Connect no longer bit-perfect?

Couple of questions:
1. As to bits not being perfect - I don't really care since I don't hear the difference and I suspect that many that do, started doing so after this thread started. But I take your point about bits and what would have made a useful difference to me is availability of volume normalisation; has that really improved consequent to this change? I haven't found that to be the case either, unfortunately, but that maybe because what I am looking for is normalisation across mixed source playlists and that may be a different problem altogether.

My response was based on an understanding I got from other discussions in these forums, where it was suggested that Sonos now applies volume normalisation even when the Connect is in fixed-volume output mode.

https://en.community.sonos.com/setting-up-sonos-228990/volume-normalization-processed-fixed-volume-output-6738413

2. Sonos went mainstream largely at the expense of Squeezebox, I imagine. Because, with Sonosnet, and less tinkering to set up/stabilise, it offered a better alternative to a large part of the user base, is my guess. Other than Hi Res, what does Bluesound do that Sonos does not? On the negatives, it does not offer mesh architecture, and costs a lot more.Expanding the question, is there anyone visible at this time that threatens the Sonos castle in home audio? Echo?

Regarding Bluesound, they offer nothing that I want that I don't already have with Sonos, and I suspect that will be the case for the vast majority of people. As I suggested before, some may be drawn to the fact that they still seem to be in start-up/development mode and that will allow them to feedback and interact with the company more, but that is likely to be a temporary thing.

As to competitors, I actually think Google are the biggest threat to Sonos today. Amazon seem to be more advanced with their development and partnerships of their Alexa voice interface, but Google have casting/streaming of both audio and video, which Amazon do not, and (IMO) Google's media services are also better than Amazon's.

Cheers,

Keith

Not as small as you suggest. It is part of The Lenbrook Group, owner of The NAD Electronics and PSB Speakers brands.

That doesn't mean that Bluesound itself is a large company, or that they have a lot of customers.

It's a private company so information is difficult to find on it, but from some research it seems they have less than 30 employees and revenue of a few million dollars, which equates to less than 10,000 units sold. That is approximately where Sonos was as a company back in 2005.

Based on these figures, they are a company firmly in start-up mode.

Cheers,

Keith

My response was based on an understanding I got from other discussions in these forums, where it was suggested that Sonos now applies volume normalisation even when the Connect is in fixed-volume output mode.

https://en.community.sonos.com/setting-up-sonos-228990/volume-normalization-processed-fixed-volume-output-6738413

I know; but I haven't felt a great need for normalisation when I play any of my albums, one at a time, so I haven't also perceived any great effect of anything that Sonos may have done on this front from the time I have Sonos - August 2011.

Where I need normalisation and don't get it even now is if I am playing two albums, one of which is recorded louder than the other, in a shuffled playlist. Or when I shuffle play a list built from tracks from Apple Music and from my NAS; I find that sound levels obtained from Apple Music are lower than that from CDs ripped to my NAS, so here again mixed source playlists still have sound levels variances to the extent of being a distraction. Even today.

Does any one offer a solution with normalisation that addresses this issue? Sonos does not.

And I get what you said about Bluesound, thanks.

As to competitors, I actually think Google are the biggest threat to Sonos today. Amazon seem to be more advanced with their development and partnerships of their Alexa voice interface, but Google have casting/streaming of both audio and video, which Amazon do not, and (IMO) Google's media services are also better than Amazon's.

So I guess the trick Sonos has to pull off is of the kind they have with streaming services - of being agnostic to which service is being used.

One should be able to use Sonos with either Amazon/Alexa, or with Google/equivalent.

[quote=Kumar]
So I guess the trick Sonos has to pull off is of the kind they have with streaming services - of being agnostic to which service is being used.

One should be able to use Sonos with either Amazon/Alexa, or with Google/equivalent.

Agreed. I also think Sonos also need to consider extending the casting solution they implemented as part of the Google Play Music integration far wider, at least on Android devices, with the aim of achieving parity with Google Cast.

Cheers,

Keith

Agreed. I also think Sonos also need to consider extending the casting solution they implemented as part of the Google Play Music integration far wider, at least on Android devices, with the aim of achieving parity with Google Cast.

Just so I understand - will this mean that any native app in use on an Android device, that allows casting will play on Sonos speakers, controlled via the native app?

Essentially, yes, although there may be some restrictions.

For instance, Google Cast does not allow casting from the Youtube app to the Chromecast Audio, but does allow casting of AV to standard Chromecast. I'm not sure if this restriction is a specific limitation that Google has encoded into the Youtube app or whether there's a generic audio framework thing which allows audio devices to be categorised in some way. I'm also not sure if there are any legal/licence restrictions on this.

Also, it's important to consider there's two types of casting: pull and push.

Apple's airplay seems to exclusively use push casting, where the audio/video being cast traverses the device initiating the casting. This has the advantage of simplicity of implementation (as it's just an audio layer similar to bluetooth audio) but it has some disadvantages in that the stream is highly dependent on the device and it's network connection, and more prone to dropouts. There's also additional load on the device which has implications, especially on battery life. It also means content is traversing the wifi network twice, and therefore put a greater load on the network, which in some conditions could increase the chances of dropouts.

Sonos largely works on pull, where the content is fetched from the source and the device initiating it isn't used. This has the advantage of using less network bandwidth and not being reliant on the device or it's wifi signal. The exception to this is when you play music "On This Mobile Device", although I suspect the same mechanism is actually used, with some sort of mini streaming server running on the device. This mechanism is focussed on streaming specific content rather than generic audio from the device. The disadvantage is that it's not as well suited to generic audio as push (for instance, if you wanted to use Sonos as a speakerphone for phone calls, or to play the audio from a game on the device). It also requires the playback device to support the audio encoding standard being used directly.

Chromecast seems to use both methods (although it may use pull as the basis and set up a streaming server on the device in cases where audio is streamed directly from the device).

So, it's a complex situation which is likely to be made worse with specific content restrictions, proprietary formats, DRM, and so on. So, whilst it's easy for me to say they should do this, the reality of doing it may not be so simple.

Cheers,

Keith