Trueplay for Connect:AMP


I have 5 Connect:Amp's in my home. They are excellent, but the tuning of the sound can be even better. I've been waiting patiently for Trueplay to be added as a feature since it was first announced. When will Sonos add it for the Connect:AMP?

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There are many solutions to the trueplay issue as it stands.The current standard reply by Sonos is that they can only tune speakers that they have the known profiles of. IE, their own speakers. This would point to a lack of processing capacity, so they work with a very narrow sample. High end amp processors that have built in room calibration have that feature baked into the their architecture, often with a calibrated mic. At the end of the day, Sonos want to sell its products, not support other speaker manufacturers, hence there is no motivation to move ahead and develop trueplay for the connect line. What there is though for the hifi enthusiast, is the option of adding a processor between your Sonos & self powered studio monitors or into your amp. Something like the Drive rack by DBX which is what I use on my system, it works a treat. https://dbxpro.com/en/products/driverack-pa2
There are many solutions that do not require controlling the speakers. Representative solutions include D.C.A.C. EX, D.C.A.C. and Advanced D.C.A.C., Audyssey MultEQ, etc. Every retail AV receiver uses one of these solutions to optimize for each of the speakers and the room. They take into account the varying capabilities of each individual speaker, the placement of the speaker and it's relative position to the listener, the acoustics of room, the size of the room (including ceiling height for reflections), and how the speakers interact with each other. At least one solution, D.C.A.C. EX, matches the phase across all the speakers despite any poor wiring by the user. These solutions have been available for many years.

These AV receivers use wired microphones, which is less elegant than using an iPhone. So Sonos should be able to make it work with an even better user experience, which is the hallmark of the Sonos brand.

With Trueplay available for multiple devices, it seems like most of the code is already written. How hard can it be to extend Trueplay to the most expensive audio solution Sonos offers?
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How about licensing ARC (Anthem Room Correction) for the sonos devices? I am currently using multiple Paradigm PW amps with sonos connect and amp units for the sole purpose of ARC - this way I have the best of both worlds - sonos interface with top notch room correction software.
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Great news!
Its not a bridge you have hooked ot the receiver it is a Sonos:Connect - bridge is a different device so want to avoid confusion there.

The Connect attached to the receiver could be getting delayed by the receivers processing. I don't know what receiver your using but make sure all DSP modes are turned off and if it has something called "Direct Mode" or similar which removes as much processing as possible.

What receiver do you have hooked to the Connect. Is it hooked analog or digital to the receiver.


Sorry about that. Yes, it's a Sonos Connect going to the receiver. And, thanks for the response.
The receiver is a Denon AVR-X1400H through optical cable. Although the receiver is capable of plenty, its only playing music from through TuneIn Radio station. I was using multi-channel Stereo and there was a delay. With your suggestion I tried direct stereo. Delay was virtually eliminated. So, I tried some other settings and Dolby PL Music seems OK, too. This setting takes advantage of the the 5 ceiling speakers, so, I'm much happier now.
Thank you, Chris.
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Its not a bridge you have hooked ot the receiver it is a Sonos:Connect - bridge is a different device so want to avoid confusion there.

The Connect attached to the receiver could be getting delayed by the receivers processing. I don't know what receiver your using but make sure all DSP modes are turned off and if it has something called "Direct Mode" or similar which removes as much processing as possible.

What receiver do you have hooked to the Connect. Is it hooked analog or digital to the receiver.
I own teo connect amps two connect Bridges (4 rooms total). I was sold on the ability to have party mode synchronized throughout the house. There is definitely a latency from room to room that is extremely annoying, even when grouped.
Unless there's a (relatively rare) hardware fault any loss of sync would either be due to delays in downstream equipment, e.g. because of processing in a receiver, or the simple perception of desync between adjoining rooms caused by the fact that sound takes about 1 millisecond to travel 1 foot in air.


Fair enough. Yes - I have a kitchen on a Connect Amp and a family room on a Connect Bridge. By the way, I went this (much more expensive) route to get high quality in-ceiling speakers and avoid having speaker boxes (Sonos Play) sitting all over the place. The rooms are within ear-shot of one another. The bridge goes through a home theater receiver, so admittedly, the receiver COULD be causing some latency. So what? I'd still like a way to tune it.
I own teo connect amps two connect Bridges (4 rooms total). I was sold on the ability to have party mode synchronized throughout the house. There is definitely a latency from room to room that is extremely annoying, even when grouped.
Unless there's a (relatively rare) hardware fault any loss of sync would either be due to delays in downstream equipment, e.g. because of processing in a receiver, or the simple perception of desync between adjoining rooms caused by the fact that sound takes about 1 millisecond to travel 1 foot in air.
I own two connect amps and two connect Bridges (4 rooms total). I was sold on the ability to have party mode synchronized throughout the house. There is definitely a latency from room to room that is extremely annoying, even when grouped. Even if a full-blown automatic app may not be possible, I agree that a volume slider in The equalizer section would be great. I also believe it should not be very difficult to add a manual signal delay per unit that we could tune as users, manually.
PLEASE SONOS!
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As a minimum they could add a volume adjust in the equalizer section for connect amp; that would be very helpful. The problem that I have is that the speakers attached to my connect amp are not as efficient as my many other Sonos speakers so that I have to manually adjust the volume for them when I use play-all. I have three Sonos amps.
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Hi Gophir and everyone else! As Melvimbe said, our best answer for now is as Keith posted a couple months back. We'll make sure the team knows you're interested, but we can't speak to roadmaps or specific plans around Connect:Amp possibly getting Trueplay. We appreciate the support and your passion here, but for now, the best we can do is assure you that we'll make sure it's on the requested feature request.
TruePlay will be migrating to an auto tuning system, using the internal microphones of Sonos existing and upcoming speakers. Just like Apple and Google have today. Bet on it.

The Connect and Connect:Amp have no microphones, so are extremely unlikely to ever get TruePlay.
Well, I enjoy speculating on this kind of stuff...admittedly too much.

As far as Sonos response, Keith did reply back to you 2 months ago. I think you got your answer there. We already talked about reason why they wouldn't want to give out more details. I wouldn't conclude that it means Sonos doesn't care about customer feature requests for any particular product, but that's obviously subjective.
Even if Sonos says they don't care about the Connect Amp customers
Notwithstanding your reluctance to embrace the engineering arguments sketched out, when you bought your CONNECT:AMP it worked as advertised didn't it? Sonos have never promised the (free) addition of Trueplay functionality have they?
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Fair comment. And good luck getting a product roadmap response. If you do succeed, can you also ask them when DTS/Atmos support will arrive for their flagship product(s) 😃
Wow, lots of feedback. Lots of guessing, even quoting other's guesses.

And the amount of responses about the costs are stunning considering this entire thread is ONLY about feature request. The singular reason I mentioned the cost of the Connect Amp is that it is not the bargain basement / stripped down product that a customer shouldn't expect support for.

Where are the facts and direct answers from Sonos? This is a Sonos hosted page. Even if Sonos says they don't care about the Connect Amp customers and aren't interested in helping, it would be a direct response. And then we can close out the thread.

Come on Sonos!
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This article is a bit dated, but the basic message is there. Seperates are in rapid decline, so it would be wasted money for sonos to sink R&D $ into further enhancing it. When Sonos first started there was a huge gap in the market which their legacy products filled. Bridging the gap between traditional hi-fi and digital services. Now the market is predominantly digital services i doubt we’ll ever see an uodated connect:amp - beyond software updates to maintain ecosystem compatibility. If they aren't focused currently on brining (proper) hdmi and hi-rea codecs to new products, adding a 3 year old feature to a 10 year old product - regardless of the technical capability to accept such new feaure - is unlikely to bring much revenue growth. Little consolation to the OP I expect. But that’s the likely market reality.

www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/01/02/home-entertainment-systems-quiet-revolution.html

It would be great to hear from the Sonos staff about this. There doesn't appear to be any technical reason as to why Sonos doesn't support their Connect Amp product with Trueplay. And spending $500 (before paying significantly more money to add the necessary speakers for an excellent stereo solution) should earn some support. Particularly when that needed support is already provided for solutions that cost $150 'all in'.

Sonos, how about it?


I doubt you'll get a response on technical feasibility on this. It's just not their standard policy to give out those sort of details. It could be that the connect:amp, being an older unit, doesn't have the internal smarts to get it done, don't know...as Sonosjunkie is implying. It could be some other reason that explaining properly would mean giving too much internal private information. it could be a matter of feature prioritization. I could be a non-technical reason that they definitely don't want to open up to public judgement.

But Sonos staff does read all these threads and passes this stuff on as a feature request.
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I’m guessing that there’s also a marketing angle to this. TP being a usp on their speaker rather rather than ability to soend $ elsewhere. If you’re spending significantly more than say the cost of a pair of play 5s to get an ‘audiophile’ experience then using a cheap amp seems somewhat counter intuitive. And I’m not sure the connect/amp is on their product development roadmap as they are what, a decade or more old? Reading the product history pages, seems they changed their whole approach away from the connect model. Indoubt they consider it anywhere near their flagship model, even if the end result is expensive if you add high end speakers. There is an easier way of getting room correction with sonos and 3rd party speakers too. Assuming an AV receiver not part of the mix. Use active speakers with a connect. Better amplification ‘tuned’ to the speakers. Just like Sonos play devices.
There doesn't appear to be any technical reason as to why Sonos doesn't support their Connect Amp product with Trueplay.
Only because you elected to ignore Kumar's entirely logical thesis:
It may even be a limitation of the DSP capability of the Connect Amp.

Single-amped setups, driving passive speakers, are crude beasts. EQ capabilities are basic. At least with an active, per-driver, multi-amped speaker Sonos has the opportunity to apply a reasonably fine-grained DRC filter profile.
Melvimbe, you raise a good point. But sending a single signal to multiple speakers is a problem that any of the AV receivers would have to manage as well. And the AV receivers still provide these solutions. And you're right, that if the results are in any way unsatisfactory, the user can simply revert back to a flat acoustical setting.

It would be great to hear from the Sonos staff about this. There doesn't appear to be any technical reason as to why Sonos doesn't support their Connect Amp product with Trueplay. And spending $500 (before paying significantly more money to add the necessary speakers for an excellent stereo solution) should earn some support. Particularly when that needed support is already provided for solutions that cost $150 'all in'.

Sonos, how about it?
Another factor to consider is that Sonos doesn't if the user attached more than one pair of speakers to the amp, possibly even different rooms. These sort of things could be dealt with though by telling the user that Trueplay may not work well under some conditions, and giving the user the ability to reset back to a standard configuration if they don't like the result.
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With Trueplay available for multiple devices, it seems like most of the code is already written. How hard can it be to extend Trueplay to the most expensive audio solution Sonos offers?


But is it really the most expensive audio solution? Playbar/base and sub are all far more expensive and play 5 is same price. Really the Connect Amp is a £350 streaming enabler with a £150 amp tacked on. I know it does not help the matter in hand, but personally If I was going to use more traditional speakers with sonos, I’d want a proper amp or av receiver with the features you described paired with a connect to bring Sonos to the party. Not a basic amp. To my mind the connect amp is aimed more the custom install market where there are dozens of in ceiling speakers. I could be wrong though. Having said that assuming the eq is all done in software is there a technical reason it can not be enabled on the connect devices? Is the trueplay analysis done on the iphone app or the Play device? I’m guessing a big part if the issue is that the connect would have no means of adjusting the individual drivers so the result of a left/right truplay would I imagine be limited to eq and not include driver timing (asuming I understood how trulay works on play devices correctly).
There are many solutions that do not require controlling the speakers. Representative solutions include D.C.A.C. EX, D.C.A.C. and Advanced D.C.A.C., Audyssey MultEQ, etc. Every retail AV receiver uses one of these solutions to optimize for each of the speakers and the room. They take into account the varying capabilities of each individual speaker, the placement of the speaker and it's relative position to the listener, the acoustics of room, the size of the room (including ceiling height for reflections), and how the speakers interact with each other. At least one solution, D.C.A.C. EX, matches the phase across all the speakers despite any poor wiring by the user. These solutions have been available for many years.

These AV receivers use wired microphones, which is less elegant than using an iPhone. So Sonos should be able to make it work with an even better user experience, which is the hallmark of the Sonos brand.

With Trueplay available for multiple devices, it seems like most of the code is already written. How hard can it be to extend Trueplay to the most expensive audio solution Sonos offers?
It may even be a limitation of the DSP capability of the Connect Amp. Don't also forget the scope to do a lot of tuning by moving the speakers around even just a little.