That’s the question I addressed in my post.  Not sure why you are asking again.

I did address those.  The Amp has the ARC/optical port, which covers TVs, the majority of users.  If you want to use it as a computer speaker or DJ, you can get an analog to optical convertor.  This would be rather overkill though, as there are better devices built for this purpose.  

For the Port, it has no use except if connected to a 3rd party amp or to group with another room.  If grouping to another room, the delay is needed for multiroom audio, no point in removing it.  If connected to a 3rd party amp, then connect your computer/DJ equipment directly to the third party amp.

Again, it’s been 4 years.  More time isn’t going to increase the level of interest.  Not unless there is a dramatic change in how people listen to music.  I kind of doubt people are going to start using more computer speakers and DJ music...in their multiroom audio system.

Why counter my vote for the feature if you’re not against it? I was trying to prevent exactly this bike shedding with my first post.

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At Sonos employees: I would just like a straightforward way of connecting no-delay inputs like instruments & computer audio to the RCA / mini jack inputs on the AMP & Five.

The current solution looks a little ridiculous and still adds ~30ms of delay: HDMI-Optical audio converter → optical audio cable → digital-analog converter → RCA cable → Actual audio device.

BINGO.  The current marketing is a fraud.  For instance, they should not be calling it a line in port.  Line in ports do not have delays.

What Sonos has is a DLIP “Delayed Line In Port”.  Market it as such, or don’t market it at all.  Just don’t defraud the consumer with false expectations.  If you’re finding this thread because you just dropped > $500 on a speaker with more lag than a $5 PC speaker, RETURN IT TO THE STORE, and tell them why.

What is the latency on your car’s audio system and it’s line-in port?  It’s more expensive than a Sonos. so I’m sure you had that info before you bought it.  Right?

And to borrow some logic from elsewhere in this thread…

Wait a minute…. Why on earth would they integrate with Alexa or Google Home?  This is a multiroom buffered audio product, not an office assistant.  Don’t tow a horse trailer with a ferarri already!  Reply to that Sonos marketing guy would you, and fill him in about ferarris.

Oh.  Wait.  People wanted it.  Like the TRUE line in capability.  So they did it. So do it already with the true line-in option.  I’m not interested in excuses and apologizers with rose colored glasses defending a caustic design decision.

We all know the real reason the line in has delay to it.  You just don’t want to say it.  Products with line-in don’t cost enough, and the latency is your penalty/incentive to buy the more expensive model.  “Don’t be a cheater” says SONOS.  “You need to pay for the expensive home theatre products if you want true line in.  Proles.”  And you better like it too.

The fact that they do sell low latency versions for home theater tells you it is 100% doable.  They just want a bigger pound of flesh.  And good for them i guess.  Capitalism.

All my sonos products have wired ethernet.  And all products that are on a wired gig-e lan together, at this price point, should have 1ms or less latency.  Full Stop.

Return to the store.  Tell them why.  Ask for more refund than what you paid because of the time wasted.

yep.  Not like there’s been a big societal change. likely a permanent one that has more people using their home differently than before.  Perhaps necessitating that people use an entertainment space for computers some times, and entertainment for others. 

Nope.  Can’t think of anything like that happen recently….  cough… 

(Merged with other reply)

Good grief. 

Line In capable products:

Port - $450

Five - $500

Amp - $650

Move - $400 (if you count bluetooth as a line in capability)

No latency (HDMI-ARC/optical)

Beam - $400

Amp - $650

Arc - $800

All of these devices have a delay though. Even the HDMI/ARC options have a 30ms delay.

No they don't, on digital input, unless you Group them with other devices.

Member since 2017, just posting now?  Phew, I smell stinky socks.

Oh, I heard that it was also the case on ungrouped speakers. So this delay-free functionality already exists in the platform.

Then what would the remaining reasons be not to implement this feature?

Some of the reasons I see to not implement a ‘no-delay’ audio feature is the development cost and the lack of any customer demand, relatively speaking ...and perhaps ‘most important of all’ it also goes against the main purpose of a Sonos Audio System, which is first and foremost designed as a multi-room wireless home audio speaker system.
 

The Sonos products are not a speaker for use with a DJ mixing desk, or to use for karaoke. The patented computer-based technology inside a Sonos device would be somewhat irrelevant for that lesser-type of functionality and I guess many other manufacturers would (and do) make a similar sounding speaker cheaper for that ‘limited-only’ purpose. 
 

Sonos is geared towards quite a niché market area and I personally think they should continue to  concentrate their development efforts in that area, rather than perhaps trying to be "all things to all men”… er … and women.

Hey @Ken_Griffiths, you don’t need to go against this (yet) again. It has been said and countered multiple times. Using development costs as a reason not to build something is just a fallacy. The more so if the functionality already exists in the platform. It’s a matter of priority.

Yes, Sonos is a multi-room wireless home audio speaker system. Yet they’ve gone into homecinema, added a mobile speaker with bluetooth, added line-in and added the no-delay functionality. Because they apparently thought it was worth the effort, it’s not up to us to decide that for them.

This is a feature request to expand the no-delay functionality to the analog inputs.

As a purely technical comment, i do not believe they have introduced ‘no delay’ anywhere.  I believe (although I am not 100% certain) that the 30ms lag is to allow the main HT speaker (e.g. Arc) to sync with the Sub / surrounds.  30ms is not detectable by the brain as far as lip sync issues are concerned.  The connection used is direct routing over 5GHz, because this allows latency as low as 30ms.  I aloo believe (but am not 100% certain) that this delay also applies when the HT speaker is used without Sub and speakers.  That would be consistent with having a lag on the line-in on a Play:5 even when not grouped.

If the HT speaker is grouped with other speakers for music, the 75ms lag is needed to sync perfectly, as it is for any other speaker.  

So I think you were right in the first place.

@by7 - I have read some insane suggestions and conspiracy theories on this forum, but I don’t think your contributions will ever be beaten for sheer, jaw-dropping craziness.

Indeed. The 30ms for HT setups is there in all configs. There has to be some finite playout buffer on an asynchronous network to allow for packet jitter. The tight 5GHz coupling allows this to be reduced to 30ms from the 75ms minimum requirement on the shared 2.4GHz.

As for 

(a) the functionality -- a direct pass-thru -- doesn’t already exist, and (b) the idea that costs have no bearing on business decisions is quite simply risible.

I’m certainly not deciding it for Sonos. I’m just attempting to look at the issues here objectively.

As a speaker hardware manufacturer, the Home Cinema market with ‘wireless’ surround sound speakers, was a ‘no brainer’ for Sonos from a sales point of view. The demand for it was clearly there before they ventured into that market.

In support, a number of similar speaker manufacturers have taken that same route, due to such demand and it’s perhaps been the same too with portable devices, like the Move, which do have a purpose to take music outside of the home, but also a user is still able to use the Move in the home as part of their wireless multi-room system. The demand for that product with Bluetooth was there too. Again some other ‘similar’ manufactures chose to go down this route aswell. 

At the end of the day it is about demand from the public and ultimately, hardware sales. 

All Sonos products still centre around a multi-room wireless home audio system and a ‘no audio’ delay product simply does not directly fit in with that purpose. The demand for such a Sonos speaker within this community, or elsewhere online, is quite insignificant too, it appears.

There are reports in this community where some Sonos audio dropout issues arise with products running on some (often quite poorly managed) wireless networks, which Sonos have tried to help with, by introducing various ‘group audio delay’ settings to help counteract those dropout issues in order to assist users to obtain a stable platform even in the poorest of WiFi environments. To switch and suddenly introduce a ‘no-delay’ option, seems a rather backward step when looking at the main purpose of their speakers and their continued use in a wireless multi room-speaker system.

Development costs would certainly play a role, because there are many implications when adding ‘no audio’ delay - A user would clearly have to detach the speaker from the rest of the audio system to make it standalone, so it could then not be ‘grouped’, ‘paired’ or ‘bonded’ at all in that state, because otherwise that currently requires some audio delay/buffering and options to keep the audio in sync over a wireless network. 

Sonos could, I guess, create a new standalone speaker to achieve no-delay audio, like they did with the Move in order to take the audio outside the Home and arguably, even that was against the Sonos main purpose, but clearly there was a good deal of customer demand there for such a ‘new’ device to switch between ‘outside’ use and also being part of a multi-room wireless system

There are ‘cheaper’ standalone/wired speakers on the market that do ‘no delay’ line audio already and I don’t personally think it’s an area that Sonos would ever want to step into/compete with, nor do I honestly think that there is any great demand from their customers for them to do this. I just don’t see there being much in terms of any additional speaker/hardware sales either.

This stated earlier in the thread, but the idea that the Tech need for the Five to be ‘no delay’ already exists in the HT equipment isn’t true.  The Five has an analog input, while the HT devices have digital inputs.  That means that the Five would need to convert from analog to digital without delay, or have some sort of bypass mode (analog input to analog speakers) that hardware may not support.  I don’t know.  Regardless, that analog mode would only work when the speaker isn’t playing with any other speaker in the system.  No stereo pairs or sub.

If they did do something like this though, I don’t know that they would necessarily have to lock out groups, just have a mechanism that switches to normal playback when grouped.  I imagine the inability to group without delay defeats the point for a significant portion of people looking for the feature though.

I think Sonos is rather hesitant to create audio devices that are separate from their home audio system.  I get that in some respect, as they don’t want to drift to far from their ‘wheelhouse’ or confuse people buying a standalone speaker they think is part of the system.  On the other hand, it seems like Sonos has a developed a brand name now, and they could make easy income by leveraging that name to make other types of audio devices, same as most other audio companies.

I’m not 100% sure on this.  I certainly have audio needs that Sonos doesn’t currently fill.  If Sonos made other audio equipment, there is a good chance I would buy the Sonos brand based on brand reputation only.

As it happens conversion A-D or D-A is almost instant.

Like all Sonos players the Five has a digital audio pipeline, including decode, volume, EQ and crossover, plus of course Trueplay digital room correction. There can’t be an analog bypass. Notwithstanding the network buffer there will be FIFOs in there which introduce slight delay. (Witness the sync problems some users have with AV receivers which do the same.)

Sonos simply wasn’t engineered for zero latency. It didn’t need to be.

Indeed, it needed not to be.

It sure needs to me now.

It’s a false dichotomy to think the only options are zero latency or annoyingly large latency.    A false dichotomy designed to throw your hands up and say well gee even light has latency, so I guess perfection isn’t possible, so there’s no reason to try.

Nobody wants latency.  I’ll permit 2-5ms.  maybe 10ms, and be ok with calling that good enough.  If I can perceive it with standard human senses, then it’s too much.

Of course, but yours is a use case which, if Sonos cares about it at all, is very low down on the priority list.

My use case?  And when did I ever tell you my use case?

I was responding to the myriad mostly reasonable use cases stated before me.  And it’s not really your place nor Sonos’ to judge how I use a speaker.  You’re not my mother.

We paid for them, we’ll use em how we please thanks!

The idea that line in audio might need to be live because it’s associated with video is pretty common.  And that’s how audio always was before sonos.  You don’t get to just add a mis-feature and not acknowledge it on the box.  Most people at one time or another have hooked up speakers to a tv or computer, or watched a youtube video in a car from their phone.  Live is expected unless they call them “Sonos Non-Live Speakers” or “Sonos Premium Delay Speakers” or some nonsense.

Yet Sonos somehow has cornered the market on excuses to add latency.  Leave it to audiophiles to rationalize why audio lag is actually a good thing!   Bet its harder to notice with some nice sound rocks in the room too. https://www.ebay.com/itm/293943838982?mkevt=1&mkcid=28&chn=ps  which color sounds better?

Leaving aside the hyperbolic verbiage, you implied a use case that required zero/low latency, otherwise why would you post on this thread? 

As for audio in conjunction with video, as has been pointed out countless times Sonos makes home theatre products for just such a purpose. 

We paid for them, we’ll use em how we please thanks!

Products are designed to do what they do. Caveat emptor.

People stop feeding the troll.  

I agree with you for once.  And if they’re designed with a “line-in” port (as opposed to a line-in-with-delay port), they they need to provide line-in without a delay.

Unless what you mean is by definition no product can ever do wrong because what a product does defines what they are designed to do.  Which I’m sure that’s not what you mean, or else recalls, warranties, class actions, wouldn’t exist in this world.  And that would be a terribly flawed logic of course.