Zp 24/96
A
Ability to play 24bit/96 files (like the competition: slimdevices transporter)
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That many people now stream? Is there evidence for this assertion? Not being argumentative, by the way, just surprised...
I agree that ripping CDs is a chore, but I suppose that ones views on streaming may be influenced by whether or not you have a fast reliable internet connection...
I've never had both, so always prefer to have full control over where my music is stored and how it's accessed...
As we've said, it's the customer's and there are simple workarounds. There are strong technical and business reasons why Sonos would see no interest in supporting hi-res. Ergo it's clearly not a problem for Sonos.
Never say never, but given that 16/44 lossless streaming services (Qobuz, WiMP) are territorially restricted with relatively small userbases I wouldn't place any bets on hi-res streaming appearing any day soon.
Indeed. I see this as similar to the people out there who wish to use less common music file formats, like WavPack, Monkey's audio, or FLAC with Cuesheet.
At least Sonos reads almost all of the mainstream formats, whilst companies like Apple do not.
At the end of the day it's impractical to cater to the varied and obscure whims of every individual user and there are very few real barriers to the user solving the problem themselves.
Honestly WappingHigh i think one of the reasons that people have been quite scathing towards you (sometimes unreasonably so), is that your campaign for a solution seems to be based on very shaky ground. To many of us you are asking for Sonos to provide you with a solution to a problem that hardly exists, even for the handful of people it does affect.
Firstly, managing a duplicate music library is not hard. It's not hard at all. I speak from a position of experience having managed a parallel library of lossless FLAC and lossy MP3 for many years in order to support use on portable devices. I know that many of the others on this thread have done the same.
If you really do genuinely believe maintaining a parallel is "difficult" (and I suspect this is more a convenient argument than a real belief) then I can only conclude it is because you haven't committed to trying it, because it really isn't that hard.
It is also not time consuming: using one of the suggested tools, you could have performed all the manual steps required to batch convert your entire collection in the time it took to make one of your recent posts. In fact, your whole collection would probably have been converted in the time it took you to type one of your longer posts!
It's very easy to form the view that you are far more committed to complaining about this than you are to getting a working solution.
IMO these are weak arguments to why Sonos should solve this for you.
Cheers,
Keith
In my opinion the only way SONOS could make the business case of supporting higher bit rates and wider words, is if the hires proponents successfully position their wish as a "must have" pre sale "check box" in the marketplace. "Expert" equipment reviewers are contributing to the creation of this check box when they deride SONOS for "not supporting WiFi".
Currently, SONOS competitors are beating the "our system supports WiFi, SONOS is not WiFi" drum -- indicating that SONOS has a shortcoming, when this is actually a technology advantage for SONOS. The competition struggles with their WiFi connections while SonosNet is robust. It's an easy check box against SONOS because a large segment of the public equates "wireless" and "WiFi" -- in this view SONOS cannot be truly wireless without WiFi. Since SONOS has announced that it will support a WiFi link at some point, the air will disappear from this check box in a quick blast of flatulence.
It will not be as easy to deflate the hires check box.
Currently, SONOS competitors are beating the "our system supports WiFi, SONOS is not WiFi" drum -- indicating that SONOS has a shortcoming, when this is actually a technology advantage for SONOS. The competition struggles with their WiFi connections while SonosNet is robust. It's an easy check box against SONOS because a large segment of the public equates "wireless" and "WiFi" -- in this view SONOS cannot be truly wireless without WiFi. Since SONOS has announced that it will support a WiFi link at some point, the air will disappear from this check box in a quick blast of flatulence.
It will not be as easy to deflate the hires check box.
Yet another option if you're sharing your files from a Linux server or NAS:
http://arbiter.sevensinsystems.com/?p=18
http://arbiter.sevensinsystems.com/?p=18
Currently, SONOS competitors are beating the "our system supports WiFi, SONOS is not WiFi" drum -- indicating that SONOS has a shortcoming, when this is actually a technology advantage for SONOS. The competition struggles with their WiFi connections while SonosNet is robust. It's an easy check box against SONOS because a large segment of the public equates "wireless" and "WiFi" -- in this view SONOS cannot be truly wireless without WiFi. Since SONOS has announced that it will support a WiFi link at some point, the air will disappear from this check box in a quick blast of flatulence.
It will not be as easy to deflate the hires check box.
I used Squeezebox for years, never had Wi-Fi issues (5-6 units at once), and I could play 24/96 flac files... SonosNet is needlessly complicated to set up and maintain (interference, connecting to bridge). Not supporting hi res formats exposes its lack of "robustness". If I hadn't spent over £1K on my Sonos set up I'd be long gone...and I will when I move back to the US. Sonos should cater a bit to the high end of the market since their gear is not cheap. Plus high res music is the new hotness...just look at all the portable high res players rising up...be scared Sonos because your service is not good and rapidly becoming antiquated...
Not very convincing when you use a discontinued product whose forums were rife with problems to deride a company which has become the 2nd largest speaker manufacturer in the world (that's 2nd largest speaker manufacturer, not just wireless speaker manufacturer). Also, the reviews, both professional and customer based, disagree with your assessment of ease of setup, reliability, and customer service.
As to your detailed market analysis which states "high res music is the new hotness" :rolleyes:, I've been hearing that type of rot for 10 years, and yet hi-res remains a niche (hi-res) of a niche (lossles) of a soon to be niche (non-service based, local libraries) market.
That's an impressive statistic! You mind providing the source? I'd guess Bose might be #1, but really have no idea.
The DSP-corrected Play:1 really does outclass everything in its size range, as objective reviews have been showing.
I've also had Squeezeboxes for years - the Sonos system is better in every respect, with the minor exception that the SB radio has a clock display. 😉
The DSP-corrected Play:1 really does outclass everything in its size range, as objective reviews have been showing.
I've also had Squeezeboxes for years - the Sonos system is better in every respect, with the minor exception that the SB radio has a clock display. ;)
From the CEO and founder himself:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/18/sonos-soundbar-home-theatre-system
And now Sonos, which Cullen says in 2012 became the world's second biggest speaker manufacturer by revenue (after Bose, and ahead of Bowers & Wilkins), is moving in to get a piece.
http://sharespost.com/companies/sonos/
According to co-founder Tom Cullen, Sonos became the world’s second biggest speaker manufacturer by revenue last year (after Bose, and ahead of Bowers & Wilkins). According to the company, Hi-Fi is more than a $10 billion market worldwide. Sonos doesn’t announce how many users the company has; they instead refer to “rooms,” which roughly equate to speakers. The company announced they currently service 2.5 million rooms – a number that is two-and-a-half times the number of rooms they serviced by the end of 2011.
I doubt he would be saying it if it were not true.
As to your detailed market analysis which states "high res music is the new hotness" :rolleyes:, I've been hearing that type of rot for 10 years, and yet hi-res remains a niche (hi-res) of a niche (lossles) of a soon to be niche (non-service based, local libraries) market.
I'm not using a discontinued product... unfortunately Squeezebox went under before I moved to the UK so I'm now using a Sonos set up. I can only speak for my personal experience setting up Sonos with 5 units across 3 floors of my house...it took two months to sort out with a lot of good help from Sonos customer service...
You should research Sony NWZ-ZX1, Fiio X5, Astell & Kern AK100 and Ponos for some info on new high res portable players. Ponos raised over $4M on kickstarter for a product that is not well designed (I'm not a supporter). A lot of high res music services are cropping up...I'm buying a ton from HDtracks. I connect my Fiio X5 to my stereo through a digital coax to play 24/92+ music and it's great. Really great. Sonos should be doing this but I have to resort to getting off my couch and plugging in another device... I guess it's a shame so many companies are wasting their time and money developing high res portable music players? They can't have any market research...
There are people like me who spend A LOT of money on the highest end audio experience. Unfortunately Sonos is going to lose me and others unless it modernizes its service. Better digital encoding, compression and streaming technologies are here...better get cracking Sonos!
Not only do many of us here disagree with you extremely strongly, but so does Sonos.
They have officially nixed the idea of supporting 24/96 (or higher) resolution music.
Hi-def (beyond CD Std) is a myth that the audiophool, Kool-ade drinkers have embraced despite all the contrary science.
Best you move on to your "high-end" play toys and stop beating that dead horse around here. You'll get little sympathy except from your "phooled" brethren.
Best of Luck
I can't refute your experience, but it is not typical. SONOS is still bound by the laws of physics and some situations are very difficult -- even for SonosNet. In the "wireless music" space, we have WiFi, SonosNet, Bluetooth, and EoP (Ethernet over Powerline), each trying to embarrass the others. Bluetooth range is much too short to be practical for whole house deployment. Typically, one of the others will save the day when the other two are embarrassed. In my experience SonosNet is the most robust of the crew. EoP is my last choice, but sometimes it will be the magic bullet.
There are lots of stories floating around about how someone struggled with one or more of the above with little success, then the magic bullet hit, creating a very vocal disciple.
It will not be as easy to deflate the hires check box.
Could Sonos not have this downsampling on the fly done inside a "new" Sonos player, with more CPU capability? It would still remain backward compatible with older units as far as Sonosnet and sync play is concerned.
With this, and the round the corner wifi capability these two loudly demanded check boxes will be ticked.
They have officially nixed the idea of supporting 24/96 (or higher) resolution music.
Hi-def (beyond CD Std) is a myth that the audiophool, Kool-ade drinkers have embraced despite all the contrary science.
Best you move on to your "high-end" play toys and stop beating that dead horse around here. You'll get little sympathy except from your "phooled" brethren.
Best of Luck
How can it be a myth if its here now?
Its inevitable high res formats will be adopted more broadly just as it has in video. Video tape -> DVD -> Blu ray -> 4K ring any bells? and this progression is happening with video streaming now. Not sure why you would dispute this...its a great thing for music lovers.
I will enjoy my high end toys. Thanks. Enjoy the middle!
Sorry, but that's a totally false analogy. It's a pitfall which repeatedly catches the unwary and is shamelessly used by snake oil audio salesmen, often in conjunction with the infamously incorrect stair-step 'jaggies' diagram supposedly illustrating the result of analog waveform reconstruction in a DAC.
Higher resolution video formats are discernible to the eye -- subject to the eye's resolution, i.e. it's a function of pixels-per-inch and viewing distance.
In the case of audio, 16/44 is able to capture the entire range of human hearing -- dynamic and frequency -- and to reproduce the original band-limited waveform with perfect accuracy. The science says so -- and BTW that article is by an expert in digital audio from the organisation which creates and maintains FLAC and other codecs. It's a myth to suggest otherwise.
Last but not least, the result of extensive controlled double-blind testing of high res audio against 16/44 by supposedly 'golden-eared' individuals was that no-one could tell the difference. The link is in the article referenced above.
In the same way that dowsing "is here". It's a myth anyway.
Its inevitable high res formats will be adopted more broadly just as it has in video. Video tape -> DVD -> Blu ray -> 4K ring any bells? and this progression is happening with video streaming now. Not sure why you would dispute this...
The analogy you draw is false in so far as the recent improvements in video resolution are actually discernible by the human eye, in contrast to what HD audio offers compared to CD quality. If you want to stay with the video analogy, you can imagine that we have left video tape, DVD, blueray and 4K behind us long ago. We're already using 16K. How much do you think the perceived image quality will improve if we go on to 24K?Exactly: Not at all.
Not at all. It's a great thing for audio gear lovers (a perfectly valid hobby) and sales people.
Exactly. That's the spirit!
Its inevitable high res formats will be adopted more broadly just as it has in video. Video tape -> DVD -> Blu ray -> 4K ring any bells? and this progression is happening with video streaming now. Not sure why you would dispute this...its a great thing for music lovers.
I will enjoy my high end toys. Thanks. Enjoy the middle!
Once again, an audiophile falls for the snake oil. The analogy to video is not higher resolution, it is higher frequencies. Raising the sampling rate to 96 or 192 simply means you are raising the frequency range into the ultra-sonic; therefore it is exactly like increasing the wavelength of your TV set to ultra-violet. Can you see ultra-violet light? Of course not. Neither can you hear anything above 20KHz (and typically much less than that if you are over 30). So you asking for a Sonos player able to play 96KHz files is just as if you asked Sony to produce a TV that displays ultra-violet light.
Worse yet, imagine if the Sony "Ultra-Violet Ultra" TV had problems with the visible picture when stressed to display the ultra-violet signal? Would you trade a crappy visible picture for the ability to "see" the ultra-violet signal, which is by definition invisible to the human eye? No, you say? Well what if I told you that stressing modern amplifiers and speakers by feeding them an ultra-sonic signal causes intermodulation distortion in the audible frequencies? Would you trade a crappy audible sound in order to "hear" the ultra-sonic signal which by definition is inaudible to the human ear? You wouldn't? Well, that is in fact what you are doing when you request support for hi-res audio.
So in short, subjective audiophiles are wishing for crappier, more distorted sound, and the objectivists want their sound to be free of distortion. Who'da thunk it?
+8
Most mornings while enjoying a coffee I read "Dilbert" then I come here.. It's usually a toss up which I find funnier ...
So to summarize the last three posts (other than the Dilbert one...I love Dilbert).
1 - cd-da red book 16 bit / 44.1K technology, released in 1980, is the BEST digital audio standard humans will ever invent. I wonder if dogs are working on anything? hmmm
2 - 24 / 96,192 blu ray audio doesn't sound better than cd. At best we can't tell the difference...it's probably worse than cd though.
3 - A scientific paper is always right and science never evolves.
Curse you Neil Young! I trusted you! 😉
1 - cd-da red book 16 bit / 44.1K technology, released in 1980, is the BEST digital audio standard humans will ever invent. I wonder if dogs are working on anything? hmmm
2 - 24 / 96,192 blu ray audio doesn't sound better than cd. At best we can't tell the difference...it's probably worse than cd though.
3 - A scientific paper is always right and science never evolves.
Curse you Neil Young! I trusted you! 😉
3 - A scientific paper is always right and science never evolves.
No one here has said that. It always evolves to a better position based on better hypotheses proved by rigorous peer testing following double blind and other protocols deemed necessary to rule out subjective bias.
This has not been done anywhere for hi res 2 channel audio.
1 - cd-da red book 16 bit / 44.1K technology, released in 1980, is the BEST digital audio standard humans will ever invent. I wonder if dogs are working on anything? hmmm
2 - 24 / 96,192 blu ray audio doesn't sound better than cd. At best we can't tell the difference...it's probably worse than cd though.
3 - A scientific paper is always right and science never evolves.
Curse you Neil Young! I trusted you! ;)
Science evolves when a hypothesis is supported by rigorous, reproducible, peer-reviewed experimentation, as the "scientific paper" you are questioning most definitely was (you did read the footnotes, didn't you?). Your hypothesis is that hi-res audio is superior to CD when sourced from the same masters. So far, every rigorous, reproducible, peer-reviewed experiment conducted has disproven this hypothesis. Show us a rigorous, reproducible, peer-reviewed experiment that proves this hypothesis and science will have evolved. See how that works? See how easy it is? Good luck in your quest, oh seeker of audio nirvana! :rolleyes:
And as to this strawman point: Is there something about the fundamental capabilities of human hearing which have changed since 1980? And if Redbook is fully capable of resolving every sound the human ear is capable of hearing (in 1980 and/or today), why do we need something "better"? Unless of course, humans have somehow been cloned with those dogs you so flippantly mention?
Humans reached the apex of audio technology in 1980! I'm curious what dogs are doing!
You didn't answer the question (actually, you haven't answered any questions - typical of audiophiles). I'll ask again:
Is there something about the fundamental capabilities of human hearing which have changed since 1980? And if Redbook is fully capable of resolving every sound the human ear is capable of hearing (in 1980 and/or today), why do we need something "better"?If all you have in response is another flippant dog comment, you can save it. We all know you have no answer which refutes my position, no need to crack dumb jokes to try and cover up that fact.
You love the :rolleyes:. Thank you! I'm seriously happy my investment in red books will carry down many generations. I've started a treasure trove of audio that my daughters and their children can only build upon! Probably the first time in the history of humanity a technology hasn't been improved upon. Errm...crap...fire is probably the same as it was when it was discovered...
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