Skip to main content

I hear conflicting information on the interwebs about high end streaming with Sonos, and how the Beam 2 (which I have, along with a stereo pair of Era 100s) can stream to 24bit. Is this correct? My understanding was that you cannot stream any better than 16bit at 44.1Khz, rendering tracks shown on Tidal as 24bit as useless. Well, not useless but just cd quality.

 

If my system is a Beam 2 with two Era 100 “slave” speakers, does this mean my system now has a 24bit streaming capability?

 

Can anyone advise? I have heard about a pending Quobuz Connect feature but, again, see conflicting posts about it. Given the choice, I would like to subscribe to Quobuz but if I have to use the dreadful S2 app to browse Quobuz instead of the native app I’ll steer clear.

 

Oh, and thanks to Sonos for removing my ability to play my 1Tb music library on my phone with their “new, improved” S2 app. Luckily I can circumnavigate the app and use USB Audio Pro to cast to Sonos. Well played, guys.

You can stream 24 bit but it will be downgraded to 16 bit by the Sonos codec.


Just an addendum to my post. I subscribed to Amazon Music Unlimited, after finding that it streams up to 24bit. Last time I tried Amazon Music it took 20-30 seconds to find an album, 10-15 seconds to load a song….just dreadful. In 2024, using a new Samsung phone with Android 14 it is STILL THE SAME. Click on an album, watch the circle go round and round and round…. Oh, and no way to cast your song to Sonos.

So I thought, okay, let’s see what it’s like using Amazon Prime Music via the Sonos app. Find an artist, a list appears. In no order. No option to sort, no option to do any filtering or organising - just a long random, messy list. Sonos sucks. I’m sorry but you do. There are free thrid party music playing apps that can organise, sort, do anything you want. But not Sonos. Bare bones.

So no 24bit for me. I’d rather stick with Spotify or Tidal than go anywhere near that piece of * S2 app.

 

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*


Reply