Any self-proclaimed “audiophile” would use an external DAC which will reclock the signal, thus eliminating any jitter.  So exactly what’s the problem (besides not being expensive enough for bragging rights?)

I have Naim DAC-v1 and Hegel H190. On both cheep Raspberry Pie HAT sounds better. I do not know if it jitter or something else. Everyone says it is a jitter.

What DAC do you listen to and do not hear a difference?

And by the way, the last thing I would call audiophiles is music lovers.  Music lovers listen to music.  Audiophiles listen to gear. 

Totally agree. As one smart man said once “You are listening to music not measurements” 

I know very little about jitter. Virtually nothing in fact. What I do know is that if I am using digital coaxial out from a Connect, I must have an external DAC, and be bypassing the DAC in the Connect. 

So how can my Connect be introducing jitter that is not, as @jgatie says, sorted out by the external DAC?

What is the Connect doing to degrade the sound please, @Ivan Jeremic ?  What is it doing other than forward packets of 0s and 1s?

@Antifon gave a very good explanation of most of the problems.

Another problem I am aware of is also that 0 or 1 is level of voltage. It looks something like this __-_-___----__ where low is 0 and high is 1. Change from 0 voltage to 1 voltage levels does not happens in no time. You have time needed to change voltage from 0 to 1 and vice versa so you have some “in between time” lets say not 0 not 1 but if you catch signal in a bad time then it is “0.2” or “0.332” times. Also you can see that if you have several zeroes in a row there is no change in voltage.. If signal is not clocked correctly then these get misinterpreted.  You have electrical pollution from WiFi and home appliances etc which can cause “buzz” in audio circuits. You have definitely hear those sometime when being extremely strong but they occur all the time. Signal is passed through the cable which can be faster at transferring this voltage level changes or slower… When you have 44kHz/16bit signal that mean DAC is taking 16 bit of signal 44000 times per second… Plenty of chances to make an error.

Coming from IT background in the first I did not believe in any of this stuff. Sure good DAC will interpret digital signal in more musical matter but that is it. 1 is 1. 0 is 0. Nothing could change that until I heard noticeable differences when using different digital sources even different digital cables.

Antifon is right when saying that this is not a big problem in a real world. Most of the people will not recognise it because they do not have gear which can reproduce this errors in processing in a way you can actually hear them. I describe it as a coarse sound. Its like you have a distortion in a sound similar to what you get when you crank volume up too much but in a more subtle manner. You can recognise it when it is gone. Music appears softer, cleaner, more relaxed. There are no sharp edges. You can listen to music longer even on higher leves.

How Sonos can deal with that I do not know. Probably just by removing complexity from device (no audio processing etc) and try to get rid of interferences from electric network I suppose… Maybe using better components since this part was left as appendix which no one cares about. I am not an expert on this.. Just my thoughts.

If a USD 25 Chromecast, a USD 350 Port and a USD 1000 external DAC can’t be picked apart in a blind listening test, what’s the point of such a Port?

Audiophiles will never love Sonos, a mass market brand, even where it sells at a higher price point than many such. As soon as mass market is the target, audiophiles exit. It has nothing to do with sound quality, but with human psychology.

@melvimbe Honda Racing Fondation was formed in 1982 in order for them to be able to experiment and try out different things to build better cars and I would say that it was a good idea. Honda today build great cars. 
Bealive it or not Sonos is building audiophile gear. Everyone who buy more then one of their products is an audiophile. They can buy cheaper products but they choose Sonos because it sounds good and it is easy to use.
Would you buy Sonos speaker if it sounds like crap but it is easy to use and looks kind of nice?

That is a classic example of an ungrounded assumption.

@Ivan Jeremic : it isn't just me; there is not ONE reported controlled level matched blind listening test anywhere in the world that has been able to pick the difference in a way that is statistically reliable. 

If there is any such reported, I would be very happy to read it through.

It will not affect my listening/buying - since I don't hear differences, I don’t need to run after expensive streamers or DACs, but more learning is always welcome.

My source these days is an Echo Show 5 - USD 50 - and that is just as good as anything else I have used in the past, and with album art as well, it is a very convenient high quality music source to Line In jacks on my Sonos kit. 

I think your point is largely a valid one, but the choice of Honda is a bit ironic, because the (original) NSX was considered to be a supercar, by the standards of the time! And it probably did affect their reputation for a time, though few people seem to know much about them now.

Just my 2 cents I have loved hifi for 20 plus years and as someone in this thread said I had stopped listening to music and started listening to the kit itself. Its a never ending pursuit of tweaking and upgrading which gets eye wateringly expensive. I started with sonos with a single play 1 for my wife for her work space years back and as time went on I have added more about the house and I have to say it brings back the joy of the music not the equipment. I have stopped the critical listening and accepted the sonos kit for what it is. I will say though that the port does not sound right to me I have one into a very good dac and it just sounds average compared to a raspberry pi plus a hat board at a fraction of the price but still the ease of use and integration is so good it cant be matched in my view. I cant see sonos ever offering an audiophile grade port as its such a small market compared to the their target market. Don't get me wrong id love one but it will never happen. I think the likes of aftermarket upgrades are going to be the only way if that's your thing or as I have done keep 1 good digital transport for listening in your main space alongside a sonos port. Finally with regards jitter maybe its snake oil I don't know but I borrowed a linear psu for the port and it sounded better with my dac anyway so maybe there is something to it(I'm aware that this doesn't resolve a digital issue though). Also my understating with regards to jitter/timing/clocking with spdif is that it is done before it is sent via spdif where as usb reclocks on receipt at the far end so for example my chord dac converts the spdif signal to analogue as it receives it errors and all where as it corrects a digital signal received via usb. 

The Port has drawn criticism for the DSP applied to the digital out when using Variable Volume mode. When using an external DAC it would make sense to switch to Fixed Volume, albeit at the loss of volume/EQ control via the Sonos controller.

I use it in fixed mode only so you do loose the volume and tone controls. Incidentally I think the dsp used in sonos speakers make them so easy to listen to and a sonos port connected to a pair of dsp powered speakers sounds better than through a standard dac amp speaker combo. Dsp is the work of the devil to some audiophiles but I'm all for it. If it sounds better to my ears I don't really care what kind of audio heresy has gone on to achieve it.

Why is a separate DAC even necessary with a Port.  Just plug the line output into your preamp, much simpler less hardware and wire.  Is not the DAC a mature technology?

My experience is similar to Kumar’s. I’ve recently switched from a small setup of old ZP90’s (Connects) to a small setup of Ports. I’ve noticed no significant deterioration in sound quality - even though both ZP90’s and Ports are set to “variable” rather than “fixed” output (because I want to be able change the volume in each room from the app, rather than going into each room to do so).

In both setups I’ve been using a good-quality external DAC and power amps (by Cyrus, retail cost around £5000 total) and decent midrange (£4000) speakers, so if my ears were golden enough I ~should~ be able to hear a difference.

Having said that, I believe that a typical person’s audio memory lasts for a matter of seconds (7 seconds is the figure that I can recall) so if any change takes longer than that, the listener probably won’t be able to detect changes in sound quality with any accuracy. Needless to say, the update of my system from ZP90s to Ports took longer than 7 seconds, so perhaps I’m not really qualified to comment...

Both good points (although my memory of the research suggests that this time is less than 7 seconds) and give an insight into why setting up a robust level matched blind test is not easily done at home. Which means unfortunately that the field is left wide open to every kind of subjective comment that there can be about comparative sound quality. For kit from amps to DACs. Or even speakers in some cases.

However the specialist media has the resources to run these tests in a proper manner, but their reason for shirking from this is because 90% of what they write would then have no cause to exist, undermining their existence.

So, the merry go around goes on for those that get on it.

I am not one that rules out the effect of subjective influences on the listening experience, but I happen to think that Sonos users would be better served with a HiFi speaker that looks the part more than the 5 unit does. Or even the One, for that matter. Blessed with a well crafted veneered cabinet, both would look “HiFi” and therefore sound better to many users, more than any “audiophile” edition of the Port - which is already too expensive for what it does. Of course only as long as said user was able to overlook the Sonos name on it, which audiophiles look down upon as being too cheap to sound good to their imagined golden ears. So maybe this won’t work either!

PS: One byproduct of this thinking is the paradox that audiophiles think that the Port is too cheap to be able meet the standards set by their golden ears, while most Sonos users think that it is way too expensive for what it does.

Im interested in what you have said here. I'm trying to rationalise giving up my other streamers/transports for the ease of using sonos but I cant help feel that I will be short changed on SQ but your probably right after several seconds I wont remember and then its just a case of putting it out of my head. I wish sonos would offer a desktop solution as I'm trying to come up with a good home office solution. I currently use a pair of play 1s which sound fine/ok near field but i have no way of getting pc audio etc into them. Its this solution I want to get the sq right with whatever i do as its where i will do a lot of listening in a nearfield environment and its where I think I'm most likely to feel short changed on sq if it was an issue.

Congratulations on getting to where most of us get to by that age! And I don't think that we get there only because of impaired hearing.

One way to do this is via a old but working on S1 Connect - it ought to be cheap. Wire the PC audio to the Connect Line in jacks, and set these to autoplay to the play 1 pair. There will be a lag, but that should not matter for pure audio. It is also likely that lip-sync issues will not arise on YouTube videos and the like, but this is something that can't be assured.

I have a port connected to a Denafrips Ares 2 external DAC connected to a rogue sphinx integrated amp.

I recently, noting its strong return policy, tried ain ifi ipure2 between the coax and the ares 2. This device claims to both galvanically issolate the signal (removing power supply noise and such) and reclocking it. 

I was commited to trying it and sending it back if I did not hear a dramatic improvmenet. Suprisingly, I did. The dynamic range (especially the base) and the imaging improved quite a bit. I was so startled I contacted IFI to see if they were applying a DSP or something else. They said nope. I then contacted Denafrips, and they said if the jitter of the signal was reduced it would help the sound quality, even though the DAC also does some reclocking. Since they also sell expensive devices to reclock as well, they obviuosly think such is possible. 

At any rate, if you are looking to improve the signal from a port into an external DAC, the IFI is  worth a try. Just make sure to buy from a place with a solid return policy. YMMV.

I still dont know if the improvement comes from reducing jitter/reclocking, or the galvanic issolation, but I’m not removing it! The improvement was way better than any other tweak (interconnects, etc), I’ve ever tried, at least in my setup. 

Personally I think Sonos missed the boat with the Port when they didn’t make it like the Amp, but with a digital/analog outs instead of speaker outs.  Same features as the Amp, just replace the amp with digital outs. 

???

Amp has a digital in.  And can be used with a TV setup to provide 4.1 sound (phantom center).

Yup, and I wish Sonos positioned Port just like an Amp but without the amp. But they didn’t!  Oh well.