Zp 24/96

I think that qualifies as anecdote, and says nothing about the Hi-Rez market in general.

I augmented my Sonos with a PS Audio PerfectWave Dac with the new Bridge.. I can now stream my Hi Rez files, and control everything with my Ipod Touch.. And Hi Rez just blows redbook away.. I would have really liked to have spent the not insignificant money on a Sonos player that would have done Hi Rez but...FYI the Bridge also sounds better than my Cullen modified ZP90... Frankly I don't think high end audio is where Sonos wants to be, and that's really not a bad thing since it's a very small part of the market.

For completeness: No hi-Rez please: develop more useful functionality

Just let us know, Sonos!

Unless the answer is a definitive "yes we have something in active development", then there is no sensible answer to give.

I'll point out that it's crazy to suggest that they should give an answer under any other circumstances, as any other answer would be subject to change, and would be pretty meaningless.

The answer you got from that lady sounds like a very sensible answer to me, and is about the best you can reasonably expect to get until such time as they develop this capability (if they ever do).

Cheers,

Keith

Keith et al this is crp. It's now getting embarrassing, and you know it! You guys can no longer justify Sonos's approach to this...
It's about time you and other respected members of this forum acknowledged this is a big deficit in their product lineup right now.

Airplay now supports 24/96 into the new B/W Zepplin. Real Hi fi is coming (See new Classe preamp product which supports airplay)Squeezbox now has a new touch zone player with 24/96
Linn, Naim, PS audio, Cambridge Audio, Arcam..the list now goes on and on, and on....and is growing EVERY day..

Come on Sonos! Cut the stalling crp. Surely there are quite a few high net worth multizone Sonos customers out there (demonstrating a desire to up the spend on audio) with at least ONE decent hifi zone which would benefit from a 24/96 zone player..

I'm about to blow 4K on a Linn DS in shear frustration. That give you some idea of the money I'm prepared to fork out for this function?

Lack of 24/96 support for loyal Sonos customers is now outrageous IMHO. Sonos owe's it to their loyal customers to tell them what the heck is going on....

If somebody wants to email me privately that's fine. I won't blab. Anything to stop me spending 4K with another competitors product 🙂

We understand you want this. You've made that perfectly clear, but there are other capabilities out there that people want, and some of them are more requested and are useful to more people than this. An example is the 65k track limit which potentially impacts far more people than hires.

The only trouble I have with this statement is that it kind of implies that Sonos can only work on one thing at once. I know that isn't what you were saying Keith but it does kind of give that impression. It certainly shouldn't be the case as far as these two features are concerned. I'd expect the 65k limit to be a software issue, whereas I'd imagine 24-bit support would be largely a hardware development and therefore the two should handled by different departments in Sonos' development team.

As usual whenever I say anything here though I expect I'll be proven entirely wrong! :D

For the record though I do have 24-bit music sitting on my laptop and it's frustrating that I can't play it through my Sonos system. I haven't yet bought anything else to handle it (I might end up with a USB equipped DAC to plug the laptop into, which I can also use with my ZP90) but I won't wait forever and frankly I don't really care whether my system can resolve the finest details of the recording or not, I just want to listen to the music!

The only trouble I have with this statement is that it kind of implies that Sonos can only work on one thing at once. I know that isn't what you were saying Keith but it does kind of give that impression.

Certainly not one thing at once, but they will have limited resources available for development (as is the case for every IT development house, including giants like Google and Microsoft).

It certainly shouldn't be the case as far as these two features are concerned. I'd expect the 65k limit to be a software issue, whereas I'd imagine 24-bit support would be largely a hardware development and therefore the two should handled by different departments in Sonos' development team.

I don't think it's as simple as that. i would actually suggest the 65K limit might not be solved entirely by software (depending, of course, on the solution). It seems the main limitation is caused by the size of the RAM in the Sonos zoneplayers. One possible solution could be a hardware addon which acts as an indexer.

And, arguably, the current Sonos hardware is already 24-bit capable. This is speaking nominally of course. There are likely to be system constraints we aren't aware of which may dictate new hardware. In any case, a lot of the work will be software support in the form of codec development.

In general any hardware developments require some sort of software activity. Even "hidden" changes like changing some internal components can require software support.

For the record though I do have 24-bit music sitting on my laptop and it's frustrating that I can't play it through my Sonos system.

... I don't really care whether my system can resolve the finest details of the recording or not, I just want to listen to the music!

As suggested by jgatie, use sox or dbPoweramp or something to downconvert it to standard res.

The evidence is that the main benefits of the hires files are almost wholly down to the better care taken in mastering the hires versions. There are studies which show that, for the majority of people, if hires files are properly converted to standard res, the audible differences between them range from negligible to undetectable.

This thread from the slimdevice forums may prove interesting. Note that some of the SB range supports hires natively and the owners of this system have every reason to extol the virtues of the format as a differentiator over Sonos. Despite this many of the more experienced and knowledgeable members (including at least one who has a professional recording studio background) dismiss many of the benefits. In most of the cases where people claim to hear a difference, it's down to the fact they are comparing versions which have been mastered differently.

So, my advice is to convert the music to standard res using a good conversion tool, and enjoy the enhanced quality that the better master gives you. If your system isn't that resolving then it will sound identical to the hires version. Unless you have a super-high-end system, the chances are you couldn't tell the difference between the hires and standard format.

Cheers,

Keith

Sonos is sold in HIFI shops for goodness sake. NOT in the Best Buy's of this world
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&id=pcat17071&type=page&ks=960&st=Sonos_Products&sc=Global&cp=1&sp=&qp=crootcategoryid~~cabcat0200000~~ncabcat0202000&list=y&usc=All+Categories&nrp=15&searchresults=1&searchterm=Sonos
http://www.bestbuy.co.uk/Catalog/Browse.aspx?Path=ccatdepartments_-1_-1~~ccataud_0_1tb~~ccataud011_0_m~~nf146--536f6e6f73&SearchKeyword=&ResultPageNumber=0&CategoryId=&SortBy=&SearchType=AttributeFacet&SearchResultsLayout=ListLayout&NumberOfResultsPerPage=12

Can't speak for Keith, but I wouldn't buy one. I also don't buy Monster cables, cocobolo wood isolators or special green markers.

Come on. This is a nonsense statement. Comparing A->D conversion of the original master recording at 16/44 vs 24/96, to 'Monster cable' or 'snake oil' or other hifi witchcraft or whatever is just plain silly.

Not at all. In my eyes it's the same sort of snake oil (and the fact that you see hires into a B&W Zeppelin as something Sonos should compete aginst shows you've bought it hook-line-and sinker).

The primary reason hires sound better than standard res releases of the main material is because they come from better masters. When people listen to hires releases and compare them with the CD quality releases, they are being conned. They are not equivalent. The industry is feeding gullible audiophiles so much snake oil that it's difficult to see the reality of the situation.

If you believe in facts and reality, the reasons to go hires start to fade away.

If you believe in the power of marketing and how easily people with a particular belief system can be misled by stoking that belief, there's good reasons for Sonos to consider hires. The problem is the industry is driven largely by con-men (aka. marketeers) who will quite happily artificially degrade music and then sell you a "premium" priced version claiming that the difference is the additional resolution when the reality is the difference is the version they sold you before isn't as good as it could be.

This is no different from Intel selling Pentium processors off the same production line at different prices because they've deliberately clocked the cheaper processors down to make them slower, in order to create a price premium for the faster processors. The same thing happens in music.

The trouble is we are missing the middle ground which is where the real benefits lie but which is where the music industry hasn't worked out how to milk us: lossless downloads at standard res. The problem is the world has got used to CD and then MP3. People will pay for MP3 (and equiv) lossy downloads for the convenience of it, but won't pay a premium for the CD lossless version as a download because it looks uncompetitive against the CD (because, fundamentally, it is), so the music industry needs a "premiium" product they can sell which is better than iTunes downloads, but is also better than CD, so they can charge a premium for it. As there are mugs who will buy and enjoy music almost wholly based on the technical characteristics of the product than the actually quality of the product, why not target products at them.

Luckily these people are a niche simply because there is a price point entry to this. Any audiophile worth the name (even the stupendously gullible ones) doesn't generally believe hires files can be resolved on everyday hifi systems, such as the B&W Zepellin. But these poeple are "true believers" and are willing to buy stuff if you are willing to put the right technical labels on it. so why not market to them.

The vast majority of the market really doesn't care about hires. They've never heard of it.

That doesn't make Sonos the McDonalds. It makes them the reasonably priced gem of a restaurant your friends recommend. Meanwhile the snobs eat at the high priced restaurants even if the food is actually no better, but they belief that the experience must be better because of the high price, fancy writing on the menu and the accents that the waiters put on.

Cheers,

Keith

I think there's another link to this somewhere else on the forums, but here's the AES test:

http://www.aes.org/journal/online/comment/?ID=14195

[Engineering Report] Claims both published and anecdotal are regularly made for audibly superior sound quality for two-channel audio encoded with longer word lengths and/or at higher sampling rates than the 16-bit/44.1-kHz CD standard. The authors report on a series of double-blind tests comparing the analog output of high-resolution players playing high-resolution recordings with the same signal passed through a 16-bit/44.1-kHz “bottleneck.” The tests were conducted for over a year using different systems and a variety of subjects. The systems included expensive professional monitors and one high-end system with electrostatic loudspeakers and expensive components and cables. The subjects included professional recording engineers, students in a university recording program, and dedicated audiophiles. The test results show that the CD-quality A/D/A loop was undetectable at normal-to-loud listening levels, by any of the subjects, on any of the playback systems. The noise of the CD-quality loop was audible only at very elevated levels.

The full report is behind a paywall. Someone may have a link.

Also this commentary: http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/explanation.htm

I'm sorry but this just doesn't make any sense to me. Leaving aside any consideration about whether people can hear any difference and so forth, why would there be different masters for a recording based on the bit-rate of the release format?

I think Keith made it very clear. The reason there are different masters is to make the 24/96 version sound better, thus justifying the premium price and feeding into the audiophile market. It's similar to the DTS vs. DD mixes on most of Speilberg's DVD releases. Speilberg was heavily invested in DTS, and it was confirmed that the DTS soundtracks on his films were mastered to be sonically superior to the DD tracks.