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Enthusiast II
August 7, 2020
Answered

24bit support only goes upto 44,000khz/48,000khz

  • August 7, 2020
  • 36 replies
  • 2732 views

Good afternoon

I’ve recently purchased the ARC, Sub (gen 3) and Move and have discovered that you only support 24bit streaming up to 44,000hz or 48,000hz. I have a lot of music that’s in 88,000hz, 96,000hz or 192,000hz (.flac container format) and I can see that this isn’t supported!

This is real shame and I’m sure many other customers will feel the same? It would be great if your developers could implement this as soon as possible via a support update?

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Best answer by Krishma M

Hi @HiRESrules, welcome to the community! Yes, Sonos S2 system supports up to 24-bit (44.1kHz/48kHz, FLAC/ALAC) and we'd be happy to share your interest with the team. Please let us know if there’s anything else we can help you with.

36 replies

Enthusiast II
November 16, 2020

Also other users here, are creating new threads based on this topic all the time, and Sonos don't seem to be listening.

All I'm asking for, is that my comments, along with others is passed to the relevant team.

 

OverallI am impressed with Sonos and it is better than it's competitors, but it's just missing that last little bit of fine tuning.

Thank you

ratty
November 16, 2020

You’re clearly entitled to your opinions. However despite all the hype over many years we’re still waiting for clear evidence that sampling rates above Red Book produce any audible benefits. Indeed a recent large-scale listening test, conducted by a widely respected industry expert, found there to be no perceptible fidelity improvement.

Of course there’s a strong commercial imperative within the recording and equipment industries to try and convince users otherwise, so they’re motivated to go out and replace their existing music collections and playback equipment.

The marketing pressure for Sonos to comply, whether or not it makes sense technically, may become insuperable if for no other reason than to be able to tick the pesky ‘hi res’ box. If that ever did come to pass though I’d expect it to only affect the Port, with its digital output -- and maybe only for a wired or 5GHz network connection. There’d be zero logic in extending such support to the speakers, since they lack ultrasonic transducers. 

November 16, 2020

There’d be zero logic in extending such support to the speakers, since they lack ultrasonic transducers. 

Who would benefit from ultrasonic transducers? By definition itself, not humans?

ratty
November 16, 2020

There’d be zero logic in extending such support to the speakers, since they lack ultrasonic transducers. 

Who would benefit from ultrasonic transducers? By definition itself, not humans?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range 

November 16, 2020

Right, so this would be useful IF the pet dog/cat likes the kind of music we do, with the higher frequency extension meant to deliver more of it’s content to them.

Enthusiast II
November 16, 2020

I can tell the difference with the higher frequecies over the lower ones, the detail is important....24 bit 96 or 192 needs to be implemented to give the user the choice

ratty
November 16, 2020

I can tell the difference with the higher frequecies over the lower ones, the detail is important....24 bit 96 or 192 needs to be implemented to give the user the choice

Consistently, in a double-blind test? Such superhuman ‘golden ears’ would surely be hugely valuable…

But setting aside the ‘faith’ vs ‘science’ debate for the moment, Sonos is a business. They will address users’ demands for ‘choice’ only if (a) they're technically feasible and (b) profitable to do so. 

Enthusiast II
November 16, 2020

Thanks ratty!

Happy listening to music and enjoy your Sonos kit

MQA rules - https://www.mqa.co.uk/

'fingers crossed"

Tidal is the best streaming service.....

ratty
November 16, 2020

MQA? This discussion started off from Sonos’ recent introduction of 24-bit lossless decode.

A proprietary codec, implying licence costs, to squash ultrasonics into a 24/48 stream. One has to ask oneself: why?

Enthusiast II
November 16, 2020

The discussion is to do with 24bit and higher frequencies..... And in turn total Tidal achieves this by streaming greater than 16bit frequecies by using MQA techniques to wrap and unwrap those higher frequencies.... Nice way of doing things I say!