The highest sound quality on a SONOS device (16-Bit/44.1 kHz FLAC)

Ahhh,,,I thought you were saying something else. My mistake.
Cheers.
 
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This is true... They were just starting to get traction on here when they were discontinued. As part of the Google ecosystem, I'm not as worried about ongoing support, and even at $50 I can't really see an obvious competitor in the current market. I have quite a stash of them from the 2/$30 delivered days that I will use as I add new nodes around the place. Incredibly useful little things.

I'm with you. At 50 bucks, there is still no obvious competitor to the CCA. Streaming to the CCA via Google Cast is supported by most if not all of the music streaming service apps as well as apps for streaming from your DLNA music libraries and I will continue to use my CCAs until they stop working.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Google Cast standard eventually evolves to a point that it is no longer supported by the CCA; that is my long-term lament.
 

brial05

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I have a Sonos Play 1, Play 3 and a Sonos Connect.

To get them working on their own Sonos "Mesh" can be difficult.
Years ago, at first it didn't work at all a because my home router (AT&T) dumped or ate STP traffic ( Spanning Tree Protocol ).
We had to hard wire them behind their own little switch.

The screen shot Amir showed can be triple frustrate if your App does not see the Sonos!

Once working, their software IMO is awesome ... as noted in posts above the Sonos Controller App can aggregate all sources so nicely that you get spoiled in only wanting to use the Sonos Controller.
Example:
You can create a play list that sources Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Amazon and your network file share ... no problem. All via a fairly slick interface.

The whole home ... can't beat it IMO.

I agree with JBNY, at least this testing has debunked some of the myths and shows "good sound" coming from both the digital and the analog outputs as Amir notes.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention also ... now every major service provider includes sourcing to Sonos directly from their app ... so Spotify, Tidal etc you can opt to use their app and select Sonos 'speakers' as the output.
 

BillG

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That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Google Cast standard eventually evolves to a point that it is no longer supported by the CCA; that is my long-term lament.

As long as Chromecast Video dongles are manufactured, there's a way to use them for pure audio streaming as well: an HDMI to Optical converter.
 

milezone

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Unfortunately Sonos products sound like utter garbage -- on the level of a Homepod or worse. What the DAC achieves in decent performance is lost in the abysmal quality of their speakers.
 

MZKM

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The only problem is that the CCA is discontinued. I love the little devices, but there is the question of continued support and the possibility that the two CCAs that I own might eventually break down. You can still buy a new CCA on eBay, but the current going price is around 50 USD, and it's only going to get more expensive as availability grows more scarce in the future. Too bad; the CCA is (correction: was) the ultimate cheapskate audio device.
A user on Reddit pointed me towards this Dayton product:
https://www.parts-express.com/dayto...etooth-audio-receiver-with-ir-remote--300-597

$35 (plus shipping if checkout order is <$100), it has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optical out, and AirPlay 1 (wish it had AirPlay 2), and while the app seems buggy, it allows for multi-room streaming and multi-user control.

I think it’s cheap enough that @amirm can afford to buy it and test it :p.
 
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As long as Chromecast Video dongles are manufactured, there's a way to use them for pure audio streaming as well: an HDMI to Optical converter.

Agree. This is going to be my solution when/if CCA stops working with Google Cast.

Just a couple of thoughts: 1) I'm not sure if Chromecast Video dongles will be in Google's long term plans. Google may discontinue the dongles once they feel they've reached their market saturation goals with respect to devices containing built-in Chromecast support. And 2) the HDMI audio extractor devices are a bit of an unknown; there are many different models; is there a difference among them? How well do they perform and measure compared to the CCA's optical output? Wondering if Amir is interested in testing the Chromecast Video -> HDMI audio extractor -> DAC combination.
 

KenG

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I forgot to mention also ... now every major service provider includes sourcing to Sonos directly from their app ... so Spotify, Tidal etc you can opt to use their app and select Sonos 'speakers' as the output.

Connectivity like this really makes Sonos shine in my opinion. Tidal streaming to multiple zones (ala Spotify Connect) straight from their native app works flawlessly if you don't have a good experience using the Sonos app.

In addition, Sonos is pretty tightly integrated with Alexa so if you have a new Sonos One (with Alexa built in) or an Echo/Echo Dot (which works with their legacy products including Sonos Connect) it is really easy to play songs by voice control without any of the apps. My kids use this all the time to annoy the crap out of me.
 

Dj7675

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Unfortunately Sonos products sound like utter garbage -- on the level of a Homepod or worse. What the DAC achieves in decent performance is lost in the abysmal quality of their speakers.
I only have experience with thee play 5 (second version) in a single speaker configuration. It sounds quite good to me for this purpose to me. Overpriced? Probably. Better powered speakers out there? Definitely. But the app is very simple to use and very reliable. I use roon but my wife uses the sonos app. For a company of their size, there really is no excuse for these relatively poor measurements however.
While hardly definitive, here is a review of the play 5 with in room frequency response measurement.
https://www.avsforum.com/sonos-play5-review/
 
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KenG

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For a company of their size, there really is no excuse for these relatively poor measurements however.

If I'm not mistaken though, the Sonos Connect measurements were actually pretty good for 16bit/44.1 kHz music which is only what Sonos supports. Based on what Amir wrote, SINAD can't go any higher than 98 with 16/44.1 so the Redbook quality is about as good as it gets. Jitter performance was also good and Amir debunked the need for a spdif jitter purifier or reclocker.
If you use the Connect with a low cost and competent DAC (ie, D50, Modi 3, Toneboard) and good speakers you could get pretty good sound with CD quality music.

Correct me if I'm wrong here.
 
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A user on Reddit pointed me towards this Dayton product:
https://www.parts-express.com/dayto...etooth-audio-receiver-with-ir-remote--300-597

$35 (plus shipping if checkout order is <$100), it has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optical out, and AirPlay 1 (wish it had AirPlay 2), and while the app seems buggy, it allows for multi-room streaming and multi-user control.

I think it’s cheap enough that @amirm can afford to buy it and test it :p.

The device has some decent features for 35 bucks and allows you to stream from your DLNA music library, but it's not really an alternative to Chromecast or CCA:

- I don't think the device can be used to directly stream from music services such as Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, Amazon Music, etc.
- Does it support bit-perfect streaming like the CCA?
- Does it support hi-res (i.e. 96/24) files without sample/bit rate conversion?

If you want to use a music streaming service with the device, I guess you can stream from your phone to the device via Bluetooth or Airplay, but there will likely be a degradation in the signal. The beauty of Chromecast is that the app you use to stream is merely a controller; once the stream is established, the streaming is (generally) performed directly from the source to the Chromecast (or CCA) device. There are exceptions with apps that cache the streams for gapless playback, but in general, Chromecast and CCA streams bypasses the "middleman", which can mean less degradation in the signal, or at the very least less dependency on the app being active in order to hear music.
 
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amirm

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I should say that at Microsoft we worked with SONOS at their inception. And I have had one of their boxes since that time. My old memory of their device was that it just worked with dead easy application to use. None of that memory is present in what I see today in a bloated application, terminology that no longer works (how can SONOS connect be a "speaker?") and networking connection issues coming out of my ears. It took me half hour to get the thing working with hard-wired Ethernet. I expect Ethernet functionality to just work.
 
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amirm

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On support or lack thereof for greater than 16/44.1, I am OK if they just do that in the app. When I tried to play 96 kHz content, it rightfully complained that it can't do that. But when I play 24 bit and or 48 kHz, it happily accepts them and plays them. But in the process butchers both. The box is designed to perform encoding of live analog audio so it has good bit of horsepower to do simple things like dither and proper sample rate conversion. I don't even know if sample rate conversion is necessary as most likely their DAC supports 48 kHz but they are just programming it wrong.

It all goes to fit and finish and not bothering to run these trivial standardized tests to see what they do.
 
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amirm

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Funny story: entire night I had this nightmare where I was working for some company and we were acquired by SONOS!!! No one had told us why they had done that and then we were invited to a meeting to be told, only to have them not show up forever.
 

MSNWatch

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I've used Sonos for many years and their interface still works good. But it definitely has become more cumbersome over the years but mostly because they've added new features so I guess you take the good with the bad though I find myself not really using many of these new features. But have also had issues with wifi connectivity with some updates in the past which they blamed on my wifi but a few updates later (and a few updates before) they were non-issues. That being said I can live with using the system. I also have Roon and Chromecast which I also like but just has as many hiccups and glitches as sonos does.
 

JBNY

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reading the review again, why is this being tested with 24bit files, it's a 16bit player. Wouldn't it make more sense to measure it using the type of files it would normally see in use?
 

KenG

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Amir, in your review you wrote:

With 16 bit, you can't get a SINAD higher than 98 dB.

Is that a general rule for all digital music and DACs or were you just talking specifically to limitations with the Sonos Connect?
 
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