Apple lossless with Play5 / Sub Configuration

the Sonos system is configured as a home theater setup

How are the Play 5s connected for a HT setup? Are the Play 5s paired as surrounds? If so, you have to add the Sub to the main speaker/soundbar.

I am not looking for a home theater setup; I just want a good listening experience with the paired Play:5’s and the Sub.  Here is my current basic configuration.  When I delete the Sub, I get lossless from the Apple Music stream.  When I add it to the room, I lose the lossless stream (as indicated in the Sonos IOS app).  Thanks for your reply - TD
 

When playing music with Play 5s and Sub, drag the playback line forward and let it play a few seconds, then back and let it play, then forwards and so on a couple of times - see if the Lossless logo appears. Sometimes it can be that it is playing in Lossless but the symbol hasn’t appeared. 

You can also check if it’s lossless by checking the data stream in your router for the device. Lossless will be ~1400 kbps. Lossy will be lower. 
 

I’ve attached a picture of an Apple Music stream playing to a Port. Should be lossless. It’s  not showing lossless in the app and the bandwidth shows it’s a lossy stream. 
 

Thanks, Rhonny. Scrubbing did not work, but adding/deleting the Sub definitely drives this.
I’ll take a closer look at my network, and keep my fingers crossed for further improvements in the app && firmware to deal with this issue.  Thx again.

Thanks, Almazri.
When I dig into the network, I’ll check out the data stream delivery in various configurations, including the newer Ones and Roam, which seem to be rock-solid.  Appreciate your reply!

To conclude this discussion:

Rhonny - I did see that at times the newer speakers (One, Roam) sometimes did NOT show lossless on the IOS app, but after scrubbing, the Lossless badge would appear and remain.

Almazri -  I setup Wireshark and looked at TCP streaming traffic on various speakers.
I can confim that the Lossless badge did appear on the newer speakers, and they did reach 1400kbps.
My Play5’s with the subs were slightly lower at about 1250kbps - 1300kbps, thus close to lossless but perhaps some downsampling happening when the Sub is added to the room configuration.

Thanks all (including Poole) for your insights.

As I recall in a post a while back, playback resolution is based on the capability of the lowest common denominator. If the Sub is Gen 1, that might be the limiting factor? 

Nik,

That very well could be.

Or alternatively, the addition of the Sub creates sync overhead to the point that Sonos downsamples, opting for stability over uncertain hi fidelity results.  
 

I’ve had some of this Sonos gear for eight years, and consider myself fortunate that it all works in the S2  environment.  Eventually I will find a newer product to replace the Sub.  Thanks for your reply.

Cory,

Thanks for your reply
-- this makes sense because I believe I have a Gen 2 Sub (it works with S2).

My only other question (and perhaps I will post this):
When I add my Gen 2 Sub with my Play:5 pair, I lose the lossless badge on my Sonos IOS app.
Does this mean that all three speakers are now downsampled, or is the absence of the lossless banner just an indication that Sub is lossy, but the Play:5 are lossless?

Sub Gen2 is supported, I think @Corry P may have miss typed. 
Sonos reference only mentions the Gen1, see additional details here 

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

Thanks, Almazri.
 

My Sub is 
Sonos OS : S2
Vers. 16.3.1 (Build 80.1-55240)
HW Vers. 1.25.1.8-1.2

I’ll try to confirm w/ Sonos which generation this unit is.
 

If you log in to your Sonos account and go to the system area it lists all your hardware and will tell you the gen of your sub and other Sonos products. 

Almazri,

Thanks!  I logged in and confirmed that my Sub is Gen 2.

Regards,

Tom

Hi @tomadelaney 

The entire room will be playing the same thing, so the Play:5s will be playing lossy audio due to the Sub Gen 2 not being capable of lossless.

And I am inclined to go with my assertion that the Sub Gen 2 is not supported due to a) the source of my info, and b) the fact that it doesn’t work.

Thanks to @almazri, however, for finding that support page - I’ll see if I can get it updated.

I hope this helps.

@Corry P my Sub is Gen2, Hardware Version: 1.8.6.6-2.2 paired with Arc, and I can play Apple Lossless, I see logo in App, and confirm bandwidth is 3-4Mb/s to Arc. I thought this was the case, but just confirmed a few moments ago.

What I suspect is happening is the Sonos system and adaptive bitrate protocol is deciding if the hardware and network is capable of lossless, ie if the hardware is capable, the network also has to be capable. So if its not working on supported hardware, the network connection to player and/or bonded Sub is not sufficient to sustain the higher bitrate.

Hi @craigski 

There could be a second test involved, but it would be strange if info I was given is wrong. 

Could I please ask both you and @tomadelaney to submit a support diagnostic while playing (or attempting to play) lossless tracks from Apple Music with Sub Gen 2 involved? Please don’t post the number - just let me know when you have done so. Thanks. I would like to get to the bottom of this.

Hi @craigski & @tomadelaney 

OK, scratch that. I’ve just been informed that when a Sub is bonded to a Home Theatre Primary device (like your Arc, @craigski), it is the HT Primary that determines what quality is played, not the Sub.

In other words, it is expected that a Sub Gen 2 will play lossless when bonded with an Arc, Beam or Ray, just as it is expected that when a Sub Gen 2 is bonded to a single speaker or stereo pair, it will not play lossless.

I hope this helps.

Corry, Craigski and Almazri,

Thanks to all of you for your follow-up.
My conclusion from your valuable discussion is that although all the components (Play:5 pair and Sub Gen2) are capable of playing lossless on my network, when grouped together in one room, Sonos can not deliver lossless.

I hope that this situation is improved through the latest products, or future products and firmware updates.  Perhaps it is time for me to also look at a product like Roon which would allow me to extend high fidelity endpoints beyond my current well-regarded Sonos ecosystem.

Hi @tomadelaney 

You are most welcome!

Largely correct, though I am not sure exactly of how to word it. “Sub Gen 2 is incapable of playing lossless via Apple Music, but it doesn’t matter when it’s connected to Home Theatre,” I suppose.

Sub Gen 3 is not affected by this. As for future software updates, I suspect not - if it was workable, it would probably already be done. I can only assume that there is a large difference between the way a HT primary tells a Sub what to play, and how a single speaker (or stereo pair) does it, and that this large difference implies a heavy engineering lift for changing it - for a discontinued product, my guess is was that it was considered too much. Remember - Sub Gen 2 was designed, manufactured and discontinued all before Apple Lossless became available in 2021.

I hope this helps.

Cory,

I am actually amazed that my Play:5, which I purchased eight years ago, are capable of handling lossless.  I appreciate all of your information.

I’d guess the difference will be in the HT setup, the HT Primary is doing the decoding of the input signal and sending the appropriate raw data stream to the relevant speaker, so the sub has little to do other than send input from the HT primary through it’s DAC to its output.

In an audio setup, the sub is more likely to be receiving the same stream as the speaker (ALAC, Flac, whatever) and decoding it itself with an audio filter for the crossover point and any equaliser/trueplay adjustments. Like some of the other older products the older sub then doesn’t have the processing power to handle decoding the higher bitrate.

Unless something has significantly change in the Sonos ABR code it uses a mix of rate estimate with buffer occupancy to decide whether to switch up or down on the bitrate.

https://tech-blog.sonos.com/posts/happy-music-streaming-with-mpeg-dash/

There may be a config setting in some older device firmware to prevent switching above a certain bitrate because the hardware isn’t capable of processing incoming network and audio fast enough.

With a HT product, I expect the HT product will be doing the heavy lifting of decoding and processing the incoming stream to send only the relevance channel data to each of the devices bonded to it.

All,

As a final note to this thread, I did upgrade my Sub Gen2 to a Sub Gen3, and confirmed that my paired Play:5s and Sub Gen3 delivered a ‘lossless music’ badge when streaming Apple music through the Sonos S2 IOS app.

Another interesting note:

I’ve been experimenting with a trial copy of the Roon server/controller and am amazed at how well it integrates with the Sonos endpoints,  Ironically, it is able to play true lossless (Tidal FLAC 44.1khz 24 bit 2 ch) with Play:1 and One models, but was a bit challenged with Era 100 and Play:5’s.  In the case of the Era 100 / Play:5, Roon can take hi-res feeds from Tidal and downsample them to 48 khz / 24 bit and classifies these as ‘high quality streams’, while the same streams through Play:1s and Ones come through as 44.1khz / 24 bit ‘lossless streams’.

One final note:
The Sub Gen 3 sound truly amazing.