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My great Vinyl dilemma: the line in source level Bug and sonos lack of response

  • 6 December 2019
  • 83 replies
  • 4522 views
T
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So I am ecstatic over using a new play 5 gen 2 as my sweet little hi fi compact setup in my bedroom for playing vinyl and digital there.  sonos does a better job translating vinyl to the digital realm and back than any other sub $1000 system.  I bought and returned a few, including the Bluesound.  play 5 gen 2 a BIG step up in SQ.  

But I now have a 2 month problem that Sonos is aware of and won’t fix.  my turntable has always had better than cd fidelity at source level set to level 9.  well now level 9 is with a bug and won’t work.  levels 1-8 work fine, but at a cost of lower fidelity from the digital volume reduction, making it pointless to spin records.  yes, level 10 is still operative, but only if you select 9.  selecting 10 leaves you at the last level you were on.  thus 9 is now skipped altogether.  the end result is if you toggle from 8 to 9, what is really happening is (listening) you are going from 8 to 10.  closing app and reopening verifies all this.

why the big deal?  because level 10 distorts with my albums and 8 or less sacrifices fidelity.  this all started about 2 months ago.

so...I have emailed and called Sonos REPEATEDLY about this problem.  they keep giving a standard line that it’s identified as a bug to fix and prioritized to fix it.  but after one month of calls and emails (they know me well now) nothing fixed.  finally in exasperation I asked for an engineer to call me.  after no less than 3 separate requests for this, finally a Kevin C. from software engineering calls me.  he’s very nice, but explains that he cannot divulge where the team is in the process.  he states essentially he’s not allowed.  when I stated that I just wanted to know if the bug will be fixed in a month or two more, he states he can’t tell me. when I asked if he can reassure me that it will EVER  get fixed, he states he cannot.

so I am going to the Community on this.  Is ANYONE else observing this bug and bothered by it enough to speak up here?  PLEASE POST HERE IF YOU FEEL THE WAY I DO ABOUT THIS BUG.  I clearly need a louder megaphone to move the needle on this issue.

Thanks to all!

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Best answer by Ryan S 6 December 2019, 20:57

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83 replies

jgatie

Are you talking about the Line-In level?  If so, there is nothing about that level which “loses fidelity”.  The higher level may distort because it is overloading the amps in the Play:5, but lowering the level to where it doesn’t distort does nothing to the fidelity except lowering the gain.  You may be perceiving a loss of fidelity because the mind will always think lower volume is lower fidelity (even if the changes are so small they are not detected), but the mind is easily fooled.

ratty

I’d hoped for a more robust response from those seeing this. 

 

Ryan already said “It is still being investigated and worked on”. I’m not sure what else he can add.

This surely has to qualify as a ‘First World problem’. You can adjust the Line-In sensitivity. Any digitisation and scaling errors resulting from a sub-optimal sensitivity have to pale into insignificance compared to the noise and distortion introduced by vinyl playback from the turntable in the first place.

Chill. Sip a glass of wine. 

jgatie

Going on 3 MONTHS!

 

I assure you, even using an agile process, the software development, test, and release cycle is longer than 3 months.

ratty

my turntable has always had better than cd fidelity

Er … no.

https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)

 

Ryan S
Userlevel 7
Badge +26

Hey Tlcocks, I just checked in for you with the team on that ticket and the status. It is still being investigated and worked on. I know it’s frustrating not having an ETA or not knowing what the exact status is, but those things can change and we don’t want to give an ETA that isn’t definite. The right team is on it, but they have other things on their plate as well. The support team will make sure to let you know when it’s resolved, but they can’t keep you updated with every change that the ticket goes through.

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T
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THANK YOU Edward R. I prefer that as well. 

Ryan S
Userlevel 7
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Hi everyone, with the 10.6.2 update today, the delay issue should be fixed. There are also some new settings that you can use with your line-in to adjust the delay (still a minimum of 75 ms) in new ways. Make sure you’ve set the line-in to uncompressed, and you can pick your delay now.

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T
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shouldn’t be stuck on 1,  select 9.  then close and reopen the app.  should be on 10

Ryan S
Userlevel 7
Badge +26

The way I understand it, line-in level addresses the line in sensitivity, and overall gain applied to the signal received from the line-in device. And regarding your question, this is happening on the analog line before it gets converted to a digital signal as far as I know.

The line level is important because at some levels the audio signal may be too faint for the line input to even hear it. However, if you increase sensitivity and apply to much gain to a signal, it may cause it to be too loud and get distorted if the line signal is much stronger. Now this shouldn’t be extremely apparent between what we call line-in level 9 (0.8V) and line-in level 10 (0.6V), but it may be just enough distortion on the audio line to cause issues.

The issue at hand it pretty straightforward, when setting the source level to level 9, the app changes the level to 10 when you return to settings. When setting source level to level 10, the app reverts the line level back to the previous setting when you return to settings. They’re working on it currently.

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T
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Thanks Ryan so much for clarification here. I was initially told it was digital domain, but am hearing clearly today it’s analog. Sorry to jgatie, who was right all along. 

ratty

I seem to recall the lowest sensitivity, at level 1, corresponds to 2V. There used to be a FAQ on this, but it’s been pulled.

I’ll bow to Ryan’s wisdom but if the front-end scaling is analog it would surprise me as it would surely make more sense to go ADC to 24 or 32bit and then scale digitally to align with 16bit. The Port might do it differently to, say, the ZP80.

 

The at vm540ml is a great cart for the money. Absolutely obliterates inner groove distortion. 

“Mitigates” maybe. “Obliterates” is challenged by the laws of physics, given the linear resolution and tracking geometry issues inherent in the medium.

ratty

Lol. I have absolutely no clue what that bit means. I can understand a cartridge obliterating inner grooves:-).

Try this:

https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-record-inner-groove-distortion-simple-explanation/

T
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Took some time off. Distracted by COVID-19. No fix yet I see. 

Edward R
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

I’ve deleted some responses from this topic. Let’s try to keep things civil and constructive, please. 

T
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No resolution yet. Just keeping this post alive until Sonos fixes this bug. 

N
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

I admire your optimism, if nothing else. Good luck. 

Ryan S
Userlevel 7
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Edward or Ryan,

any updates on when?

I don’t have a specific eta on the update right now, but we’ll let you know as soon as it’s been resolved in the software.

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chicks

OCD audiophiles are always so amusing. ;)

T
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Thank you very kindly. Glad to entertain. 😜

T
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But really, I am simply asking for the creators (Sonos) to provide full functionality out of their app. What’s so unreasonable about that, when we spend hundreds or even thousands on their hardware. 😊

T
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Wow. My other more succinct thread was WIPED. Wonder if my bringing it up here will get this thread WIPED too. COMMUNISM!  😂 LOL

T
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Thanks. 
 

melvimbe

Wow. My other more succinct thread was WIPED. Wonder if my bringing it up here will get this thread WIPED too. COMMUNISM!  😂 LOL

 

Your other thread would not have been intentionally removed unless it broke community policies, and couldn’t be edited/fixed.  Most likely, there was some other error that’s preventing the thread from display.  This current thread is not bad at all, and can’t imagine Ryan would post to it if there was an issue.

 

 

Danny
T
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Got it. Thanks. Yes, I suppose the tension between jgatie and I was the reason. Seemed minimal though. No worries. 

D
Userlevel 2
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So this thread has all gone quiet for 6 months. Can I assume this is fixed and TIcocks is now happy?

Just wondering as I’m just about to add a turntable to my Five.

 

interesting that Dr. Colossuss mentions he can use ‘9’ but not ‘10’, but it was the other way around in the original post.

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