change bit rate in Sonos - feature request

Hey @bugplanet, thanks for your suggestion.

I’ll be sure to pass this over to our development teams as a feature request for you. Let me know if you have any other suggestions to improve your Sonos experience and I’ll pass them along too 

Are there still internet suppliers charging by download amount!  This is a pretty niche requirement so I wouldn’t hold your breath. 
Why not buy and save your music locally in flac or Wav. This would save internet costs and also provide more revenue for the artists concerned?

It’s not by the download amount, it is a data cap.  Once you cross a threshold, there is a huge penalty.  This is common practice for Internet Service Providers in some areas (including my own).

Hi.  Am I missing something here?  @bugplanet refers to using the Spotify and Tidal apps to play to Sonos speakers (at least that’s my reading of it).  I would not have expected settings in the Sonos app (if they existed) to have any bearing on the data rates in that use case.  Would this not depend on settings in the Spotify or Tidal apps?

Am I mistaken?  I suppose it is still a Sonos speaker that is fetching the stream to play…. but not from within the Sonos system.  My best guess is that Sonos app settings would be irrelevant, but not sure…..

I think you misunderstood, I have Xfininty with “unlimited” data, but there is still a 1.2TB/month data cap.  It the data cap is exceeded I am charged something like 10$ per10MB over the limit, that can get very expensive.  

Most internet providers in the US have a data cap - they don’t like to talk about it.  It’s possible that you have a data cap and don’t even know it.  You can see some of the larger providers here:

https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/which-internet-service-providers-have-data-caps

My household is 4 adults and one teen all working/schooling from home and streaming (different) music all day to multiple Sonos zones.  We have exceeded the 1.2TB several times during Covid.

Tidal and Sportify both support “connect” where you can start music in the mobile app and send it to sonos without using the Sonos app at all.  The Sonos speakers then take the stream direct from Tidal/Spotify - its a great feature.  The way it currently works Sonos always takes the highest bitrate stream that is available for your subscription level at Tidal or Spotify.  Changing the bitrate in the Spotify/Tidal app does not change how Sonos pulls the stream from the services.

Hi.  If there is a data cap it isn’t unlimited.  In the UK, ‘unlimited’ really means that.  I don’t think it would be legal to use that term where a data cap existed.

Hi.  Yes I understand all that, my only question was whether, given that one is not using the Sonos app at all, any settings that might be put in the Sonos app could affect this.

I’m not sure, I guess that’s my question. I do know that if I change my subscription tier in Spotify or Tidal, it will change which stream gets retrieved by Sonos speakers.

For instance, if I switch my TIDAL subscription to “premium” from “hi-fi”, the stream that Sonos retrieves will revert to 320 KBPS (at the start of the next month).  So Sonos is talking to the services and figuring out which stream to use based of what I’m paying for.   I’m just asking if it’s possible Sonos can give us a choice to take the smaller bit rate stream. It seems like it would have to be done through Sonos because it is the Sonos speaker that is connecting to Spotify and initiating a stream. 
 

Probably won’t be an issue for me anymore because I just paid an extra $30 a month to Xfinity so that I can have truly unlimited data. But I would expect this to become an issue when Spotify releases its new high-quality lossless service later in the year.  Once Spotify goes there it’s going to start impacting a lot of users.

thanks everyone for your comments and feedback. 👍

@bugplanet  - “So Sonos is talking to the services and figuring out which stream to use based of what I’m paying for. “  

I doubt that that is an accurate portrayal.  I think the service sees which Spotify / Tidal account is being used to access its service and offers the appropriate stream.   I doubt that the Sonos speaker does any “figuring out” which bit rate stream to take - I suspect it takes what it is offered.

I don’t think this is different from streaming to any standalone Spotify Connect enabled speaker.  

If the service offer different bitrates Sonos will request the highest available for the subscription level. In some cases it will drop down to a lower quality if the stream falters.

@ratty . I was confident that was the case if connecting via the Sonos app but less sure where native apps were being used.

I have no idea of the behaviour when casting from a native app. Logically one would expect the Sonos player to have control over stream choice, since the app is simply issuing playback commands to it. On the other hand those commands could be more specific in terms of what to fetch. Something of a grey area.

I don’t currently use a service capable of casting to be able to experiment. (I seem to recall that the last one I tried, Amazon ‘HD’, cast in lossy only though this could have changed since.)