Sonos Port (Subjectivist) Review in TechHive [trigger warning]

[bogart]

The review linked below had some interesting information about the performance of the new Sonos Port that was interesting (e.g. dropouts when streaming from line-in), together with some informative feature discussions.

Then it devolves into an indictment of the sound quality that is so badly subjective that it got my blood pressure up.
"I piped this in from Qobuz running at its “CD-quality” service level, delivered to my gear in parallel through a fiber optic cable-connected Connect and a coax cable-connected Port “grouped” in the Sonos app in perfect synch. Levels were balanced, loudness was “off,” and EQ settings were flat. I later tried tweaking the bass and treble settings on the Port to see if that could improve its performance, but ultimately decided the changes didn’t do it any favors.
...
The comparisons just went from bad to worse. On the Port, I heard less personality and grit in Keith’s and Ronnie’s guitars. Solos sounded flat as pancakes. On the Connect I could practically “see” the strings wobbling and (on acoustic cuts like “Wild Horses”), I could hear the rich hollow-body resonance of Keith’s slide guitar."

So, the same source material passed through their respective digital outs was a night and day difference, eh? Neat story, dude. Wouldn't be clickbait unless you trashed the new device.

Spoiler: Maybe we shouldn't reward the clickbait.

https://www.techhive.com/article/3546333/sonos-port-review.html

 

[pozz]

We have got to find a word better than "subjective" since the personal usability review is important, as is impression of design and quality and so forth.

 

[bogart]

Hm, yes. My actual quarrel with the review is that the really useful review of function, usability, consistency is spoiled by the (subjective) audio performance review. I found a lot of value in the overview of the physical units, the ability to daisy-chain network links, highlighting 12V trigger making it useful for home install.

For whatever reason, the reviewer is absolutely convinced of day and night sonic differences that are difficult to explain, particularly when an external DAC is processing them both. About 50% of the review is spent talking about the Rolling Stones' performances being holographic vs. flat and lifeless.
There's a fair amount of hostility to Sonos making a breaking change to their operating system, and I get the sense the reviewer is taking out some aggression by trashing the audible performance in a sighted test. Just a frustration that an otherwise useful review goes so sideways.

 

[dfuller]

So, let's say he isn't being fooled by his eyes. What could be going on here that would change the sound so much? The description sounds like it's got some kind of lossy compression that he hasn't turned off.

 

[bogart]

Unless Sonos S2 is loaded on one, any service settings should be applied uniformly across all devices. As far as I know, the new OS isn’t available yet, so the devices should be fed the same signal from the streaming provider. I agree that it does sound like possible lossy compression, but I don’t see a mechanism for introducing it in their current ecosystem.

 

[dfuller]

Unless Sonos S2 is loaded on one, any service settings should be applied uniformly across all devices. As far as I know, the new OS isn’t available yet, so the devices should be fed the same signal from the streaming provider. I agree that it does sound like possible lossy compression, but I don’t see a mechanism for introducing it in their current ecosystem.

Yup, that's roughly my assessment as well.

 

[bogart]

I was going to tongue-in-cheek blame it on higher jitter from optical, but it’s backward!

 

[Kegemusha]

Anyone tried the new S2 sonos app? I have the old connect, so I am on S1. Is high res a fact now?
I find the new port pretty expensive.

 

[AudioJunky]

Anyone tried the new S2 sonos app? I have the old connect, so I am on S1. Is high res a fact now?
I find the new port pretty expensive.

I've been using the S2 app albeit with my Play:1, which is just a bathroom speaker.... The app is decent enough and I've had no issues streaming anything from Tidal, deezer, etc. There's not much different so far from the previous app.

I've been looking at the Port as I want something to feed my external DAC in my main listening/living room. I don't care about it's built in DAC, unless it's amazing, something I doubt. I'm using the Topping D50s. Why don't they offer a dac-less option!?

I'm currently using the D50S via USB from the Nvidia Shield Pro's built in Chromecast. It actually sounds pretty great from Deezer, my current streaming service. I've compared from the desktop via usb or my phone via USB and didn't notice any difference. Unfortunately the Chromecast integration in the Deezer app is hit or miss. It will sometimes require a phone reboot for the Chromecast icon to show up in the deezer app, which is beyond frustrating. The Nvidia Shield Pro also seems to up convert everything to 192khz, which while sounds fine, is annoying, as with most audiophiles, along with my OCD, I want Bit Perfect!

I've previously been using Tidal with bubbleupnp via Android to a raspberry pi running moode which was ok, yet a bit clunky. Tidal is pretty bad though, not regarding audio quality, just regarding literally everything else...

I feel like I'm prince charming with a slipper looking for the best fit, yet nothing fits.

If Spotify had HiFi, I'd be done, but the most compatible service, offers only garbage quality... /sadnap

 

[Kegemusha]

Same here, I connect the old connect to an external DAC, but what I am reading about the Port is the poor sound quality it produces and even at dig-out level. Seems to be too expensive for what it offers. A couple of years ago I bought 3 play:1 and connect as 2nd hand, I dont care that much about the speakers sound quality, even that I think these are good, these are used as background music always but the connect/port streamer should be of really good quality for that price.
I can get much better quality on a raspberry-pi but then to have multi room music I need to have several pis or more chromecast devices.

What I found bad on the sonos is their wi-fi, seems they have some cheap wifi chip because the data band used is very narrow, even they sit close to the routers, of all devices I have always I need to reboot the Sonos once every 2 months approx.

I am sticking to S1 app until they pull it off, then I will see.