Zp 24/96

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

Silly me
I should have known!!!!!
Go for it Sonos. Dumb your product down....
Classic retailing mistake.
Lots of low margin sales...
Yippee! You beauty.
Go try fight against all the other electronic rubbish that lasts 2 weeks and people don't actually need...
See where that gets you in the long run...

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.

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.

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

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

Hey Keith. No hard feelings!

It just occurred to me where you got your Majik login ID from : Co-incidence? 🙂 :)
Listening to the beautiful sound from one right now :)

If in your heart of hearts, you truly believe all this rhetoric. Then fine. What can I do? Go ahead and live a life with the glass half empty.

You'll probably be relieved I've moved on... Just don't expect to hang onto the "ashes" too long 🙂

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

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.

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?

Take something like the Linn Records website, where they offer new recordings (so we're not talking about "re-mastered" old stuff, where even different CD releases may not have been taken from the same source) of albums, in a variety of different formats, typically (and it varies depending on the label) "Studio Master" versions which are 24-bit and anywhere from 44.1kHz up to 192kHz, in both FLAC and WMA format, "CD Quality" which is, as you'd expect, 16-bit 44.1kHz, again in FLAC and WMA and also 320kbps MP3.

Now, are you telling me that for the different formats (ie 24-bit and 16-bit) the recording studio produced two different Masters of differing quality, rather than just converting to whichever format and bit-rate was required?

If you can tell me they have, or show me some other evidence to prove that I've misunderstood or something then fair enough, I like to know these things and I admit I don't really know that much about the studio recording process but it seems rather odd to me that a studio would duplicate things in this way, rather than just producing one high-quality master and then converting it to the format of choice.

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.

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 absurd to suggest that the entire recording industry uses underhand tactics to create artificial differences in sound quality between CDs and higher resolution formats. This may apply to some studios and labels, but it certainly doesn't apply to every studio and label on the planet. There are still some people out there with integrity.

Apart from anything else, it's a very hard claim to prove without inside knowledge.