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Sonos won't play Hi-Res music files. What are my options?

  • 22 September 2023
  • 35 replies
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J
Userlevel 1
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Hi everyone

I’m a newbie Audiophile and love Hi-Res music but don’t fully understand what it’s all about other than the quality of sound is better.

I have a Sonos system at home that comprises of an Arc, Sub and two One speakers L+R.

I keep all my music files on my PC and a backup drive. These files are mostly Apple AAC/M4A format that I listen to through the Sonos app on my PC as well as on my phone.

However, I recently purchased two Hi-Res albums online U2’s Achtung Baby and All That You Can’t Leave Behind. They are both 96Khz/24bit FLAC files but Sonos will not play them and brings up a message saying;

“Unable to play this track - it is encoded at unsupported rate 24b96000Hz”

Is there a way round this to play these files without compromising the sound? If this isn’t possible, then what are my options to play Hi-Res music through my Sonos speakers? 

I have been able to listen to Hi-Res music through my Sonos speakers but this was through using Amazon Music streaming service.

Now I want to play my own Hi-Res music files stored on my PC but can’t with Sonos.

 

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Best answer by jgatie 22 September 2023, 19:01

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35 replies

jgatie

All a higher sample rate gives you is the ability to capture frequencies higher than a human being can hear.  It's pure snake oil, unless you are playing music for your dog.  Studies show any quality differences are due to better mastering, not higher sample rates.  So resample at 48 kHz and be confident you aren't missing any quality.

jgatie

 

Does the sound quality diminish though by reducing the Khz size from 96 to 48?

 

Not unless you are a dog, or a bat.  The sampling theorem used in audio states that all of the signal under one half the sampling rate is captured and reproduced exactly the same as the original analog signal, with no loss.  1/2 of 48 is 24 kHz.  The human ear cannot hear anything over 20 kHz, and if you are out of your teens, it’s far less than 20 kHz.  

By the way, if you are ever perusing audiophile sites, and you see anything about “jaggies” or “stairsteps”, or “digital is an estimate, and a higher sample rate gets you closer to the original” run away.  They are either ignorant, or lying to you, and neither one is to your benefit.  

G
Userlevel 7

Sonos supports FLAC but the maximum sample rate can only be 48kHz. So convert the files to 48kHz/24-bit FLAC using audio software like Audacity.

Read more about what audio formats are supported for a Sonos music library here:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/supported-audio-formats-for-sonos-music-library

"Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." - Rashi
buzz

There are no peer reviewed studies proving that anything beyond the CD sample rate of 44.1KHz can be perceived by the human listener.

In the studio, during production, there are benefits when the producer uses higher sample rates while processing the session, but there is no audible benefit using these higher rates for distribution to the retail listener. For anal producers, they should be operating at sample rates higher than 192KHz. 192K is lame if you are being anal.

A minor historic detail: SONOS has used 24bit internal processing since inception in 2005.

jgatie

 

This is profoundly incorrect. Sampling rate has nothing to do the frequency of the audio data that it contains. it's the frequency at which the data is captured. there is plenty of audiophile snake oil out there, this isn't one of em.

 

Honestly, you couldn’t be more wrong. 

https://www.asel.udel.edu/speech/tutorials/instrument/sam_rat.html

See the bolded?

 

Sampling Rate

Sampling rate determines the sound frequency range (corresponding to pitch) which can be represented in the digital waveform. The range of frequencies represented in a waveform is often called its bandwidth. Waveforms sampled at a high sampling rate can represent a broad range of frequencies and hence have broad bandwidth. In fact, the maximum bandwidth of a sampled waveform is determined exactly by its sampling rate; the maximum frequency representable in a sampled waveform is termed its Nyquist frequency, and is equal to one half the sampling rate. Thus, for example, a waveform sampled at 16,000 Hz can represent all frequencies up to its Nyquist frequency of 8,000 Hz.

 

Also (more technical)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem

 

The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem is an essential principle for digital signal processing linking the frequency range of a signal and the sample rate required to avoid a type of distortion called aliasing. The theorem states that the sample rate must be at least twice the bandwidth of the signal to avoid aliasing distortion. In practice, it is used to select band-limiting filters to keep aliasing distortion below an acceptable amount when an analog signal is sampled or when sample rates are changed within a digital signal processing function.

. . .

The sampling theorem introduces the concept of a sample rate that is sufficient for perfect fidelity for the class of functions that are band-limited to a given bandwidth, such that no actual information is lost in the sampling process. It expresses the sufficient sample rate in terms of the bandwidth for the class of functions. The theorem also leads to a formula for perfectly reconstructing the original continuous-time function from the samples.

 

All those jaggy stairstep diagrams the audiophiles have been selling you are complete lies.  There are no estimations in sound sampling, there’s no “filling in” of the parts in between.  Lossless sampling is truly lossless, up to ½ the sampling rate.

jgatie

just because sampling rate determines bandwidth doesn't mean it IS bandwidth. there's a lot you can do with bandwidth. 

 

Yes, you can store sounds that only your dog can hear and charge gullible humans a premium for them.  Because I can't think of anything else I can do with sounds above 20 kHz.

Oh wait, yes I can.  You can use them to cause audible intermodulation distortion in the playback hardware, making the audio sound worse!  Silly me.

And thanks for the acknowledgement that my post was not "profoundly incorrect".  I appreciate it.

buzz

During the lecture on sampling theory the audiophiles ran out in mid lecture flailing their hands, shouting about “jaggies”. Had they stayed for the full lecture they would understand why the jaggies are not present in the final reconstruction. This is somewhat like complaining how bad an empty construction site looks before it is painted and furnished.

Processing, at any bandwidth, can be constructive. While uncompressed music might sound better to some listeners in a quiet room, compressing music that will be played through earbuds on a busy street results in music that is much more comfortable to listen to.

By the way, there are two types of “compression”. One type is an attempt to reduce the amount of data that must be transferred from here to there. This type of “data compression” is simply some data processing tricks. Once lossless data compression is undone at the receiving end there is no way to determine that the data had been compressed along the way. Nothing is added and nothing has been removed. Some audio data compression methods, such as MP3, will permanently alter the music. Audibility of this compression depends on how aggressive the compression was. Early in this digital age when music was sent over voice grade lines and a 20MB hard drive was HUGE, music compression had to be very aggressive and there were clearly audible consequences. At this point we don’t need to worry much about disk space or the connection bandwidth.

The other type of compression can be done in the analog or digital world. This should really be described as “dynamic range compression”. “Dynamic range” is the difference between the quietest and loudest notes in a session. In noisy listening environments one must increase the Volume in order to prevent the quiet parts from being lost in the environment’s noise. Unfortunately, loud portions may then be above the threshold of pain and you’ll be racing for the Volume control. Dynamic range compression is an automatic Volume control adjustment. Tastefully used, dynamic range compression can improve listening enjoyment in difficult environments. Music producers have proven that highly compressed music sells better than uncompressed music. This is why it is difficult to purchase uncompressed releases. You need to actively seek uncompressed releases. If you are listening in a good (quiet) environment, premium releases (often touted as “Hi-Res”) sound better if they have not been compressed.

In my opinion, music should be distributed without dynamic range compression. When needed, compression can be easily applied by the playback system. Historically, compression has increased the equipment costs, been misunderstood by the public, and has always been dumped on by the audiophile community. At his point playback compression hardware is virtually costless. Unfortunately, there will need to be an added button or two and the user will need to spend a couple minutes learning to use the feature. This might result in a unit being branded as “complicated” by some users. And, the audiophiles will continue to dump on the feature. A great feature would be to use a phone/pad/computer microphone to measure the ambient noise and adjust the playback compression automatically.

J
Userlevel 1
Badge +1

The reason why I got into Hi-Res music is because I bought a Sony NW-A306 Walkman with Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones and that I now keep my entire music library on.

I think the ultimate goal was to listen to classic albums in Hi-Res with my Sony gear. I don’t use iTunes that often anymore and only have a very old iPod Nano that I use to listen to music in my car.

Though a lot of my music is still m4a and iTunes registered but always use the Sonos app now to listen to these files.

K

Hi everyone

I’m a newbie Audiophile and love Hi-Res music but don’t fully understand what it’s all about other than the quality of sound is better.

I have a Sonos system at home that comprises of an Arc, Sub and two One speakers L+R.

I keep all my music files on my PC and a backup drive. These files are mostly Apple AAC/M4A format that I listen to through the Sonos app on my PC as well as on my phone.

However, I recently purchased two Hi-Res albums online U2’s Achtung Baby and All That You Can’t Leave Behind. They are both 96Khz/24bit FLAC files but Sonos will not play them and brings up a message saying;

“Unable to play this track - it is encoded at unsupported rate 24b96000Hz”

Is there a way round this to play these files without compromising the sound? If this isn’t possible, then what are my options to play Hi-Res music through my Sonos speakers? 

I have been able to listen to Hi-Res music through my Sonos speakers but this was through using Amazon Music streaming service.

Now I want to play my own Hi-Res music files stored on my PC but can’t with Sonos.

 
K

All a higher sample rate gives you is the ability to capture frequencies higher than a human being can hear.  It's pure snake oil, unless you are playing music for your dog.  Studies show any quality differences are due to better mastering, not higher sample rates.  So resample at 48 kHz and be confident you aren't missing any quality.

 

This is profoundly incorrect. Sampling rate has nothing to do the frequency of the audio data that it contains. it's the frequency at which the data is captured. there is plenty of audiophile snake oil out there, this isn't one of em.

K

 

This is profoundly incorrect. Sampling rate has nothing to do the frequency of the audio data that it contains. it's the frequency at which the data is captured. there is plenty of audiophile snake oil out there, this isn't one of em.

 

Honestly, you couldn’t be more wrong if you were actually trying. 

https://www.asel.udel.edu/speech/tutorials/instrument/sam_rat.html

See the bolded?

 

Sampling Rate

Sampling rate determines the sound frequency range (corresponding to pitch) which can be represented in the digital waveform. The range of frequencies represented in a waveform is often called its bandwidth. Waveforms sampled at a high sampling rate can represent a broad range of frequencies and hence have broad bandwidth. In fact, the maximum bandwidth of a sampled waveform is determined exactly by its sampling rate; the maximum frequency representable in a sampled waveform is termed its Nyquist frequency, and is equal to one half the sampling rate. Thus, for example, a waveform sampled at 16,000 Hz can represent all frequencies up to its Nyquist frequency of 8,000 Hz.

 

All those jaggy stairstep diagrams the audiophiles have been selling you are complete lies.  There are no estimations in sound sampling, there’s no “filling in” of the parts in between.  Lossless sampling is truly lossless, up to ½ the sampling rate.

just because sampling rate determines bandwidth doesn't mean it IS bandwidth. there's a lot you can do with bandwidth. 

W
Userlevel 2
Badge +4

Just an additional piece of info I’ve noticed, the songs on Spotify that seem to sound bad (off and on constantly while playing) are the latest remastered stuff and seems to be the same songs. My normal playlists play fine but I tried the latest remastered 2023 u2 (yes I know 😂) and that’s all over the place, I went back to one I knew worked and was fine and then went back to the u2 and exactly the same again, all over the place. 
I’m thinking my kit is probably dated too much now it could be time to move up to era’s? 

J
Userlevel 1
Badge +1

Sonos supports FLAC but the maximum sample rate can only be 48kHz. So convert the files to 48kHz/24-bit FLAC using audio software like Audacity.

Read more about what audio formats are supported for a Sonos music library here:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/supported-audio-formats-for-sonos-music-library

 

Does the sound quality diminish though by reducing the Khz size from 96 to 48?

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I rip to FLAC as it is likely to have the longest lifetime as a supported format.

Once ripped in FLAC I can easily convert to anything else.

Which conversion I did for the car with its limited storage and weak sound system. It holds a lot more in the MP3 format and on that setup you can’t hear the difference. I also stuff some MP3s on my laptop to listen to in hotel rooms.

K

If ripping, lossless is the obvious route. My question was to the OP question on whether 256 AAC, if mastered for iTunes and purchased would sound better than the CD - why not listen to both and trust your ears to tell you? As well as for albums ripped already - the same test would be valid regardless of whether AAC or ALAC has been used. When I stopped buying CDs, I moved to buying such 256 AAC albums from iTunes and found SQ to be just as good. As I now find Spotify to be, having stopped buying music completely.

Of course if the OP is using premium headphones and the like, differences I do not hear may well be audible and then those would be relevant in deciding how to proceed.

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I loved my dBx audio compressor, it had a lot of uses but I sure didn’t want original audio that someone else had messed with.

Some purchased stuff that had been over-compressed at the studio did sound better slightly uncompressed but artifacts were always an audible issue. Being able to compress at home was nice, either to bring the quiet passages up above ambient noise or to dampen the loud sounds at night, I usually set the range gate to only act above normal volume levels though.

The place it really worked well was in making cassette tapes for the car. Setting a pretty large compression ratio with no range gate brought the lower level sounds up over the car noise while not blowing your ears out on the loud stuff. In a quiet setting it was obvious the music had suffered badly but in the car it worked well. 

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Aside from the higher sampling rates being inaudible snake oil, they would add to the communications load between speakers and services which would lead to increased dropouts.

It would be interesting to see some numbers from folks in heavily congested WiFi locations on the reliability of the various options, to include ATMOS when channel utilization is 60% or higher.

I have my local music at 16 / 44.1 as I, or a few friends I’ve asked,  can not hear any difference between that and the higher resolution ones.

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I’d take a look at the data rates your selections are using, if the new stuff is pushing more data you may simply have wireless issues that can usually be resolved with out buying new gear that would suffer the same problems.

 

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/improve-your-sonos-products-wifi-connection

K

 

I’m a newbie Audiophile and love Hi-Res music but don’t fully understand what it’s all about other than the quality of sound is better.

 

 

For a music lover the only thing to understand about audio formats is whether they deliver better sound to the extent that humans can hear, and as said by others here, Hi Res does not offer that. Indeed, even Apple AAC, that is a format that compresses CD files, offers outcomes that are audibly the same as CD quality, something that is vouched for by the head of Apple Music.

Doing the one time exercise of resampling the Hi Res music you have, also as suggested, is all you need to do to hear music of the quality that is on those Hi Res files, via Sonos.

buzz

Music sold as “Hi-Res” can often sound better than the standard issue, but this is due to more careful processing, beginning with higher quality master tapes, not some sort of higher playback bit rate.

Some less than ethical producers will (at a premium charge) simply resample a regular CD in a “Hi-Res” format. At best, this release will sound no better than the original CD.

K

Music sold as “Hi-Res” can often sound better than the standard issue, but this is due to more careful processing, beginning with higher quality master tapes, not some sort of higher playback bit rate.

 

Also: none of the above gains will be lost via downsampling to a file that Sonos can play. And of course, if the quoted above has not been done, ask the question why you have paid extra for the Hi Res files in the first place.

J
Userlevel 1
Badge +1

Thank you for all your feedback, that’s really interesting to hear your views and will have a think before buying any more Hi-Res files.

J
Userlevel 1
Badge +1

 

Indeed, even Apple AAC, that is a format that compresses CD files, offers outcomes that are audibly the same as CD quality, something that is vouched for by the head of Apple Music.

 

I always had the understanding that AAC was better in sound quality than CD or am I wrong? Like if you buy a 256kbps Mastered for iTunes album of The Beatles Abbey Road that it would be better sounding than your old CD album you purchased 20 years ago?

ratty

I always had the understanding that AAC was better in sound quality than CD or am I wrong?

It can’t be. AAC is lossy. It throws data away.

(Some might argue that this makes it sound ‘nicer’ but it’s not what the artist intended.)

 

Like if you buy a 256kbps Mastered for iTunes album of The Beatles Abbey Road that it would be better sounding than your old CD album you purchased 20 years ago?

That’s a different matter, independent of the format issue. Remastering should obviously (we hope) improve on the original, sometimes dramatically.

J
Userlevel 1
Badge +1

I have recently remastered albums on CD, so if I wanted to rip those songs from the CD into digital format, what would be the best format to rip them in and using what software?

I have always ripped my CD’s into Apple iTunes m4a format but is this losing the quality that is on the CD?

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