Hi-resolution support required (eg: AIFF 96kHz/24bit)

Current streaming solutions from traditional hi-fi manufacturers such as Naim, Chord and so on prove that hi-res replay and the convenience of streaming are not mutually exclusive. Sonos generally beats them all hands-down on the usability experience however, with simple multi-room setup, and a (generally) great user interface. It's one of the reasons I chose it after all. So it's a shame that Sonos doesn't see the need (benefit?) for hi-res support.

Naim says they are mutually exclusive - hi res on Naim only works on a wired connection. I think we can agree that this isn't convenient for most users.

Sonos has chosen to offer other features in preference to hi-res support. In a utopian world there would be no trade offs, but in a real one there are. Which of the Sonos features that you say you love would you choose to live without for obtaining hi - res support for which there is not a single controlled test that demonstrates audibly superior sound quality?

Sonos has chosen to offer other features in preference to hi-res support.
It appears that it wasn't a case of trade-offs. Sonos were smart and went with the scientific consensus:
http://www.whathifi.com/news/sonos-plans-brighter-and-brighter-wireless-music-future

Hi-res numbers don't add up
While we’re talking about the competition, we can’t help but ask Sonos about its feelings on hi-res music. No matter who we asked, the answer was the same – don’t hold your breath.

“We’ve looked really hard at it”, says Tom [Cullen]. “Of course we want to make sure we’re not missing anything and we feel pretty good that we’re not. There are arguments you could make about deeper bit depth, but we are unable to make a meaningful argument on sample rate. We tried, we can’t – the math just isn’t there.”

Giles Martin agrees: “There’s a huge, cheap miscommunication about high-resolution music. Manufacturers try to put a number to it, like 0 to 60 in a car, and it’s not that simple. I think we need to improve the overall quality of listening full stop. When everyone is listening to the quality of music they were listening to 15 years ago, then we have a discussion about pushing it further.

“Once we get to that stage where there is a huge consumer demand or it, we should accept it. For now, there are neither enough tracks, nor enough value in it for the majority of consumers for us to chase it.”

We ask about downsampling, which Sonos currently doesn’t offer - meaning any high-res music you own is completely unplayable on Sonos unless you downsample it yourself.

Jon Reilly admits: “We want to play everything, so we should do and that’s fair feedback. It’s something we’re considering.”

Which of the Sonos features that you say you love would you choose to live without for obtaining hi - res support for which there is not a single controlled test that demonstrates audibly superior sound quality?

In fact the reverse is true...

The Engineering theory is that hires causes intermodulation products when played back on hifi kit and this actually damages the sound quality. There have been some basic tests performed which demonstrate this intermodulation distortion exists in real-world systems, is measurable and, probably, audible.

Cheers,

Keith

I am familiar with the possible downsides to hi res that may at times be audible.

But allowing hi res music, as bought, to be played on Sonos is definitely a feature of some value to some people, as Jon Reilly also admitted. And for it to be played without on the fly downsampling of the kind that Jon alludes to, is another feature with value to some with a very vocal subset.

The only point I was making is that every company has finite resources and therefore has to prioritise. Only if this was not the case could Sonos have done these lhings AND everything it has done so far. Strategy is nothing but trade offs, be it war or business.

First, do you need "hi res" audio? Absolutely not. 16bit 44k/48k is more than sufficient to play back pretty much anything. One of the reasons all the various hi res formats like DSD have died in the consumer world is consumers couldn't hear the difference. Those that do are more likely suffering from consumer bias ("I spent a lot of money on this, it must be better") and/or differences in playback volume (FAR greater impact on perceived quality from volume differences than actual recording quality), etc. The only place 24bit makes sense is in a studio/during mixdown. The final audio mix does not need more than 16bit.

That said, it would be nice if the Sonos players could consume some of the higher resolution FLAC files, so one doesn't have to convert purchased FLACs to something Sonos supports. But FLAC is actually pretty computationally difficult to decompress (much more so than MP3/AAC as I understand it), and adding transcoding on top of that to bring it down to 16bit/44k in the player combined with the DSP Sonos is using is only 16bit, supporting 24bit files natively would probably be too slow for Sonos to decode).

Also, I don't see why high-res FLAC would need wired Ethernet. The files are still trivial in bitrate compared to even a piss-poor, over-congested 2.4Ghz network.

Pretty sure Sonos' internal buss is 24 bit. That way they can allow volume adjustment of a very wide range without Truncating bits. I may be wrong.

It's a 16-bit TI DSP: http://www.qobuz.com/nl-nl/info/hi-fi-guide/sonos-hi-res-ready-or-not-qobuz177054

(That entire article pretty much says no F'ing way to do "hi res" audio on the current Sonos hardware platform.)

It's a 16-bit TI DSP: http://www.qobuz.com/nl-nl/info/hi-fi-guide/sonos-hi-res-ready-or-not-qobuz177054
Presumably the volume control is elsewhere then, since long ago the ZP80 was tested and found to be populating the lowest byte of the 24-bit word on the S/PDIF. The findings were also confirmed by Sonos reps at the time

I would also like Sonos to support high-resolution audio (i.e.: 96kHz/24bit)

I would also like Sonos to support high-resolution audio (i.e.: 96kHz/24bit)
They've said they have no intention of doing so. http://www.whathifi.com/features/sonos-plans-brighter-and-brighter-wireless-music-future

The science simply doesn't support it. http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html