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

In the recording studio there are advantages to using 24/192 (and higher), but there is no proven advantage for distributing more than 16/44.1.

It's a numbers game. 24 MUST be better than 16, right? The golden ear types will always claim that things sound better when they know the music is rendered at 24/192, and it is a great story, but to date no one has been able to demonstrate the ability to identify the 24/192 streams in blind, well managed studies. The results are no better than 50/50.

These studies are very difficult to setup. Many times the 16/44.1 source is simply a CD bought at retail, while the 24/192 file is a special mix and mastering -- and the 24/192 version really does sound better for many reasons. However, if this same 24/192 master is carefully down sampled to 16/44.1, then the "obvious" differences disappear into chance selection by the listening jury.

If you have access to some of the Mobile Fidelity Ultra Disc releases, compare them with regular retail CD's. Even though these two products originated from the same session and master tape, they can sound starkly different. In some cases I had to listen, and re-listen for an excruciating number of trials before I was satisfied that the two releases actually came from the same session. You can experience similar differences when comparing a well mastered 24/192 with its mass release retail version. These differences are not due to the 24/192, more careful attention to detail makes a difference. Really, these products were prepared for different audiences. Retail versions are designed to be relevant in a noisy portable environment while the 24/192 is targeted at audiophiles and better listening environments.

There is nothing wrong with purchasing a 24/192 version of something, then down sampling for the SONOS system. This will give one access to the high quality mastering while still allowing the advantages of practical multi-room wireless music at home. It is much more difficult to stream 24/192 at home. It is unlikely that the home wireless environment would reliably support more than a few streams because of the large amount of data to move around. While the current 16/44.1 SONOS streaming is very robust, there are always a few complaints centered around difficult wireless environments that keep SONOS on edge. In a 24/192 environment there would be exponentially more of these complaints. Since no one has been able to consistently demonstrate that 24/192 rendering offers any advantage, it seems foolish to drag the system reliability down, just to show better, but irrelevant marketing numbers. Look at the competing hardware that can render 24/192. How many simultaneous 24/192 streams can they support? (not many) A SONOS system can support up to 32 16/44.1 streams.

Could we stream higher bit rates? Certainly. If you dig around you can find ways to use networking to stream multiple 4K video sources to multiple TVs. (dozens of sources and dozens of TV's) This represents much more data flow than 24/192 audio. However, everything is wired and this cannot be done with networking equipment found at your local big box retail outlet. Unless you are a network pro during the day, professional installation is recommended. This approach is quite different from picking up a couple SONOS boxes at retail and setting them up in a few minutes to run over the home networking that is already in place.

A "simple" first step would be for SONOS to ignore a higher res file and move on to the next song in a playlist/artist/category, etc. That way you do not have to keep separate libraries (as I do now) for casual listening and "serious" listening in iTunes or any other playback system. One library is more user-friendly.

Doesn't Sonos do this already, in the way it handle files with other issues? If not, I agree this is an essential feature but one that will not work for many hi res fans of course.

I only have one library of all my music. It is good for both serious and casual listening. Perhaps over half the files are iTunes 256kbps downloads. They are however from quality recordings from folks like ECM, Mapleshade, HighNote, Blue Note/Rudy Van Gelder, Smoke Sessions, Philology and the like, and that is the secret of great sound quality. Many are of performances from more than 50 years ago.

A "simple" first step would be for SONOS to ignore a higher res file and move on to the next song in a playlist/artist/category, etc. That way you do not have to keep separate libraries (as I do now) for casual listening and "serious" listening in iTunes or any other playback system. One library is more user-friendly.

The logical thing to do would be to forget the High-Res files and delete them. As has been previously repeated, almost ad nauseam, there is NO peer reviewed scientific evidence that the human ear can differentiate between the 16/44.1 and 24/192. You are fooling yourself if you think you can and what's worse you may be paying for some supposed "extra" quality that simply isn't there - you're also having to pay for more storage AND, what's worse, your Sonos experience is significantly affected in a negative manner.

The people trying to sell you this have an agenda to make money, pure and simple. They want you to buy your whole music collection again at "Super Dooper Hi-Res Gold standard" - No matter they have zero evidence of any quantifiable benefit to the consumer. They make me mad.

The people trying to sell you this have an agenda to make money, pure and simple.

They make me mad.

They shouldn't make you mad; they are just trying to bring food home, in the best way they know! And there are a lot worse things happening in the consumer markets, to make people want what they don't need. The entire global economy and the growth story of the times is built on this behaviour on both sides.

One upside of this particular issue is that it has opened eyes to the mastering subject and how critical that is to get good sound quality at home. All CD albums are equally well recorded is the belief I had for a long time.

While they are being silly, I don't understand why the audiophile community is not demanding 384/32. It is out there and it must be better, right?

Lol, just give them some time.

We use just connects mostly on hard line network. And then send that audio into a URC Total Control System.
So the Hi-Res for us would not present an issue for Sonos.
They are looking for it to work and have not real need to justify the risk of that feature.
Guess I need to down covert the files

The whole point of higher sampling (96khz and up) was to move the noise generated from digital sampling higher in band... above most humans ability to hear. The reason was at the time not all DAC's were made equal. Many of the methods used to filter out the digital noise caused more problems than they solved. By moving the noise up the band you were left with a cleaner signal. The technology finally caught up so that most consumer DAC's could filter out the sampling noise and sound good with standard 16bit- 44.1khz audio. The only thing sampling has domain over is the frequency range captured. At 44.1 you'l get 0-22.5khz well above the 20khz most systems and even most people can hear. Many enthusiasts will argue that you can hear above 20khz... but this is another topic entirely.

At this point the only real issue left is the bit depth which does make a difference in dynamic range. More accurate than 16 bit and a difference many audiophiles can hear. The issue with applying it to Sonos is: A) do their DAC's support 24 bit playback in the first place. Not sure they wouldn't but I'm not aware of what DAC's they're using. 😎 Adding support to the firmware ($$$) C) Adding support to down sample media to the hardware specs. To point C the big issue here is where the down sampling occurs and is a major software rewrite. Is the feature only supported on desktops or do mobile devices with minimal hardware resources need the feature too? Down-sampling in its own right introduces noise and the methods to minimize that noise (called anti-aliasing) is an art left to a professional sound engineer not automated software on consumer speakers. I'm pretty sure there would be an uproar on the forums if such a system was put in place and everyone would have an opinion on the best solution to that.

I don't think Sonos ever billed itself as a hi-fi platform. They certainly don't compete with the high end audio market. I think for the sake of play-ability it would be wise for them to support 24-96khz as these files are used more often. But to be honest if you're looking for a hi-fi experience with these files you should have a better hi-fi set-up than Sonos.

At this point the only real issue left is the bit depth which does make a difference in dynamic range. More accurate than 16 bit and a difference many audiophiles can hear.

CLAIM to hear...

The dynamic range of 16-bit is 96dB. This is WAY more range than any recording actually uses, especially when you consider the current mastering practices that massively over-compress the dynamic range of the music. Even non-overtly compressed music is still typically under 40-50dB of dynamnic range. Greater than 16-bit makes sense in the recording/mastering pipeline, but 16-but is perfectly fine for the final delivery.