Connect no longer bit-perfect?

Thank you, gents, for those useful explanations. Something for Sonos to mull over as it devotes development resources in other areas. If these message get to them.

I wonder if there might be another mode that would also be useful for those using Sonos in a business setting (such as a restaurant). This would involve on-the-fly normalization, much the same as a radio station might use. There are various standards (such as EBU R-128) that could be followed. This sort of normalization would vary smoothly throughout a song to try and keep the level relatively uniform (within reason). Presumably this problem was solved many years ago for broadcasting. It might involve compression as well as volume changes. It would not be a mode intended for quiet music listening, but rather for noisy environments to maintain a relatively constant musical ambience. I've often thought this sort of thing would be useful in a car too.

I wonder if there might be another mode that would also be useful for those using Sonos in a business setting (such as a restaurant). This would involve on-the-fly normalization, much the same as a radio station might use. There are various standards (such as EBU R-128) that could be followed. This sort of normalization would vary smoothly throughout a song to try and keep the level relatively uniform (within reason). Presumably this problem was solved many years ago for broadcasting. It might involve compression as well as volume changes. It would not be a mode intended for quiet music listening, but rather for noisy environments to maintain a relatively constant musical ambience. I've often thought this sort of thing would be useful in a car too.
Rockbox firmware has had such a compressor feature for donkey's years. For a time I was using a Sansa Clip+ as a sound source in a car and the compressor worked pretty well.

OK, back to the topic of "Connect no longer bit-perfect?"

SONOS changed the processing in the Connect firmware in versions 6 and later which resulted in the S/PDIF output for fix-volume setting to no longer be bit-perfect to the input stream. For what reason, or functional intent, has yet to be made public. I can speculate a number of reasons why this happened, but there is no need to speculate -- it happened and it's remained in place over several firmware revisions indicating to me that it was intentional and is here for the long term.

I started to wonder, why would this be an issue? Then I wondered if SONOS had ever made a claim in the past that the Connect was bit-perfect, or was this simply an observation that some reviewer made in the past and it became an Internet fact.

When the Connect digital output was bit-perfect to the stream, I considered it a valued component as a streamer to a better quality DAC in an audiophile setup, providing the equivalent of a wire between the streaming source and my DAC. For me, the Connect was simply an S/PDIF output interface to what I think is one of the best controller interfaces for streaming and queue management. Now that I know that it's no longer bit-perfect, I no longer consider the Connect a trusted "equivalent of a wire" component in my setup. I've tried to move on to other streaming products like the Bluesound Node2, but it's controller interface comes no where close to the functionality and performance of the SONOS Controller.

The SONOS organizational and product focus changes that manifested about a year ago gives me the impression that SONOS is going into a different direction and would rather not worry about this. I continue to hope that there will be a reversal on decision at SONOS to re-instate the legacy capability, even if it's via an advanced setting to enable it for the few of us that care.

The more of the posts I reviewed and the more I thought about this, I couldn't help but ask the question "Why does it need to be bit-perfect?". Well, I can think of the following reason -- to use the product for the controller and streaming service interface capabilities so that it functions in a transparent manner when doing so.

I bumped into this topic from the post and thread about the Connect and playback of MQA encoded tracks as I was curious to see what the community had to report on the apparent ability to select an MQA track on TIDAL and have it play on SONOS equipment. Knowing that the Connect was no longer bit-perfect I felt that there would be no opportunity to pass through MQA encoded tracks to an MQA capable DAC.

And incidentally, I feel there is another reason for support bit-perfect and 24-bit. I'd prefer to process all of my local 16/44.1 content that has been mastered with peaks to 0dBFS to reduce the amplitude with a 1 bit shift with a conversion from 16-bit to 24-bit and playback the 24-bit version with no loss of fidelity and no peak level distortions. Storage is cheap and I don't care that that the resultant conversion is 30% 0's in its raw form -- I am interested in the fidelity and listening quality. Technically, this would be possible with the digital volume control on the Connect, but there is no evidence that this can be performed transparently either. As for the SONOS speaker systems,I never considered them audiophile grade and they are used for convenience over sound quality.

And incidentally, I feel there is another reason for support bit-perfect and 24-bit. I'd prefer to process all of my local 16/44.1 content that has been mastered with peaks to 0dBFS to reduce the amplitude with a 1 bit shift with a conversion from 16-bit to 24-bit and playback the 24-bit version with no loss of fidelity and no peak level distortions.
Why bother, when upmarket DACs will provide a few dBs of headroom to account for inter-sample peaks?

As for the SONOS speaker systems,I never considered them audiophile grade and they are used for convenience over sound quality.
Three examples of other speakers that meet your benchmark for audiophile grade? I realise that there could be other kinds of kit upstream of these too, but that isn't of interest to me as the business end is.

As for the SONOS speaker systems,I never considered them audiophile grade and they are used for convenience over sound quality.
What speakers meet your test for audiophile quality? Just the speakers please; let's leave the upstream electronics out of this for now.

Darren B - take a look at Roon. Expensive, but it can control your Bluesound and Sonos devices, along with many others...

Another one for Roon here, just love it!

I have just ordered a Raspberry Pi which will allow me to have my Meridian Explorer 2 DAC attached to it as a Roon endpoint.
It will also allow airplay, soundcloud, spotify etc. which are the bits missing from Roon.

I borrowed a mates the other day and it is on a very different level to my Connect sound wise. Plus total cost is £160.
That will replace the Connect, but I think I am going to get another one, sell the Connect Amp and buy a power amp for my little Quad S2 ribbon speakers.


Three speaker that I have in my house that sound considerably better than a pair of Play 5s are Meridian DSP5200s, Martin Logan Electromotion and the little Quad Ribbons, which I just paid £480 for, but the Quad 11L's they replaced were better too. They replaced a pair of Play 5s, I put the Quads in there with the ZP100, so similar price point.

I'm not knocking the Play 5, I think it is an amazing bit of kit, and a pair can really boogie, but they are extremely coloured (in a good way) compared to even a pair of decent bookshelf speakers.

A lot of the guys on another forum are swapping their Play units for these.....

https://www.whathifi.com/q-acoustics/q-bt3/review

They seem well pleased with them.