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Hey Sonos Engineers!



I know this has been touched upon. I previously submitted this request to support and they encouraged me to share here to keep the conversation going.



Is there any chance we could implement a soft switch for line-in audio to bypass the computer for "delay disable" functionality.



I understand and appreciate the reason for the delay.



However, I'm running turntables through a mixer and into the line-in of the PLAY:5. Can't teach my son to mix records with that delay, and since we're set-up in a communal space, my wife is not too keen on bringing out the old mix monitors. Can you dig it?



Can we figure out a way to manually disable the delay on an individual speaker basis?



Otherwise love the gear!



Thanks!



Here's quote from customer support. Hope it isn't too heavy handed or out of school to post:



"I'm not on the development team, but I personally think that it wouldn't be too hard to implement some kind of soft switch to bypass the computer altogether and pipe line-in audio directly to the amplifiers (something like a computer-controlled solid state IC relay network)."
Frankly I'm surprised support has offered you the encouragement that they have.



Whilst you usage case is perfectly valid it is, I'm sure you appreciate, a very small number of customers who want to use the product in this way.



In terms of the delay I'm sure Sonos have undertaken a number of tests to find an optimal delay - A delay is required as errors in the stream which could be caused by slightly poor connectivity, wireless interference or poor internet need to be buffered so that they become invisible to the listener.



I don't know if is trivial or not to turn-off the delay for certain cases but I suspect it is highly unlikely that Sonos will make this change.



You're going to need to get those mix monitors out of the loft, can your wife dig it?
I live in an apartment. In my uneducated opinion, the distance between all the SONOS speakers, in all the different rooms of my home is so small, that no delay (or very, very little) for syncing purposes should be necessary.

As Stuart_W notes, this has nothing to do with wireless propagation times which are of course at the speed of light.



Any system which attempts to produce synchronous playback from multiple units connected via an asynchronous communication medium has to do (at least) two things:

- provide sufficient buffering to absorb the variations in packet transit times across the network

- exchange highly accurate timing information between the devices such that final playback can be synchronised



In an apartment, where neighbouring wireless networks are competing for bandwidth, it's all the more important to maintain buffering to prevent the receiving device being starved of data by a burst of interference. Sonos chose 70ms as the optimum solution, presumably sized to cope with packet jitter across a typical multi-hop SonosNet wireless mesh.



Although in theory it might be possible to collapse the delay out of the audio pipeline for a player which is operating Line-In stand-alone, it would likely be a lot of work for an outlier use-case. It would also produce playback discontinuities when other players were grouped or ungrouped.
Thanks for the reply Stuart_W, and the explanation.
I would say however, that big picture, I think this feature request (realistic or not) is related to the mix app integration requests (djay etc.), which is also niche, but there are real numbers there.

Yes, but those numbers are most probably a really tiny fraction of Sonos customers. Remember, we're talking here about the case where a user has a Line-In to a PLAY:5, CONNECT or CONNECT:AMP and wants to simply use it as a local amplifier/speaker. No network communications, no streaming, no multi-room: all the kinds of features which account for Sonos' market position and success.



The opportunity cost of addressing a niche (low latency / DJ mixing) of a niche (stand-alone play) of a niche (Line-In play) would potentially be huge, compared to all the other much more popular feature requests stacked up in Product Development's in-tray.
I'm not sure you're right about that. I've read several posts about the Playbar having a delay from the TV source and the instructions suggest setting a video delay on your TV (something not all TV's have). I've got a playbar on a TV for the past several months and I think the audio is a smidge behind (with the delay set to 0 in the app). My understanding of it is that the playbar still has to send the source out to all the other groups and the latency comes in from the time necessary to provide an accurate sync. Of course I'm just regurgitating what I've read some several sources and could be completely wrong.



I also hooked up the playbar to my computer for a test and I noticed a latency between button clicks and noises.
A beneficial side-effect of PLAYBAR using 5GHz to talk to its satellites is reduced interference. It clearly also helps that the connections are direct (hub-spoke) rather than over a mesh with an indeterminate number of wireless hops. PLAYBAR satellites can therefore afford to operate using a shallower (30ms) buffer.



Whilst there could be an argument for dispensing with such latency when PLAYBAR operates without satellites, the marginal gain presumably never warranted the extra development effort. Besides, for many the 30ms doesn't matter, and in some territories with bad broadcast lip-sync where video lags the audio the PLAYBAR latency can even be constructive.



Those using an external TV set-top box, Bluray/DVD, etc. who want tighter sync have the option of bypassing the TV and switching audio direct to the PLAYBAR.
Does the latency increase when grouped with other zones?
No, because the system doesn't attempt to maintain sync between PLAYBAR and the other zones for the 'TV' source. The other zones are in sync amongst themselves, but delayed with respect to PLAYBAR.



https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1966
The delay is necessary for streaming reliability, and is not going away. Matter of fact, in the case of the Airport Express, the inherent unreliability of Airplaystreaming required the Airplay setting on the line in to increase the delay to increase the buffer. Sonos never promised to sync with other devices, only with Sonos devices and the delay helps accomplish that.
I doubt very highly Sonos is going to enable this feature so that you can sync their devices with a competing product, while simultaneously decreasing the reliably of their streaming performance. But you never know . . . 😉
I wanted to purchase a reasonable number of Sonos 5 speakers in a real time audio environment. The live music was strictly in a local environment and not dependent on the vagaries of internet and strictly hard wired with 1 gbps Layer 3 Ip switch ports on a private LAN environment. I am really not sure if the current code can still be maintained with an option to opt out for direct connect scenarios to reduce the delay from over 70 msec to around 5 msec. By Sonos being rigid in their approach, it is likely that Sonos will lose large chunk of business which may be up for grabs and it may go to other solution providers which are available in the market place which are as cost effective and give better audio experience. One of them is a Dante solution.

Sonos is not suitable for such situations, and is not designed for them. The 5ms latency you seek is of the order of the PING time in an uncongested network. Any kind of sustainable audio delivery will require a certain amount of buffering at the receiver end, to ride out variations in packet arrival times. 70ms is a sensible compromise, allowing for several wireless hops in what is, after all, intended to be a multi-room wireless home audio system.
A fully wired network with guaranteed bandwidth provision could in theory provide low and predictable latency. However Sonos is designed as a wireless system, where fading and interference can periodically push up latency quite substantially.



Reducing the buffering to a very low level for public address applications over a dedicated wired network could of course be an option, but it's not Sonos' market at all. In fact Line-In is to some degree a nice-to-have for connecting legacy audio kit (turntables, CD, a phone's 3.5mm, etc.). Sonos' market focus was recently restated as being primarily on online music services (Spotify, Deezer, Apple et al), and voice control.



And before anyone chips in with the 'well, it would only be a software tweak' observation I have two words: Opportunity Cost. 😉
You may be missing the point.



It doesn't matter how big the potential market is for large corporate public address systems (and by the way Sonos' internal architecture imposes a limit of 32 devices per system), this simply isn't where Sonos chooses to do business. To devote any attention whatsoever to that segment would divert resources from the market space where Sonos has made its name and strives to continue to be successful.



I'm no Sonos employee but, to be blunt, in my opinion your needs simply aren't going to be addressed by Sonos. I therefore suggest you focus your search for solutions on other potential suppliers.
I have already resolved he issue of 32 devices in a local environment through two subnets in the worst case scenario, that is not a hurdle, I am already reviewing others do not worry about that
For the record you'd not need two subnets, just more than one Sonos system ('household'). Multiple systems can occupy a single subnet.
Sonos will certainly lose some business by not meeting this need. Just as they lose some by not supporting Bluetooth. Or Airplay. Or hires audio.



But overall the company succeeds by focusing all its efforts on being best at what it does, I.e. being a network based, multiroom, multiroom source home audio system.



You are entitled to ask for the feature you want but I can't see it ever getting near the top of the priority list.
Sonos will certainly lose some business by not meeting this need.

Indeed. My point was that they'd stand to lose even more business by diverting their attention away from the needs of their target market.
Your point taken, John. I think there is a fine distinction in what is being requested. It is not to include every other feature under the Sun, but still maintain wired and wireless options only but broaden the market base. After all how much consumer market spread is possible unless it becomes accessible very cost effectively and internet really becomes cheap across the world, which is not the case.....
@iamryanparker. Duped by Sonos? I'm sorry but that is a nonsensical statement. Sonos has only ever promoted one product as suitable for TV audio - the Playbar. The line-in on the P:5 is a "bonus" that allows legacy audio devices to be incorporated.
I objected, and still do, to your use of the word "duped", which implies a deliberate intention to mislead. The line in is a minor point in the way the Play:5 is marketed and it is not marketed at all as a TV speaker. Given that the line-in can be used for a TV, it's natural that the line-in guide should give what helpful advice there is. "Reduce" lip sync delay clearly implies does not eliminate lip sync delay.



It remains nonsensical to claim you were duped.
Resistance? Hardly.



First there are routinely statements to the effect that the system architecture is built around an assumption of multi-room operation. To engineer a 'direct path' for delay-sensitive content via Line-In played solely on a local device would be a significant distraction of effort for a limited use case. Moreover it has the potential to introduce regression problems in the players' existing audio pipelines.



But more fundamentally, Sonos have already addressed the requirement for low latency with TV sound, in the shape of the purpose-designed PLAYBAR. Modern TVs often no longer offer analog outputs anyway, only optical.
Perfect if the 5 were a standalone speaker. But it is not. The delay is to allow the speaker to communicate with other speakers.
I see it as an "operates as designed" and ease of use issue. It isn't marketed as a stand alone computer speaker, and nobody wants to keep switching between buffered and non-buffered output according to how one is using it. It is what it is, and isn't what it isn't, and allowing it to be what it isn't is both costly in engineering and confusing to the consumer.



ETA: As ratty says, it is most certainly a hardware difference that allows the Playbar to pass audio more real-time. The Playbar uses the 5 GHz band to send audio to the Sub/surrounds in the same room. Unfortunately, the 5 GHz band was found to be unreliable outside of the Sub/Surrounds, because passing through walls and floors proved to be too much for the faster, yet weaker 5 GHz signal. Therefore, for synchronized music* which must go between rooms, Sonos has to buffer the 2.4 GHz, and thus the delay on the line-in for music.



*Note, even the TV source, which is low latency at the Playbar/Sub/surrounds, is delayed a bit when playing in other rooms due to this buffering.
Moreover it has the potential to introduce regression problems in the players' existing audio pipelines.





No one has asked what exactly the above means; for sure this requested feature will add a lot of noise of complaints from people that have inadvertently selected it to the effect that Sonos multi room is playing music out of sync.



But the quoted seems to be much more than just that, I am guessing.
Yes, but what when someone tries to group it without remembering or knowing about changing the no sync feature?



More important is the ratty caution I quoted.
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