There are a lot of people with questions regarding Sono Port sound quality, and the topics always seem to be closed. I just acquired a Sonos Port because I was excited about adding that capability to my HiFi setup. I was excited about the functionality, and the Port accomplishes the connected and streaming tasks just fine, love the automatic input selection for the Aux input.
But the sound: It’s flat, lacks detail, it even sounds like there is an arbitrary roll-off on high and low frequencies. The imaging is horrible. Music sound “canned” and “lifeless”. For those just using background music while they have a dinner party, you wouldn’t notice. But if you intend to just sit back with a glass of wine and listen to music on purpose, the sound is sorely lacking.
I’m using “good” quality components: vintage Marantz Receiver (restored) and relatively new BW Speakers. I’m not trying compare Spotify to listening to vinyl (which sounds great on my system), but I expected the Port to sound as good or not better than any other digital playback solution I’ve tried:
- MacBook Pro using the headphone jack (excellent),
- Samsung TV Spotify app (really good)
- Echo Dot (Wow! this should not sound better than the Port!)
- MacBook Pro using the USB input on a Behringer toy mixer (Also Wow! this should not sound better than the Port!)
It seems they are doing some sort of post-processing of the sound, like compression or limiting. For the price of this thing, it should sound like liquid gold. It’s just a Raspberry-Pi sized computer hooked up to a DAC, so the sound should reflect the price. I’ve read some people say the sound got worse after a recent software update. Since there is no way to manually load a particular version of the software, I’m curious if anyone has any input on that.
Before everyone goes on about some setting, I’ve tried all the possibilities:
- Line Out Level (variable and fixed)
- EQ (flat and adjusted, only available with variable line-out)
- Volume Limit (various levels including the default of 100%).
- Reset all settings (switches the Line Out back to variable at volume 100%)
Something I’ve noticed is that when using Line Out Level: Variable, is that if you turn up the EQ bass and treble, it has almost no effect on the sound, unless you reduce the volume down to below 80%. This raised my suspicion that the Port’s software is compressing the sound, perhaps using a soft limiter.
My one theory is that the DSP in Port is the same as the Sonos speakers, and has it been tuned to make small speakers sound good at the sacrifice of clean, flat sound.
I’m curious on other people’s experience with this. I have 20 days remaining to return it, but I’d love to see if this thread stays open long enough to solicit a variety of comments.
Note: I am using the analog output. If you are finding better sound with a DAC that would be interesting. Of course, at this price point, the built-in DAC should sound better, not worse, than the headphone jack of a MacBook Pro.