Jazz Groove HD/FLAC

You probably won’t see ‘HD’ badging. As far as I’m aware that just applies to Amazon Music and Sonos Radio.

However, it wouldn’t hurt to ask Jazz Groove if they’re sending that data as part of their implementation of the Sonos API in order to pop that flag up. It is already part of Sonos’ software, since it works on both Amazon Radio and Sonos Radio,  but Jazz Groove have to be sending the appropriate “tickle” to make it work.

I will definitely ask. Not that I really think I might hear a difference, and I do want to be a supporter of their programming, but it would be nice to have a confirmation that I am getting what I thought I would for being a donor. 

Just asked them and they claim that it’s a future enhancement. After all that time spent with Sonos on this integration, seems like it would be a relatively easy add. I thought the Sonos app would somehow know that the current stream quality must be CD/lossless and turn that badge on for any music service. I don’t use them but Tidal and other HD sources don’t automatically turn that badge on? Not that I don’t trust JazzGroove but  having no confirmation is a bit of a let down.

Not sure that it checks bitrate, rather than being a separate “flag” that they send across, I’m not intimately familiar with the API that is used by Sonos for all streams.  But given that there’s some amount of buffering that likely goes on on different streams, it seems like a simple measurement of bitrate might be fraught with potential for mis-labeling. 

I would agree. Makes sense that they would rely on the provider via the API to tell the app that the stream is of a certain category. Variable FLAC bitrate would make the tagging a possible issue. But I just wonder why Sonos and Jazz Groove didn’t get it worked out ahead of time during the integration testing.

The “HD” tag will be shown if the stream is lossless, AND if the correct tag for 16bit or 24bit has been added to the music service map.

For example, the Amazon map includes these lines:

            <QualityBadgeMap id="16bit" text="HD" />
            <QualityBadgeMap id="24bit" text="ULTRA HD" />

which is how these show up in the Sonos app. I am not a Jazz Groove subscriber so cannot tell you what is in their map.

You can determine the actual bitrate and bit depth, map or not, by using a 3rd party Sonos app that shows this information.

“You can determine the actual bitrate and bit depth, map or not, by using a 3rd party Sonos app that shows this information.”

What 3rd party app might do this?

Go to their website, log in, click on your icon / Audio Settings, and grab the generated URLs for each of their channels in FLAC quality.  Plug them into Sonos manually.

As a matter of interest have you tried this? Sonos still says that manually configured URLs support only MP3, AAC, or WMA.