Connecting hi res mp3 player with with Sonos 5

Note that the FiiO player would output analog to the Five. The Five will digitise it on input. Audible frequencies only. None of the inaudible ultrasonics that ‘hi res’ claims to reproduce.

@ratty Ratty, thank you. Could I ask, will there be lost information through the digitizing? My hope was to download high resolution music to the player in hopes too lose some of the brassyness (if that's a world) digital music seems to provide. I hoping the analog format would do that, even though it will be encoded into zeros and ones again. 

Thanks again for responding. 

@Paul A 

One last newbie question. Will I be getting stereo when plugging into one Sonos 5 speaker with the Jack?

Thanks again

Nothing audible will be lost. Despite the marketing hype behind ‘hi res’, the venerable Red Book CD format is able to encompass the full range of human hearing.  

The ‘brassyness’ you refer to probably dates back to the designs of the early CD players in the 80s, many of which were pretty grim. Conversion techniques -- from analog to digital and especially from digital to analog -- have long since improved, and arguably plateaued many years ago.

@ratty 

Again, many thanks. Great info. And you nailed it that's exactly what I was remembering. My last system was pretty dated. 

@Tim K . I really think that the whole idea of using a line in and an MP3 player is misguided  Better to store CD quality lossless files on a NAS and / or use one of the lossless streaming services. 

Very true!  I was working on the, perhaps short-sighted, assumption that @Tim K had other reasons for wanting to keep a personal music collection portable.

@ratty, @John B 

Well both are true. I've never owned one before so I was interested to find out of it was superior to my phone. Next, I was going to use it to put downloaded files on and play through the powered Sonos speakers. I've never heard of a NAS, so I have some research to do. I just received the FiiO today  I haven't opened the package, serendipitously possibly. If NAS isn't lovely expensive I might do both. I thought the FiiO was a superior player and therefore provide superior sound. 

Very new to all this. 

Thank you for your responses. 

Hi @Tim K.

Thanks for the immediate response. I apologize for the late reply. Based on the information relayed to us, using the Sonos Play 5 or Sonos Five alone does not generate stereo pair audio. The Sonos Five needs to be stereo paired to another Sonos Five to generate stereo audio. They both have good points for lossless music playing capability. since MP3 is a smaller file compared to WAV for example or FLAC which are considered to have a richer quality in audio than MP3. their recommendation is spot on. You could definitely tell the difference between an MP3 audio format and a WAV or FLAC audio format. I personally prefer the richer audio WAV format than MP3 especially if played through a quality speaker. You can definitely tell the difference. You can give it a try if you have a CD player, you can use the CD player and connect it to your Sonos Play 5 using a 3.5 mm headphone jack (male on both ends). If you play the same music (MP3 and CD) you can (on the spot) tell the difference. You can also try signing up for a music service (that has a free trial for HD music) so you can check out the difference in audio quality.

I hope this answers your question. 

Please let us know if you still have further questions or concerns. We are always here to help.

Thanks,

I was using 'mp3 player' in its loose sense to mean any portable music player. I was not really trying to discuss mp3 format vs FLAC because I don't think @Tim K is planning on using MP3s.

@Tim K  - Sonos as a system is not designed for playing from a phone or other handheld device.  The line-in is not the most convenient way to play music on Sonos nor is it likely to produce the best sound. 

A NAS drive is essentially a storage drive that connects to your router. A fairly basic one is all that you need.

The Sonos mobile app allows you to play the music stored on the NAS, as well as any other source.

You still have the convenience of a mobile phone controller, without the music actually being stored on the phone.

I’ve yet to encounter a ‘hi res’ MP3. 

And in any case the OP already said he’d bought Fives (plural) and a Sub, so the discussion of how to obtain stereo playback seems rather unnecessary. 

Please stop recommending WAV format.  It has non-standard tagging and it can wreak havoc with a local library used by Sonos.  Sonos recommends either the FLAC or ALAC lossless codecs for this reason.

Thank-you, my education continues. Here's where I am. I think I'll use Tidal as a streaming service, using Spotify currently. I may keep the my my as a personal music player. The reviews suggest it provides good quality audio. (It does have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi)  I'm trying to lessen my phone dependence . 

I was considering hooking up my old cd carousel player, but thought better of it. (Brassy). A replacement will be another researching adventure no doubt. 

I'll research the NAS systems, not sure what a basic model is, any suggestions are very welcome. Not even sure my router will accept one. New stuff to learn. I don't want to go too far down the proverbial rabbit hole. 

Thank-you again @John B @ratty and @Paul A 

PS. Sorry  I wasn't clear. I did purchase two 5s and the sub. I want sure if plugging into one speaker would provide stereo sound.  Lots to learn it seems. 

Tidal is a reasonable choice.

Please try to resist the temptation to buy a CD player. If you have an existing CD collection you should rip them and store the files on your new NAS drive. :)

I have used Synology and WD NAS drives and have found WD to be simpler.

Having been through most of the mainstream services over the years, personally I prefer Deezer HiFi. 

@ratty I did try it and thought it was great. Just a little clunky to use for me. Tidal had direct connect, which is similar to Spotify which I was used to. I may go back. What is it about Deezer you like?

I like Deezer’s catalogue breadth and quite like their recommendation engine and curated playlists. I also like the fact that they honestly display the stream format in the Sonos controller (FLAC, or occasionally MP3). On the negative side, a number of features in the native app haven’t (yet) made it into Sonos.

In my experience Deezer has been the most reliable of the lossless services. I hate dropouts...

I could understand if Deezer’s native app was not much to your taste. I can take or leave direct casting to Sonos but the structure and layout of their app leaves something to be desired.