We need Audiophile Edition version of Port

Ivan - to be honest, I can’t see it happening. Whether you like it or not, Sonos is a volume manufacturer, but the audiophool market is (by comparison) a tiny one.

Sonos will probably want to leave it to the tiny specialists. It’s hard to be both a volume producer and a niche specialist, not least because in the specialist niche that you’re talking about, the marketing has to be completely different. It’s easy for a tiny, specialist company to do the necessary thing and start inventing things that don’t exist to satisfy this small group of people, but it’s hard for a big company to do that and maintain credibility with their “normal” customers (who will always bring in most of the revenue).

Here’s an example: How do you satisfy a niche market when most of the people in it don’t know what they want? Ask ten “audiophiles” what jitter sounds like, and you will get ten different answers. How do you manufacture a product on that basis?

So… IMO it’s something that Sonos will choose to leave to others...

Any self-proclaimed “audiophile” would use an external DAC which will reclock the signal, thus eliminating any jitter.  So exactly what’s the problem (besides not being expensive enough for bragging rights?)

I agree on economic side of your point. It is always better to have general population as customer then a niche.

The question here remains who do general population consult when buying music gear? 

My point is that you have to have music lovers on your side. There is a very small difference from being judged as great from just good. It is a matter of preference. People who are active on forums, write reviews, do youtube videos and so on are audiophiles. This is a best way to make them LOVE Sonos. It is always give and take relationship.

From technical side and jitter Sonos knows what sounds good. If Wired 4 Sound can do it Sonos can too and 10x better. When something sounds good everyone agrees and let it go and when something sounds bad everyone tries to find out why. Jitter is just one of these excuses. Even 39$ Raspberry Pie HAT has better coax output for goodness sake.... It can not be that difficult or expensive.

Just wanted to help since I really love Sonos and I would like to continue to use its products for many more years to come. 

I have Naim DAC-v1 and Hegel H190. On both cheep Raspberry Pie HAT sounds better. I do not know if it jitter or something else. Everyone says it is a jitter.

What DAC do you listen to and do not hear a difference?

Jitter is a catch all term audiophiles use when they want to denigrate a piece of digital gear.  The fact is, jitter has never been proven audible in double blind tests for the vast majority of home audio devices.  Sonos gear has been tested for jitter, and found to be far below the threshold of audibility.  I’m afraid when you start talking about things like “jitter”, you have gone down the “audiophile” rabbit hole, from which there is no exit, except to stop listening to your gear, and start listening to your music. 

One question, though.  The Port is known to roll off when using the variable output setting.  Then again, no self-respecting audiophile would use the digital volume, they would want a bit-perfect signal and when set to “Fixed”, the Port is bit-perfect to the source.  Are you using the variable output setting?

Also, unless you are conducting a level matched double blind test, subjective claims of “better” are useless.  The human ear can consciously detect only around a 3 dB difference in volume level.  Tests have shown that just a 1 dB difference can be unconsciously detected as sounding “better” instead of louder.  Your ears can (and will) play tricks on you.  

That goes to the heart of the problem for Sonos, and other similar manufacturers. Everyone (who has golden ears) says this, and yet there is still no consensus on what jitter sounds like in the real world! Why is that?

Essentially it’s because of the development of audiophool tropes. These are the things that “everyone knows”. Here’s an example: “Everyone knows” that interconnects made out of silver sound “bright”. It’s a good example, because frequency response is easy to measure - there is absolutely no factual basis to this trope.

And so it becomes common knowledge that a $399 product must have poor jitter performance, even though 99.99% of the users have no way of measuring jitter, and are just recounting something that “everyone knows”. They say that it sounds bad because the price means that it must have poor jitter performance, even though they have no way of measuring jitter.

So... the “audiophile” community wants to drive the company to develop a low-jitter product, without any factual basis. Will it sound better? You can’t predict, because nobody can tell you what jitter sounds like, other than it is “bad”.

At the root of the problem is the fact that the “audiophile” community has to believe in almost mystical things - because if there were not such things as “magic” mains cables that make “night and day” changes to the sound of a component, who would be making any money?

And by the way, the last thing I would call audiophiles is music lovers.  Music lovers listen to music.  Audiophiles listen to gear. 

I agree. Many audiophiles are NOT music lovers. My question to all is does music in your house/office/car plays even if you are not listening to it? Do you go to concerts? Do you explore new artists or genres? If answer is no to all three then you are not a music lover regardless of how much money you have spent on gear. Many of audiophiles start as music lovers but get obsessed by sound quality. Like all hobbies it tends to grab you and make you more interested in details then in whole. It is probably a distraction from other things in life or something… 

Anyway… Maybe I did not choose words wisely but point that I wanted for Sonos to take away is that with not so much effort they can get attention of audience which is predominant in gear reviews.

I need a device like this so one customer is already there.

I can understand what you are saying, and it’s a very interesting subject, if you like that sort of thing!

A very recent example that I can think of is a highly respected manufacturer of loudspeakers, covering both domestic and “professional” customers (I won’t name them here). Their products have been well reviewed for many many years, and then suddenly a reviewer (Audio Science Review) decided to measure the linearity of the frequency response of their products and found that - shock, horror - they aren’t very linear at all!

Of course, everyone knows that the frequency response must be ruler-flat, so how could this be, when many people (including me) like the sound of their products?

It does imply that focussing on what “everyone knows” will produce the best sound may be counter-productive, and that you may be better off simply trying your equipment in front of a selection of “typical” listeners. You can then make whatever they like the sound of best - even if that means non-linear frequency response, poor jitter performance, etc.

Totally agree. As one smart man said once “You are listening to music not measurements”