So it’s been months since S2. Before the update, S1 was already able to play back flac 24/48. The promise was of more HiRes audio to come. I sold my gen1 connect in anticipation, bought a Port. And waited. I can still play the only same files as before, I’m a couple hundred pounds down, and feeling a little duped to be honest. Just curious whether there are others feeling the same....
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Userlevel 1
I know it’s the mastering not the medium, and I’m not precious about bits. If Sonos could downsample Hi res files to 24/48 and play them it would be a start. It’s just a convenience thing, not needing to convert the hires files I buy to something Sonos can play.
As for the promises made, there were enough stories about what S2 would bring around the time of release, all of them mentioned hi res playback. There may not have been statements about it being on day one, but I don’t recall the stories talking about at some point in the future either. Clearly they could have managed expectations better. The annoying thing is just the way they leveraged S2 as the reason to upgrade, and the software to date hasn’t anything offered anything other than a new paint job.
Clearly they could have managed expectations better. The annoying thing is just the way they leveraged S2 as the reason to upgrade, and the software to date hasn’t anything offered anything other than a new paint job.
You make a good point, and perhaps Sonos did exactly what they wanted to do with the implicit promise of a better world post S2, even though they did not have the wherewithal to follow through to meet the expectations generated. They were angling for a sales bump, pure and simple, driven by the Street.
They did not go against the “letter of the law”, which is the defense being offered by Sonos defenders here, which is true enough.
But if they did not have the bullets ready, they could have held back selling the gun until they had the bullets for it. But that is not how the new Sonos works, and perhaps they even had the perceived good reason of survival calling for the release.
For what its worth, Hi Res itself is a chimera of no impact on heard sound quality, and the only reason for Sonos - a vocal opponent of Hi Res in up to the recent past - offers it now, even if just in terms of potentials and capability, is to counter the PR that it does not offer Hi Res.
The real reason for S2 is to be liberated from the acute limitations of S1 hardware that does not allow Sonos to offer what in their opinion will be a new and improved all singing and dancing Sonos much beyond just Hi Res, to cope with the very serious competitive and existential threat they face. But I don't see that radically improved thing happening in the next 12 months, so I suspect Sonos, realising this, had to put out S2 to keep the ship afloat.
While I have no interest in S2 and am content in S1, it will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out for Sonos over the next couple of years.
On the other hand, the S2 promise is being able to keep up with the competition.
It won't be easy. For example, Amazon works at different price points as a strategy that is also afforded to it by much bigger scales, that allows it to offer replaceable hardware. For instance an Echo of three years ago to the new spherical model around the corner, or, similar with respect to the Echo Dot. From both a sound quality and features perspective, both will offer a night and day difference for the better in the user experience for just music play. And Amazon will keep moving the bar higher via this model of cheaper and therefore more easily replaced hardware.
Sonos will have to deliver corresponding improvements in the user experience if it is to keep a lead using the same S2 hardware, via free software upgrades to the same hardware. Can it? Only time will tell, but getting those improvements is what you sign on for when you move to S2. The Hi Res thing is a side issue in this.
Userlevel 1
“While Sonos is currently offering very little in the way of specifics around the Sonos S2 platform, it has said that the upgraded audio bandwidth will "enable higher resolution technologies for music and home theatre". We'd be amazed if that didn't mean support for high-resolution audio content from the likes of Qobuz and Tidal (MQA seems likely), as well as Dolby Atmos surround sound capabilities.
We're told that these updates won't arrive immediately, though. In fact the only new feature detailed so far is 'Room Groups'. “
As I have said, Sonos never comment on rumours. If they were to deny one speculation, then any future failure to deny another rumour would be taken as endorsement. So, consistently throughout their existence, they have adopted a ‘no comment’ approach.
If some users wish to weave press speculation into their own wishes and then berate Sonos for failing to meet their unfounded expectations, that is their business.
(Although in fact further HiRes support may come - just don’t expect Sonos to say what and when before it happens.)
I didn’t speculate. I read an article.
Userlevel 1
Sonos promised nothing for day 1 S2, and even the reporting actually seems to have reflected that. How this got translated into ‘false promises’ by Sonos is something you are better placed to comment on than I.
https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/introducing-s2-new-app-and-os-for-sonos-6841762
“Sonos S2 is a new app and an operating system for compatible devices, which brings support for higher resolution audio, saved groups, support for new Sonos products, and more”
True there’s no day 1 mentioned, but generally when a software update brings support for something it happens on release day. I don’t recall Apple announcing support for any features in an OS update only for it to happen at some point following the release. It comes with the update. This is why I talk about expectation management. I get that Sonos weren’t able to do this on day one, that S2 provides only a framework for these new developments, but this could have been made clearer.
+1
“...but I do not think that Hi Res will save the day for Sonos to any great extent...”
You’re probably right. But like the computer or photo equipment industries, once they get someone invested in an ecosystem it seems smart to keep pace with the larger movements in the industry as a whole. Is Apple a hardware company that creates software to run its hardware and keep me buying iMacs and MacBooks? Once Apple stops updating OS X I will go back either to Windows or Linux, and I will not be back. Or is Fuji a lens company that makes camera bodies to support the lens business? Once Fuji stops making bodies with the latest tech to support my eight Fuji lenses, I’m moving to Nikon and I’m not coming back.
ISTM that if Sonos wants to keep you and me buying its hardware, it has to stay current with the music delivery trends that the rest of the industry is selling. Because once I spend my first $1,200 on a Cambridge Audio integrated amp that can deliver the format I’m after instead of a Sonos Amp, I’m gone and not coming back. OTOH, if Sonos were upfront about its hi res plans I wouldn’t even be looking at that Cambridge Audio integrated amp, and I’d remain happily captive in the Sonos ecosystem for a few more years. There isn't a “fallacy of sunk cost” here, because when I move I have to replace the whole system, which is a significant new cost to undertake. It’s not a simple matter of just not buying the next Sonos sub or sound bar.
Because once I spend my first $1,200 on a Cambridge Audio integrated amp that can deliver the format I’m after instead of a Sonos Amp, I’m gone and not coming back. OTOH, if Sonos were upfront about its hi res plans I wouldn’t even be looking at that Cambridge Audio integrated amp, and I’d remain happily captive in the Sonos ecosystem for a few more years. There isn't a “fallacy of sunk cost” here, because when I move I have to replace the whole system, which is a significant new cost to undertake. It’s not a simple matter of just not buying the next Sonos sub or sound bar.
The moment you refer to Cambridge Audio, you are no longer part of the Sonos target market - the one that gives them 2 billion dollars in annual sales. Neither am I, but as a ex audiophile, I no longer sneer at Echo Show as a source to obtain excellent sound quality from good downstream kit, let alone sneer at Sonos as audiophiles do.
Back in the day when you and I bought Sonos, they were probably less than USD 100 million in sales, much of it coming from users of HiFi kit that were able to overcome the audiophile prejudices against digital streaming to buy their Zone players, that made no sound without downstream kit. For such a market, Hi Res may still be of interest.
To keep growing from USD 2 billion annual sales, they need to win in the Amazon/Google markets and as I see it the only advantage they have at this time are their products for TV. And they need to bring some radical innovation to market to survive - although I find it hard to imagine in what form or manner that can be done. But for this, they needed to untether themselves from legacy, memory constrained Sonos kit. They have done the easy part - the untethering - via this S1/S2 thing. Now is the hard part, to deliver something really ground breaking, unlike Hi Res.
I now see them as a good takeover candidate, nothing more on their own. It would be very interesting to see what they come up with that proves me wrong.
As someone that bought the first Fuji X100 version and still has it in its much improved via free upgrades form, it is an interesting analogy, with the usual caveats about analogies. My main system camera is still a Nikon, but most of my pictures these days are taken using my phone. The best camera in the world is the one that is with you when there is a picture to be taken, and my phone is always at hand.
For the Nikon/Canon SLR divisions - comparable more accurately than Fuji to Sonos of today - the problem isn't beating Fuji because that does not do enough for them. It is to survive in their present form in a world of smartphones. Actually, the pro models may continue, but all else, especially the point and shoot side seems to be a candidate for extinction.
Also, here is the thing - I am able to move from Sonos to Amazon/other products with no impact on my present Sonos products because of the magic of line in jacks. I therefore have zero interest in S2, and even if Sonos was to shut down tomorrow, my Sonos kit will still perform as dumb hardware, with the exception of the play 1 units and the one Sonos Sub.
Therefore it is very easy for me to step off the Sonos train, while keeping all Sonos zones functional.
+1
You’re solving problems I don’t have. All I want is to get back to SOME semblance of the sound quality I had before I got married, and had to surrender my tube mono blocks and related kit in order to reclaim house real estate for family. Maybe I’m overly optimistic about hi res—and from your posts I suspect you would agree with that assessment. I just don’t have the energy—or interest really—to go through the hassle of rebuilding that whole type of system again. (And don’t even get me started on the vinyl headache. After hauling a thousand lp’s around for decades—lovingly accumulated during the 70’s and 80’s—I finally decided that life was too short to work that hard for something I supposedly enjoyed but which just caused tons of work.) I’ve been hoping to recover some of that pleasure from hi res without having to replace tons of hardware, or go back in time to when my (unmarried male’s) house was overrun with amps, preamps, power conditioners, turntables, wires, DACs the size of footlockers, medical grade power cables and stupid expensive speaker cables.
Fortunately I kept my “legacy” speakers. I just need to find the right signal diet for them. I was hoping I could productively repurpose my Sonos stuff but that seems unlikely.
when my (unmarried male’s) house was overrun with amps, preamps, power conditioners, turntables, wires, DACs the size of footlockers, medical grade power cables and stupid expensive speaker cables.
I was in the same situation - add a power conditioner the size of a footlocker to the above list, and a tube DAC with feet that changed colour to say that the tubes are warmed up. And silly things like a fancy cable to connect the optional external PSU of a Tube buffer to the Buffer which in itself was a non value adding item in the signal chain - at best.
I held off on wireless streaming for some years, not trusting it to deliver the needed quality even if music play was stable, but once I got one Sonos Connect, it allowed me to run blind tests against my existing kit which convinced me to replace most of it to get Sonos front ends in every room. I have enjoyed the greatly bigger window to the world of music ever since, without ever feeling I have compromised on sound quality. Financially, I was ahead because the sale of the HiFi kit funded all Sonos purchases, while still leaving me with the units that mattered - passive speakers.
Now of course, the Echo products can take the place of Sonos front ends in many places for their added features, with similar results, in some zones with same old passive speakers.
In all this, a few test with SACDs back in the day convinced me that Hi Res was snake oil cleverly disguised and so the absence of it on both Sonos and Echo does not bother me at all. Subsequent research informs me that the science of Hi Res and human hearing supports this conclusion.
+1
Feeling exposed here. 
It could very well be that the only real “problem” I’m trying to address is just the unwelcome intrusion of fond memory, or, if I’m completely honest, revisionist nostalgia. What I should probably do is take your advice and see what’s left of that nostalgia after it’s put through rigorous experimentation under bright klieg lights. And also as you suggest--and I know this to be at least partly true--it could be that my best experiences with that ridiculous system were more a function of the quality of the masters and original material I was listening to than its downstream reproduction in a living room. Thinking about labels like ECM, Deutsche Grammophone, Chesky, Denon, or artists like Roger Waters. So thank you for your comments. You may have saved me a few grand that I was getting ready to spend in pursuit of rainbows, unicorns and other chimeras.
But if you don’t mind, may I impose on you to give me a brief explanation of how you set things up with the Connect (which I have) or the Echo Show devices in partnership with the Sonos hardware? You also mentioned “the magic of line in jacks,” but not all Sonos hardware has that functionality (except for ethernet) and I’m not entirely clear on what such a rig would look like. I’m not a very creative wirer so I’m not sure how one would use Sonos gear as “dumb hardware” as you mentioned. I have no experience at all with Echo Show devices so don’t quite see how that would mesh with a house-wide Sonos environment.
Also, on the subject of photo equipment manufacturers, I was thinking about that subject less in the context of them competing with each other or with smart phones, but more in terms of the old Gillette razor marketing concept of “give them the razor and sell them the blades.” I don’t know this to be true, but I have long suspected that to be how most of the big photo manufacturers operate (at least the mass producers like Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus). The real juice for them is in selling glass, and it would not surprise me if they sold bodies--which they seem to come out with like mosquitos in the spring--at or very near break even. So I have thought about Sonos in that way. It’s a hardware company, and if hi res really is snake oil but it’s snake oil that their customers want, it would seem logical (from a business perspective) to provide that functionality to keep people like me buying their hardware and getting deeper and deeper into their ecosystem.
Thanks for the colloquy. I wish more forums were like this.
+1
Lots to consider. What do you use as a source into the Connect? Obviously any streaming service can do that, but assuming you have a million CD’s ripped over time and sitting in a file directory somewhere, do you have a dedicated laptop, NAS, the Echo accessing a HDD somewhere else in the house, or are you using the S1 library tool for that? I don’t suppose it matters really though if you can get a good enough signal from wifi. I have a couple of Synology NAS drives gathering dust, but I don’t like them because they’re too busy and noisy. Also, my very early experience with NAS as a Sonos source was discouraging, though both Synology and Sonos may have matured to a point where it’s worth another shot. That was 2009, so things have probably gotten better.
Do you find the sound quality and power from the Connect is good enough for your legacy speakers, or do you have a higher end integrated amp dedicated to that? In this setup, it would seem that the only purpose of the Connect is to link to the Sonos environment—both in and out—so what would the point of the line in jacks be anyhow? Wouldn’t you just use the Connect as a source into an IA, and then get the benefits of the IA for a clean signal to the speakers?
And what about the library function? Apple’s abandonment of iTunes, while neither surprising nor wrong—and frankly overdue given the “bloatware” problem— to me was a fail given what they replaced it with. I’ve been playing with J River Media Center, but that’s also bloated, and not (in my experience to date) very LAN friendly. But that’s a recent experiment and the jury is both out and under informed so far. VOX wants money, for no real product benefit that I can see, which is another reason I am considering Roon.
+1
Fair enough. Thank you.
Also, my very early experience with NAS as a Sonos source was discouraging, though both Synology and Sonos may have matured to a point where it’s worth another shot. That was 2009, so things have probably gotten better.
I’ve been using a cheap LG NAS running 24x7 since 2011, with no problems other than the Sonos track/store limits. I run a Synology NAS for the rest of my data.
Do you find the sound quality and power from the Connect is good enough for your legacy speakers, or do you have a higher end integrated amp dedicated to that?
The Connect is is simply a rather expensive link into the Sonos system, with no amplification - for that you need a Connect:AMP, or whatever it’s called today. The line in jacks are so that you can add an AV device (e.g. CD Player, Chromecast Audio etc), which can then be played on any other Sonos device - it’s really neat. So I can play my CD player in the living room to just a Sonos speaker in a bedroom, should I so wish - with the living room playing a completely different stream.
I don’t use any of the library functions for general use, as they don’t work for me, so I always use my own folder structure.
Regarding Sonos HD Radio - we just canceled our subscription. Even with all components upgraded to Gen2 and S2 compatible units, support team says it’s likely our set-up won’t handle Sonos HD Radio inter-transmission and they admit it’s not our system, house, or anything external it’s Sonos limitations period! Might work for you - jolly good! Bet many will find it does NOT work in its current state.
Userlevel 7
+14
Regarding Sonos HD Radio - we just canceled our subscription. Even with all components upgraded to Gen2 and S2 compatible units, support team says it’s likely our set-up won’t handle Sonos HD Radio inter-transmission and they admit it’s not our system, house, or anything external it’s Sonos limitations period! Might work for you - jolly good! Bet many will find it does NOT work in its current state.
Can you further explain the problem you had with Sonos radio?
It’s most likely the limitations of a mix of S2 ready Gen2 components with fully S2-built units and HD bandwidth requirements.
In other worlds, NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME YET. Amazon HD can cause such Sonosnet constipation as well but not as consistently as Amazon throttles back it’s HD broadcasts throughout the day depending on their AWS needs.
I don't see how any other make that claims to offer HD audio would be immune to this problem, and I also suspect this is less an S2 issue and more one of bandwidth. Plus, what you are finding is not even HD as is usually known - Amazon HD is just Amazon sticking the HD label on CD spec streams. So if these present a problem, how will the higher than CD spec streams work? Based on present state of the art, only by using wired ethernet connections between units.
IMO, this all amounts to trying to sell solutions to a non existent problem, when even 320k lossy streams sound just as good, and do not face these issues.
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