Amazon Echo is better than Sonos

H

I've had Sonos for over a decade. Started with a Play:5. Decent enough. Definitely not audiophile and doesn't compare to my B&W CDM 9NT speakers, nor do I expect it to, but I did hook a Sonos Connect up to that system for the better audio quality of those speakers. I also eventually got some Play:1's, a Playbase, a Sub, and a Sonos One.

Sonos eventually rendered my old system incompatible with itself. The older Play:5 and Connect are not compatible with the other newer speakers. If I try to play through all of them on the legacy app, the sound keeps dropping out. Their solution is to buy more of their stuff and junk my old perfectly working $500 Play:5 and both of my $350 Connects. Yes. That is over $1,000 in equipment they want me to junk.

Well, with the Echo, you can take the 1/8" jack and output audio to any type of amp and speaker. If the tech in the Echo becomes outdated, just get a new cheap Echo instead of throwing out $1,200 in equipment. In fact, I had an old, but good quality 100W/channel studio power amp in a rack and some decent bookshelf speakers, just hooked an Echo up to them, and they sounds way better than the pair of Play:1's that were originally in the room... And it still would have been cheaper if I bought everything new instead of using stuff I had lying around.

Granted, the audio quality of the Echo output isn't audiophile quality. However, if you pair it with a better speaker, it will sound better in many respects than any of the Sonos speakers. Also, if you want better quality audio, just get the Echo Link. Best of all, you won't be forced to throw out a perfectly good amp and speaker when Sonos decides to render the streaming portion obsolete.

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28 replies

K

In my case, it was a backlash in 2011 against a decade in the audiophile wonderland. I swung the other way and my object was/is to get the same sound quality for the least cost/clutter. I tried Airport Express but there were too many drop outs, and hence moved to Sonos using a hybrid solution of Connect Amp/Connect with existing passive speakers.  

I only paid serious attention to Echo when the S1/S2 thing happened, and found I could get the same results that I needed, for much less. The Sonos kit moved to intermediate components role and kept a place in the set up as passive speakers had earlier - because they still worked fine.

Back in 2011, I would have been ok with a hardware life in 8-10 years for Sonos, but now, I will just take this as long as the hardware works, for as long as it works! When a Connect Amp dies, it will get replaced by a legacy style amp with Echo upstream, and passive speakers of twenty year vintage downstream.

What helps stick to this path is a complete lack of interest in anything exotic for TV sound. Back in 1998 my first moves to improve that was via a stereo amp and a quality passive speaker pair, and in essence, that still works very well for me. For the bedroom TV and music, there is a nifty pair of active Pioneer DJ speakers, that have auto on sensing, and can take inputs from both the TV and a Echo Show via two wired jacks. The Pioneer pair cost me all of USD 175 and approaches the SQ from a play 1 pair.

It also helps that advancing age is a fix for upgraditis.

K
Userlevel 7
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I'm quite happy on S1 and buying S1 compatible kit. 

Alexa works fine on S1 for what I use it for.

We have an Echo Dot but that's for controlling the Playbar.

 

K

I'm quite happy on S1 and buying S1 compatible kit. 

Alexa works fine on S1 for what I use it for.

 

 

I see nothing in S2 that merits attention as a buyer if one is not interested in the TV side of things. Apart from such trivial things like Airplay/BT of which I have never being a fan for the way both keep the battery powered device, usually a phone, in the music play loop.

Sonos never got around to giving Indian customers the Alexa integration, so when the S1/S2 thing happened, my moves were a no brainer - used as an adjunct to the usual way of operating the system, I now cannot live without voice commands. I also do not use Alexa for any other first world kind of uses and have customised all my Echo devices to disable all the silly stuff so it never even appears on the screens, because I use them for just music play interfaces to my system.

There is an even cheaper than Dot device Echo has on the market; the Flex has a terrible speaker compared to even the Dot, but the sound quality from the line out jacks is as good as that from a Port. It plugs directly into the power outlet, so even less footprint/visibility, except for a line out wire coming out from it in my use case. No screen, obviously, but other than that it does all that any Echo will do.

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