Connect no longer bit-perfect?

The 'usual idiots' who request a level-matched double-blind test?

Yes the 'idiots' who would like to see objective scientific evidence rather than believing marketing hype and claims of superhuman hearing or violations of the laws of physics. Those idiots.

The world is truly upside down. Next thing we know, the cast of 'Finding Bigfoot' will get accepted to Mensa.


Just listen to it.

If you can't hear it fair enough. If you can then decide whether it is worth the price.

Been there, done that. If there's a difference, it's going to be in the mastering, definitely not in the rendering. 16/44.1 was chosen for its ability to completely reproduce EXACTLY everything the human ear is capable of hearing. That fact hasn't changed. What has changed is the level of marketing pushing for ever higher bit depths and sampling rates, some of which may be useful on the recording side of things, but meangless in the reproduction chain, except to get technically unsophisticated rubes to purchase music yet again at inflated prices.

BTW, there isn't a recording in existence that uses even the full 16 bits of a CD. Most pop music has ~ 9dB of dynamic range; see "loudness wars". Not many amplifiers have noise floors below the -120dB of a dithered 16 bit recording, either. The extra 8 bits of a 24 bit recording are simply lost in the noise. We won't even talk about the noise floor of a typical living room, and what a full 120dB of dynamic range above that would do to your eardrums, lol.

Blimey thanks for the education. Christ, tomorrow they will probably tell me the earth isn't flat, that will really ruin my week.

Yeah, of course it is in the mastering, but when the best masters are only available through hi res or MQA it would be nice to be able to play them.

I agree with what you said, but I think there is lots to be done with timing and reducing digital smearing, and that is usually done at higher rates.

If all dacs were perfect, if all masterings were perfect your arguments would hold true, but they are not. Still a long way to go.


Have you tried MQA?
A simple MQA dac and a pair of headphones, switch the MQA on and off. Some tracks have serious gains, others not so.
But there is a difference.


However, no matter what I say you obviously have your beliefs and don't want to change them.

I don't deal with "beliefs". That's for the audiophools. I stick to facts. Real facts, not alternative ones.

I think 44.1kHz is good enough if the DAC does it's job properly. But there may be filtering, phase, leakage and non-linearity issues that make a real-world DAC less than perfect at 44.1kHz. The Sonos DAC is mid-range at best.

There are arguments you can make for 24 bit (and Sonos have said this themselves). The least-significant of 16 bits buys you a noise floor of -90dB (ignoring dithering, which is what gets you to the quoted -96dB of CDs). The next bit gets you to -84dB, so there is a 6dB difference, which is generally agreed to be audible at normal volume. It's not clear if this matters at such low volumes. At the other end of the scale, the volume difference between the two most significant bits is about 0.0003dB, so this is unlikely to be an issue.

It is likely that the mastering of hi-res and MQA songs is the biggest difference here. It would be interesting to downsample one of these and do an ABX test.

All Sonos kit uses a 1dB brick-wall limiter, which you could probably argue is at least as big a problem as resolution and bit rate.

Cheers, Peter.

The point is, as a Sonos customer where do I go from here?
Lol. How about to listening to more music?
Peter, the only way one can rank the Sonos DAC against any other at any price on sound quality is via a level matched blind test, and I am yet to see one reported any where. If I do, I just might have reasons to reconsider what my ears tell me today!
Obviously, in the case of DACs with bolted on filters and additional EQ capability there will be a better ability to customise sound to preferences/room responses, but that is then no longer just a DAC comparison if one is comparing one of these with another.
I could just as well claim sound signatures from power supply units, as some audiophiles still do by the way. And if the Connect had an ability to accept an external "audiophile quality" PSU as an option, people would be claiming better sound from using these! Why do you think does the DAC question not raise its head in the world of pro audio where active speakers with built in DACs generally are the norm? Because DACs have now matured to the level of PSUs and have become commodity components that it does not take special skills to integrate into an an amp, or an active speaker. As in the case of PSUs, it just takes sound engineering that is no longer cutting edge and therefore is widely known. There will still be cases of lousy implementation of DACs, but that is also in the case of PSUs.
On audiophiles, a question: why can't someone that has a 1 pair/5 pair with bonded Sub, properly set up in a room, Trueplay tuned,using the best available masters, also be called an audiophile?
Answer: Because his kit has tone controls:D

As an aside, my most extreme audiophile dabbling was in adding a Tube buffer between my preamp and amp, a little box of tricks made by Musical Fideiity in the UK. The idea sold, that I too bought mindlessly, was that it would add the tube magic to my sound.

Now, that box also was sold with an optional box of the same size and looks, that was just an auxiliary PSU, that bypassed the built in PSU in the buffer box, to take the sound to the next level of "where do we go from here". I bought that as well.

Finally, and I still cringe to say this, I bought a purple coloured, thick as my finger, 6 inch long umbilical cord to connect the PSU box to the Tube Buffer box. THAT was to take the whole magic to the ultimate level. It was made in California, if that is saying something about it:D

Never Never Land of fairy dust. The magic mushrooms were all that were missing.

if all masterings were perfect
Now if someone could make a box of tricks that would let the mastering quality be irrelevant, by extracting the "true" sound from every mastering, THAT would be ground breaking progress. As an option of course, that sound may not be to everyone's tastes.

I don't deal with "beliefs". That's for the audiophools. I stick to facts. Real facts, not alternative ones.

So you won't even listen to other kit? It is a blanket 'fact' that all kit sounds the same?

You don't think each manufacturers kit has their own sonic signature?

OK. Fair enough.

The point is, as a Sonos customer where do I go from here?
Lol. How about to listening to more music?

I listen to music all day. But I do agree with the sentiment.



Obviously, in the case of DACs with bolted on filters and additional EQ capability there will be a better ability to customise sound to preferences/room responses, but that is then no longer just a DAC comparison if one is comparing one of these with another.


But that is what separates a good DAC from an average DAC.

You used to get the one filer, the one the manufacturer thought was best, now you get an option between different types so you can choose the sound you like.
What is so wrong with that?

Plus apodising, MQA decoding etc. etc.

Anyone who says all DACs are the same just sounds extremely ignorant.

What's wrong with that is you can do the exact same thing with a DSP and/or equalizer, in an almost infinite amount of configurations, and not pay thousands of dollars for it. A DAC shouldn't be purposefully coloring the output, if it does, it is not a "pure" DAC, it's nothing but DSP snake oil easily achieved in much less deceptive (and less expensive) ways.