Zp 24/96

I honestly think that if you look at the population in general, hires is a non-issue. I would be surprised if more than one or two people in every ten thousand of the population desire this.


You're quite probably right, and those people are no doubt Sonos's target market, but they're not the niche market that Sonos currently sells to.

Amongst the kind of people who currently find themselves considering Sonos as an option, the number would be much higher and increasing disproportionately fast.

So, you either cater to the market you find yourself in, or you find a way to drill into a new segment of the population, the mainstream.

Ultimately, though, consumers are always wooed by higher numbers. More is better. In that regard, high definition audio will be an easy sell from a marketing perspective.

You're quite probably right, and those people are no doubt Sonos's target market, but they're not the niche market that Sonos currently sells to.

Amongst the kind of people who currently find themselves considering Sonos as an option, the number would be much higher and increasing disproportionately fast.

So, you either cater to the market you find yourself in, or you find a way to drill into a new segment of the population, the mainstream.

Ultimately, though, consumers are always wooed by higher numbers. More is better. In that regard, high definition audio will be an easy sell from a marketing perspective.

You and I are broadly in agreement, which is why I'm not completely against (and actually, to a degree, in favour of) Sonos building hires support.

My main argument here is that some are treating this with "religious fervour" (as jgatie puts it, although I would not personally count you amongst those) and I think we need a bit of reasonable perspective on this. However desirable this is for some, and I think it's OK for people to state that, they really should understand that their personal needs and desires do not map to the majority of other users and their blind faith in hires formats is not shared by most others.

When they overstate how "vital" this is, gloss over the technical challenges, and resort to overhyping both the benefits and the market for it, take pot-shots at Sonos, and make bold and unjustified claims about the damage Sonos is doing to it's future prospects then they look ridiculous. If anything they are damaging their case as the supporters of this capability start to come across as "crazed fanatics" rather than reasonable advocates.

Cheers,

Keith

However desirable this is for some, and I think it's OK for people to state that, they really should understand that their personal needs and desires do not map to the majority of other users and their blind faith in hires formats is not shared by most others.


Well, clearly some people believe that the desire for support of hi-res formats is much more widespread amongst Sonos users. I don't know what, if anything, that belief is based on, but it's plain that some people don't believe it's a niche desire any more.

Given that people who want something are always noisier than people who don't care, it's hard to gauge the actual interest without proper research, something with a bit more weight than a forum poll.

When they overstate how "vital" this is, gloss over the technical challenges, and resort to overhyping both the benefits and the market for it, take pot-shots at Sonos, and make bold and unjustified claims about the damage Sonos is doing to it's future prospects then they look ridiculous. If anything they are damaging their case as the supporters of this capability start to come across as "crazed fanatics" rather than reasonable advocates.

Again, the problem, as it appears to me, is that neither the people who argue for it nor the people who say it's a waste of time can prove that they, in fact, speak for the majority of users.

One can only hope that Sonos have a foolproof way of determining the commercial importance of this feature, be it overwhelming, non-existent or somewhere in-between.

Well, clearly some people believe that the desire for support of hi-res formats is much more widespread amongst Sonos users. I don't know what, if anything, that belief is based on, but it's plain that some people don't believe it's a niche desire any more.

Given that people who want something are always noisier than people who don't care, it's hard to gauge the actual interest without proper research, something with a bit more weight than a forum poll.



Again, the problem, as it appears to me, is that neither the people who argue for it nor the people who say it's a waste of time can prove that they, in fact, speak for the majority of users.

One can only hope that Sonos have a foolproof way of determining the commercial importance of this feature, be it overwhelming, non-existent or somewhere in-between.

That is the problem at its heart. But I take the view that, regardless of how many people want this, it's just another feature request. It's when people trying to make out it is more important than that, when people complain about it as if it was a major software bug that Sonos has not fixed that I have a problem.

(And just to pre-empt someone claiming that they consider it a bug in an attempt to hype their desire for this feature, it is not. I will personally consider anyone who claims they believe it is a bug to be either a liar or a moron of the highest order. It is not a bug. it is a feature that Sonos don't currently support.)

I will point out that I have done some unscientific market research of my own both online and in real life which suggests even the awareness of hires formats amongst the general population is extremely low, and those who knew of hires didn't seem that interested in it. Of course there are always hotbeds of activity where the interest levels are much higher than is typical (such as audiophile forums), and these are often quoted as "evidence" of the level of support. There might be some validity in this if Sonos was specifically targeting the audiophile market. I so no evidence they are. Outside of audio interest groups like this, I see negligible levels of desire or even awareness. Even within groups such as these forums (or even the Squeezebox forums), the interest seems to be confined to a mostly very noisy dozen or so people out of a community of several thousand. Hardly compelling!

If enough of the Sonos user base (or target user base) wants it, Sonos will have a better idea than us

Ultimately, that's my view. If there is a compelling market for this (or any other feature) Sonos will know about it. Sonos have proved themselves to be surprisingly canny when it comes to understanding and addressing their market (they have surprised me a few times in the past when I thought they were taking a wrong turn), and I have no reason to think they are doing the wrong thing in this case.

People seem to forget that Sonos do actually have a Marketing department. If the market was as obviously pro-hires formats as some seem to maintain, Sonos would know about it. They aren't so stupid that they wouldn't have addressed it by now.

Cheers,

Keith

I recently bought some HD and Master recordings online. I can't play them with Sonos.
I think since this buying online is the future and if the listener want good quality Sonos should be able to play such recordings. Does anyone agree with me?

[Mod note: Wiebele, I've moved your post to one of the more recent threads on this topic.]

I think at the end of the day it may simply be that the current Sonos system ( hardware and software) is incapable of playing Hi Rez formats without a complete redesign that might obsolete all the current products. That would so totally piss everyone off that it's not in Sonos interest to do it. It's really a shame since Sonos is by far, truly by far, the best streaming media system out there, or rather has the best interface, this side of the much more expensive Sooloos system. What I think will happen whether in a week or a month or a year is that someone will do a system that is as slick as Sonos but with HiRez abilities.. I just hope Sonos is looking to the future and figuring a way to do it. There's an awful lot of dead business that thought they were the s--t and that they didn't need to innovate.

So is there a solution? I believe there is. I think Sonos could leverage their existing client base and engineering into a separate higher end system that would do Hi Rez.. why not have a higher end product line up that would address the demands of Hi Rez audio..and the more upscale buyer? if nothing else it could create an entirely new revenue stream. The existing products and price points would be maintained for the more price sensitive and those looking for better would also be served .. there are certainly plenty of very successful businesses modeled on that concept.

I'll wait now for the reasons why not..

Squeezebox did the high end unit thing with the Transporter. It was discontinued last year. Supposedly it never sold enough to justify its existence.

So is there a solution? I believe there is. I think Sonos could leverage their existing client base and engineering into a separate higher end system that would do Hi Rez.. why not have a higher end product line up that would address the demands of Hi Rez audio..and the more upscale buyer?

There are well reported rumours that Sonos are looking into Home Theater products. What this means in practice (outside of Sonos), is anyone's guess. Here's mine:

A range of products which incorporate Sonos technology into a Home theatre receiver capability. As wireless is one of Sonos's strengths I would see some options for the speakers to be wireless (perhaps these are linked zones using different channels, similar to paired S5s).

Why am I going off on this tangent? Because a primary requirement for any such product is multichannel support. This alone would make it stand apart from the current stereo platform. If it's going to be different, then putting hires in wouldn't be a stretch. In fact I would say it would be foolish not to. If the platform has the resources to decode multichannel audio, it's certainly capable of decoding hires stereo.

Will it support video? It will probably have to support video switching at least, if not some form of transport (although this would need to be for wired players, wifi isn't capable of supporting streams of HD video with any meaningful reliability). Some form of native video encoding/transport would remove the need to worry about codecs and would provide full support to existing video sources. There's always room for a separate "Google TV" type box which links in for seamless streaming support.

There's also room for compatibility with the current zoneplayers by streaming a stereo/standard-res only version of audio soundtracks to legacy players. The slightly tricky bit could be making the interface between the two as transparent as possible, but the UI for such a device will need to be far richer than the existing UI. My feeling is this can only be supported using a "two-tier" approach where the current Zoneplayers and any new "Home Theatre" devices are mostly independent, but with some functional bridge between them. A simple solution would be to expose the new system's audio channels as a new music source on the existing system's menu, allowing these channels to be streamed (and synced) to the existing zoneplayers, a bit like Internet radio.

I honestly don't think there's room in the range for a player which is only different because of hires capability: it would be practically identical to the current range but wouldn't be fully compatible with existing zoneplayers. I also think it would sell far fewer than you expect.

Squeezebox did the high end unit thing with the Transporter. It was discontinued last year. Supposedly it never sold enough to justify its existence.

This is what I heard too.

Home Theater gives a proper, mainstream, and easily marketable reason to have a new platform which operates in a different way because it is fundamentally addressing a different capability. If such a platform should appear in the future, it would be natural in my view that it would support hires.

This is, of course, all speculation, and any new range is at least a development cycle or two away (probably 18 months to 2 years). I also don't see it completely replacing the current range, at least not for a few years.

Cheers,

Keith

Actually gatie you're wrong. Logitech just released a new version for $1500.00 because of demand it be brought back. They also listened to their customers that complained about the pretty much worthless Trans-Nav controller on the front panel, they removed it, which brought the price down $500.00 at retail. http://www.logitech.com/en-us/speakers-audio/wireless-music-systems/devices/7934


Squeezebox did the high end unit thing with the Transporter. It was discontinued last year. Supposedly it never sold enough to justify its existence.