Ability to play 24bit/96 files (like the competition: slimdevices transporter)
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I believe that when synced, the server sets the bitrate at the highest common rate all synced players can cope with. So for a mix of players that can't all cope with 24/96 then 16/44.1 is chosen and HiRes files downsampled. If all players can cope with 24/96, then the sync is at 24/96. This seems a reasonable compromise.
You may be right about gapless, I don't have any 24/96 gapless material to test it with.
I dont follow your 30mS comment. Squeeze has no analogue input like Sonos, so a 'delay' in the stream is irrelevant. If you mean a timing difference between players of 30mS, then this would be very noticable, and I have not experienced this.
Yes, the maximum timing difference, or "delay" between zones, is 30ms, up to 10 times that of Sonos. And it's not that the ALAC or 24/96 is downsampled, they also drop bits because Squeeze uses multiple streams which must be constantly resynced, rather than the single stream design of Sonos. The only way to resync 2 streams which drift out of sync is to speed one up, slow one down, or drop bits. Any way you do it (Squeeze chooses to drop bits), music quality is compromised. Sonos doesn't suffer from this compromise because linked zones all play a single stream, rather than multiple streams of the same track.
And this is all without mentioning that running the server on an NAS without a high powered CPU leaves 24/96 and ALAC users out in the cold.
Jgatie,
It is my understanding that Squeeze currently use a single stream for synced players, that is why the stream needs to run at a speed that all players can cope with. It is possible that earlier sync approaches used separate streams, I am afraid I don't know.
I am not aware that Squeeze is not 'bit perfect' in synced mode. Do you have a link for me to learn more about this?
Squeeze uses SOX on the server to downsample HiRes files for its less able players. This does have a processing overhead, but SOX is highly regarded audio software. I guess having a decent CPU is the price for wanting to have HiRes files available to non HiRes players.
It is my understanding that Squeeze currently use a single stream for synced players, that is why the stream needs to run at a speed that all players can cope with. It is possible that earlier sync approaches used separate streams, I am afraid I don't know.
I am not aware that Squeeze is not 'bit perfect' in synced mode. Do you have a link for me to learn more about this?
Squeeze uses SOX on the server to downsample HiRes files for its less able players. This does have a processing overhead, but SOX is highly regarded audio software. I guess having a decent CPU is the price for wanting to have HiRes files available to non HiRes players.
Looking at the Squeeze Wiki, it seems streaming has changed from multiple to single streams in recent updates. I must apologize for not following the seemingly nightly releases. ;)
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Synchronization
However, streaming is still incomplete with MySqueezebox.com, and my NAS comments still stand, so I wouldn't call it perfect. It does seem they have come a long way, but there are still compromises in syncing, along with horribly buggy software and lack of support; three things which would be unacceptable at Sonos.
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Synchronization
However, streaming is still incomplete with MySqueezebox.com, and my NAS comments still stand, so I wouldn't call it perfect. It does seem they have come a long way, but there are still compromises in syncing, along with horribly buggy software and lack of support; three things which would be unacceptable at Sonos.
Jgatie,
I wouldn't argue the reliability point as I have had issues with the software myself, and I agree that Sonos support is excellent.
I am still not sure I agree with your syncing point however, I think thats a bit of a red herring. With a local server, I find syncing to be fine. Whilst typing this I am listening to 'Raising Sand' in 24/96 on a Transporter while my wife is listening to Michael Buble on two synced Booms (with no perceptible delay). I had all of my seven players synced for a party two weeks ago with no problems.
I have no axe to grind with Sonos, and I have recommended Sonos to friends of mine rather than Squeeze because of reliability issues. On the basis of my experience, I wouldn't however justify the choice on the basis of syncing ability.
I wouldn't argue the reliability point as I have had issues with the software myself, and I agree that Sonos support is excellent.
I am still not sure I agree with your syncing point however, I think thats a bit of a red herring. With a local server, I find syncing to be fine. Whilst typing this I am listening to 'Raising Sand' in 24/96 on a Transporter while my wife is listening to Michael Buble on two synced Booms (with no perceptible delay). I had all of my seven players synced for a party two weeks ago with no problems.
I have no axe to grind with Sonos, and I have recommended Sonos to friends of mine rather than Squeeze because of reliability issues. On the basis of my experience, I wouldn't however justify the choice on the basis of syncing ability.
I was speaking of the compromises when using MySqueezebox.com or a lower powered NAS. For full syncing ability, Squeeze still requires a computer CPU and a complicated, buggy server, two things Sonos does not require.
Hi All,
It seems this subject has been coming up for years now. I have a few pretty high end systems in my house and love SONOS for getting music around. I often get ads for songs on some of the hi-res music sites and lately, I can't even purchase them because the only format they come in is not supported by SONOS. I would be in heaven if SONOS would do just two things:
1) Support the hi-res formats with the zp80/90.
2) Open the interface up so other home control systems could talk directly to SONOS. I could understand somewhat when the only controller came from SONOS. It was brilliant to allow iPads, iPods, etc. to be controllers. I don't see the big deal in making the upnp stream readable by device s that support it. That would just make the system more ubiquitous.
Craig
It seems this subject has been coming up for years now. I have a few pretty high end systems in my house and love SONOS for getting music around. I often get ads for songs on some of the hi-res music sites and lately, I can't even purchase them because the only format they come in is not supported by SONOS. I would be in heaven if SONOS would do just two things:
1) Support the hi-res formats with the zp80/90.
2) Open the interface up so other home control systems could talk directly to SONOS. I could understand somewhat when the only controller came from SONOS. It was brilliant to allow iPads, iPods, etc. to be controllers. I don't see the big deal in making the upnp stream readable by device s that support it. That would just make the system more ubiquitous.
Craig
2) Open the interface up so other home control systems could talk directly to SONOS. I could understand somewhat when the only controller came from SONOS. It was brilliant to allow iPads, iPods, etc. to be controllers. I don't see the big deal in making the upnp stream readable by device s that support it. That would just make the system more ubiquitous.
The latter is already possible. Many generic UPnP controllers can control Sonos, and there are libraries for development and plugins for tools like Homeseer.
Cheers,
Keith
Old but interesting article about high quality audio in 44.1/16:http://www.dagogo.com/view-article.asp?harticle=39
Interesting. Thanks for this post.
It's clear to anyone with the slightest clue about audio that adult humans cannot hear audio above 20kHz, and thus any benefits of faster sample rates in hires are nothing to do with there being "additional audible information" in the higher frequencies: that is absurd and well known to be factually incorrect. Despite that the number of people I see who think that, because the file contains more data, that it must contain more audio. That is not the case: the majority of the additional information is noise.
However, it is clear that there are likely to be indirect benefits from higher sampling rates. This has mostly always been known during the production stage (although some attribute the higher sampling rates used during production processes as something which translates directly to listening, which it does not; another common incorrect assumption in audiophile circles).
With careful mastering Redbook audio can be made much better than the commonly produced CDs of today, and this article shows this. Hires formats are a tool to achieve better quality, but a very blunt one, especially when in most cases we're not getting the best out of the current format.
I also suggest people interested in this subject should check out Bob Katz's book "Mastering Audio". This guy really is the authority on audio production. The book is from the point of view of audio production, which is not the same as audio distribution, but it does discuss the reasons for using hires within the production process and how careful production techniques can be used to produce high quality results for Redbook standard distribution (and, conversely, how sloppy techniques produce poor results that are often attributed to the format itself when they are really the fault of the master Engineer).
Cheers,
Keith
It's clear to anyone with the slightest clue about audio that adult humans cannot hear audio above 20kHz, and thus any benefits of faster sample rates in hires are nothing to do with there being "additional audible information" in the higher frequencies: that is absurd and well known to be factually incorrect. Despite that the number of people I see who think that, because the file contains more data, that it must contain more audio. That is not the case: the majority of the additional information is noise.
However, it is clear that there are likely to be indirect benefits from higher sampling rates. This has mostly always been known during the production stage (although some attribute the higher sampling rates used during production processes as something which translates directly to listening, which it does not; another common incorrect assumption in audiophile circles).
With careful mastering Redbook audio can be made much better than the commonly produced CDs of today, and this article shows this. Hires formats are a tool to achieve better quality, but a very blunt one, especially when in most cases we're not getting the best out of the current format.
I also suggest people interested in this subject should check out Bob Katz's book "Mastering Audio". This guy really is the authority on audio production. The book is from the point of view of audio production, which is not the same as audio distribution, but it does discuss the reasons for using hires within the production process and how careful production techniques can be used to produce high quality results for Redbook standard distribution (and, conversely, how sloppy techniques produce poor results that are often attributed to the format itself when they are really the fault of the master Engineer).
Cheers,
Keith
Wow. It's pretty outrageous to delete as "pointless and grossly inaccurate personal criticism" a posting containing the following text:
Calling for a more civil tone hardly qualifies as "grossly inaccurate personal criticism", does it?
By the way, is there any way to ignore a mod? When I try to add you to my (currently empty) ignore list, I'm told:
That hardly seems fair.
Majik, your opinions may be your own but you having the position in this forum that you have does call for slightly more civil tone as everything you say will fall back on Sonos whether you or they mean or want it to.
Calling for a more civil tone hardly qualifies as "grossly inaccurate personal criticism", does it?
By the way, is there any way to ignore a mod? When I try to add you to my (currently empty) ignore list, I'm told:
Sorry Majik is a moderator/admin and you are not allowed to ignore him or her.
That hardly seems fair.
It's no surprise to me that, once again, you have deliberately and carefully selected quotes in an attempt to discredit me. I realise this is part of a personal vendetta that you and gman have against me, but others may not.
For their benefit: the original post attributed a quote to me that I did not make and then criticised me for it. If I had made that quote then the criticism would have been fair. However, I didn't. thniels made it up.
The criticism was of not being civil, but I see nothing in my post which could qualify for this. I didn't post anything defamatory, critical, or even particularly controversial. I really cannot understand how my post could have been considered "uncivil", even when considered through the highly coloured eyes of people like Ianmacd, gman and a couple of others who use "being a moderator" enough of a reason to criticise me at every opportunity in lieu of actually having credible arguments against my opinions.
So thniels posted a quote I didn't make, accused me of behaviour I didn't exhibit, and completely ignored the actual content of my post in order to have a rant and to throw out accusations.
If this isn't "pointless and grossly inaccurate personal criticism" then I struggle to think what is.
But, once again Ianmacd springs to defend the indefensible simply because it yields the opportunity to take a carefully crafted pot-shot at me. I find it slightly ironic that someone who recently aimed the words "petulant and childish" at another user in [thread=24453]a recent thread[/thread] feels the need to criticise my civility.
Ian, you have a track record of escalating arguments to the point where we have to shut threads and start handing out bans to people to cool off. We don't like doing this.
Recently I am, in particular, being less tolerant of people who have a history of causing problems on these forums. It is a very small group, and you are one of them. Even recently you have got very close to the line in the thread I mention above and, once again, this escalated into an argument and ended up with the thread being closed and another user getting a short ban. In this case the other user stepped over the line, but it takes two to cause a fight and you are so often one of them.
I will close by warning you, this is not a debate. I do not expect a response and will take a very dim view of further off-topic posts on this thread.
Keith
Fwiw the New Wilco album sounds amazing in 24/96.. and yes it sounds better than the down sampled version I also have.. but even the 16/44 is a really good recording and of course what really matters is the music and it's a great album 🙂
Cheers,
Keith
I use a Control4 one very successfully....
Squeezebox comes close in terms of feature set, but doesn't have reliable enough synchronisation for multi-room use, and that's something I use quite a bit.
On the other hand, it is without many of the other annoying limitations that Sonos has. If I were forced to live with the worst of these, such as the 65k track limit, I probably would have started to seriously evaluate whether I wouldn't be better off living with Squeezebox's limitations instead, but I'm happy to have found tolerable workarounds for the most critical shortcomings. Everything else falls into the tolerable shortcoming category.
It's also worth pointing out that my needs have grown over the years that I have had Sonos. It was perfectly adequate for my needs when I first purchased Sonos equipment five years ago, but those needs have not remained static. Over the years, my collection has grown beyond what the Sonos can natively track and serve, streaming services such as Spotify have arrived on the scene in Europe, and I now draw music from a much wider variety of sources than I used to.
In that regard, the Sonos is somewhat a victim of its own success. It has made the consumption of music so easy, that I am now much more actively purchasing and listening to music than I was a few years ago. My ownership of Sonos has directly influenced my requirements of the system to the point that they now outstrip what the system can deliver.
That said, I still love the system. I can't think of many other purchases, apart from a bed and a coffee machine, that I use daily and derive so much enjoyment from.
That said, my bed and coffee machine do all that I expect of them, but the Sonos could be so much better than it is. Its slow, closed development model is particularly frustrating, with some of the system's worst annoyances not having been addressed after years of user complaints in forum threads spanning tens of pages. I don't need to name them here.
In short, there is much that is good about Sonos and quite a few things that are not. Whilst it's frustrating to see firmware release cycles come and go without many of these long-term niggles ever being addressed or even discussed by the company, no-one else has yet produced a system that can compete when all of the pros and cons are weighed against each other. That's a situation that won't persist forever, of course.
As far as hi-res is concerned, I don't get involved in the audible difference argument. I would like to play hi-res files, just because I have some and because more and more music will be offered in these formats in the future, making for the prospect of ever greater inconvenience in having a system that doesn't support them.
It's nice to see I'm not the only one out there with exactly the same history with the product, the same no of zones, and an ongoing love for it. And the same frustrations 🙂
Okay, not going to pretend to have read the whole of this thread (got a bit dull after ~5 pages :rolleyes:), but I will add a +1 to requesting 24/96 playback capability. More LPs are being released with 24/96 downloads, I'd like to be able to play them 🙂.
Please add me to the 24/96 wish list.
I purchased an Oppo-95 specifically to play "hi-def" content (physical media + UPnP/DLNA) of which I have a lot of, and when I buy recordings is generally the #1 factor WRT the purchase of either the DL-content or media. A good portion of this $ *could* have been spent on Sonos gear.
Cheers,
Frank
ZP90, ZP120, Oppo-95, 10T OpenIndiana NAS
I purchased an Oppo-95 specifically to play "hi-def" content (physical media + UPnP/DLNA) of which I have a lot of, and when I buy recordings is generally the #1 factor WRT the purchase of either the DL-content or media. A good portion of this $ *could* have been spent on Sonos gear.
Cheers,
Frank
ZP90, ZP120, Oppo-95, 10T OpenIndiana NAS
I'm another Sonos owner who would love to see support for 24/96 or other higher resolution formats. If there was a new Zone Player that offered higher performance I would certainly buy one for my main system as my outboard DAC can handle it. I would have picked up the recent Tom Petty and Wings releases in hi-res if I could have played them. This feature was the one downside to going with Sonos over Squeezebox but I made that choice because I wanted an easy to use system for the other people in my family and Sonos provided that.
+1 on this request!
Jethro Tull Aqualung in 24/96 sounds awesome..
Still waiting for the support...
They're losing customers with this, but apparently they still have enough of them to keep discarding this request.
They're losing customers with this, but apparently they still have enough of them to keep discarding this request.
Same here. My main system is high end enough to hear the difference (primare/audio physic). Did the test with my brother's Linn streamer, and was godsmacked. Same recording in 16 bit and 24 bit really made all the difference (both downloads from Linn store).
I am sure Sonos could deliver better quality sound if they choose to. Either Sonos aknowledges the future in streaming, or I will start to save up for the Linn route too.
So please do another audio test for us... Downsample/convert/transcode the 24bit recording into 16bit and compare the two.
Do you still hear a difference? I lack the equipment to do a proper test (eliminate the variable of differing mastering in 16 vs 24 bit samples) and would like to see some comparisons.
Best of Luck
I'll second this request. If you can find the time, I'd like to know if the downsample is noticeably different.
I've done this with numerous albums, there is certainly a difference. In fact anytime I buy a HiRes album from HD Tracks I make a 16/44 version for the Sonos systems, it's then quite easy to compare the HiRes version to the 16/44 version.
Here's an interesting development on the hi-res discussion as Gilad Tiefenbrun of Linn discusses Apple's decision to open-source the ALAC codec.
He pretty clear that it paves the way to adoption of 24-bit music by the masses.
Is this what will finally prod Sonos in to taking hi-res seriously at last?
He pretty clear that it paves the way to adoption of 24-bit music by the masses.
Is this what will finally prod Sonos in to taking hi-res seriously at last?
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