Spotify Lossless coming to Sonos next month!

It is indeed good news, to bring it almost in line with Apple Lossless on Sonos (certainly to anyone’s ears it’ll be an equal). Although not sure I can congratulate Spotify on this ‘epic’ achievement after all these years...

I love their turn of phrase: “Lossless audio has been one of the most anticipated features on Spotify...”! 

I think they meant “Lossless audio is one of the most fundamental features of a music streaming service, and for us to take eight years to get there is quite frankly an embarrassment. That said, for some reason we remain the world’s most popular music streamer so offer no apology, and have been delighted to continue taking subscriber money for a lesser audio experience. We are now pleased to be where everyone else has been since forever - Amazon, Apple, Deezer, Qobuz, Tidal. And in another exciting development, the next highly anticipated feature - Atmos audio - is currently slated for 2035, but could well be later.”

Interesting. More technical details here:

https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/audio-file-formats/

• Tracks delivered at sample rates higher than 44.1 kHz (e.g., 48 kHz, 96 kHz) or bit depths higher than 24-bit are downsampled and/or reduced to a maximum of 44.1 kHz / 24-bit FLAC for playback on supported clients, with a fallback to 16-bit FLAC for backward compatibility.

That downsampling is good  wish I could get my non-Atmos Amazon streams to do that.

My reading of that part was it's for the Artists uploading their tracks in the best quality and Spotify take care of it from there

Spotify already downsample when you select a lower quality stream now?

From the video included in the original link, using Spotify Connect you can choose the audio quality.

Will wait to see what streaming options are available once lossless is available from Spotify within Sonos app.

Correct. Same as Apple.

https://www.apple.com/apple-music/apple-digital-masters/docs/apple-digital-masters.pdf

Some mastering engineers prefer to control the SRC process by sending already converted files, however we ask that you deliver the highest native sample rate available. As technology advances and bandwidth, storage, battery life, and processor power increase, keeping the highest-resolution masters available in our systems allows for full advantage of future improvements to your or your client’s music.

I have a Sonos Amp and was wondering if I would have to wait for Sonos to update their app for me to stream lossless Spotify if listening via the Spotify Connect app?  

‘Sonos Connect app’ do you mean the Sonos Spotify Service in the Sonos App? Yes, I would expect there will be an App update, to give you the ‘eye candy’ lossless logo, similar to when App for updated for Apple Music Lossless in May ‘24, keep an eye on release notes.

My point is if Spotify releases lossless before Sonos makes the update to make it work from the Sonos app, will the lossless play via the Spotify Connect app which is how I normally play from anyway.  

I would expect their would be a requirement for a Sonos system update to enable lossless from Spotify Connect. 

https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/spotify-connect/

Listen in lossless

Note: To switch to lossless on a third-party device you will need to switch from your mobile device. Currently, not all devices support lossless.

1. Tap the device icon when listening to a song.
2. Select a playing device.
3. Tap Change quality settings.
4. Select Lossless.

As per first post:

Support for additional devices, including those from Sonos and Amazon, arrives next month.”

Do we expect that once Sonos does it’s updates, with Spotify Connect app we will be able to start a lossless stream from the SPOTIFY app without having to go through the Sonos app?  For me, that would be a game changer.  You can’t do that with any other services, and the music exploration in the Sonos app is non-existent.

Cautiously optimistic….

 WiiM and Bluesound already have Spotify lossless active and users are saying Connect is lossless. So we know it’s possible 😎
 

I’m cautiously optimistic that Sonos will implement this as well across all s2 devices. 🤞

For some reason it’s greyed out. Is it avalible with the play:1?

I’d imagine ​@craigski ‘s post above is still applicable, either way. 

That being said, I’ve no idea if the chipset that was built in to the PLAY:1 has enough power to interpret the signal. 

Play:1 does not support Apple Music Lossless:

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/services/apple-music

Can all Sonos products stream lossless audio from Apple Music?

Most Sonos products can stream lossless audio from Apple Music. However, some older products don’t support the required streaming protocol (HLSv7) and will stream audio at a lower quality. The following Sonos products won’t stream lossless audio from Apple Music:

• Connect (Gen 1)
• Connect (Gen 2)
• Connect:Amp
• Play:1
• Play:3
• Play:5 (Gen 1)
• Playbar
• Playbase
• Sub (Gen 1)
• Sub (Gen 2)

My educated guess is that the above product list will also be true for Spotify Lossless.

It also states on Spotify website that they are rolling out gradually to different devices, and different geographic regions in a controlled manner:

HLSv7 is not the same as FLAC. My Play:3 can play FLAC files from my local library just fine.

Also, if you check services like Tidal, Amazon Music and Qobuz on this page, the only lossless service that has issues with older Sonos speakers is Apple Music:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/services

My guess is that Spotify lossless will work without issue.

From what I read here it has something to do wih the DRM Apple uses for lossless streams:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1l0ze92/how_does_the_play1_know_it_cannot_play_apple/

Would it be possible to group a Sonos Amp and Play3 with lossless music playing on the Sonos Amp and very high quality on the Play3?

When streaming music, the overall stream quality is based on the least capable speaker in the group. I haven’t seen any official confirmation of which Sonos devices will support Spotify lossless. The screenshot above implies a Play:1 won’t play lossless and I would consider a Play:3 as similar to a Play:1 in terms of capability. The Spotify press release also implied lossless was coming to Sonos next month, so that may be why it’s currently greyed out, but will potentially change in the future.

Looking forward to Spotify lossless.  Will see if there’s a noticeable difference in quality of sound.  I have no qualms with the Spotify sound quality getting through my setup.  

Nope… I found out today after finally getting the lossless option in Spotify. Hopefully Sonos will update the app and players in (early!) October🙏

Spotify message (Danish) says someting like ‘unit (Sonos Port) not compatible with lossless’.

Considering we’re still in the same month as the announcement, that is to be expected when using Spotify Connect.

Apparently it’s a firmware issue with the streaming equipment being used.  I’ve read for example that Naim streaming devices require no firmware update for lossless Spotify to work while Linn streaming devices do.  Not sure the technical aspects but it’s interesting why one works without any firmware updates.

I believe the Naim devices had Spotify lossless enabled by an earlier firmware update in anticipation of this. 

Hopefully there’s not a long delay for Sonos to implement the necessary firmware updates required.  Funny that Naim anticipated the change before the Spotify lossless rolled out.  Not sure how you would be able to test whether it would even work or not.

Spotify has been beta testing lossless audio across multiple streaming platforms for at least ten months. From what I understand, several hardware manufacturers (WiiM being another one) have already built in support so the feature can go live the moment Spotify activates it.
I expect Sonos will enable this very soon, but just speculation on my part.