S2 and Sonos Port

From the announcement: 

With S2, Sonos speakers now have support for high resolution audio, 24-bit, 44.1/48kHz for FLAC/ALAC only. This support is for local music libraries shared from computers and network attached drives. We’ve updated the article on Sonos supported music formats here.

To stress: at present 24-bit support is limited to local library files. Sonos haven’t commented on whether it will eventually extend to streaming services.

Hi Davnos

I bought a Port to replace my dying Connect with the trade up voucher. I just tried playing 24-bit 48KHz files (Solo: A star wars story). My Port is connected via digital Coax to my Denon x6300h amp. The Denon amp confirms 48KHz, but won't tell me if it's 24-bit or 16-bit down converted, just says PCM unfortunately.

Hi Liono

Thank you for the feedback and sharing your experience.

You don’t say which format you are playing from but 48kHz is not considered to be high resolution audio.

Interestingly, I also found 48kHz files to be unplayable on some streaming systems (eg roon), so I converted the files using a free audio converter from 48kHz to 44.1kHz and this was universally accepted.

Admittedly this is still only CD quality, but to be honest when played through a decent hi-fi system, still sounds excellent given a good recording.

Maybe there is a setting on your Denon to set the output frequency at 44.1kHz, although I’m not an audio engineer.

However, from the sources that you are able to play from, I would be interested to know how you find the Port sounds in comparison to the Connect.

From what I have learnt in a short period of time is that the Sonos Port is only able to play high resolution audio files from local storage, for example from a nas drive.

If you do have a nas drive, by way of an experiment, try purchasing an album or track in high resolution for example. highresaudio.com, or presto music.com are among a group of excellent suppliers offering true high resolution downloads, however you must pay for these.

These lossless downloads could be at 96khz or even 92khz 24bit. Storage space for these very large files may become an issue.  So most of us end up playing CD quality audio for the time being anyway.

All the Best.

Hello I would like to know if I connect a preamp turntable to Sonos port, if the DAC Inside the port will output 16 bit or 24bit conversion.

and at which bitrate?

in conclusion since I don’t have nor any turntable neither the port, I would like to know if the digital audio output will be better than a FLAC file from Deezer Hifi for example.

thanks

A DAC outputs analog, by definition. No bits, no bitrate.

The Port chip itself is a 32-bit DAC.

Port digitises Line-In on input, at 16-bit/44.1kHz. Since vinyl has a dynamic range equivalent to around 12 bits this is more than sufficient.

16/44.1 is CD quality, e.g. Deezer HiFi. Of course the sound from Deezer HiFi would be distinctly superior to that from a turntable, unless you particularly enjoy all the shortcomings of vinyl playback. On that score “better” is definitely subjective.

thanks for the answer. Will work the same 16 bit output if I will connect directly to a Sonos Five?

what would ne better? Sonos Five or port?

The Line-In on a Five would work the same as the Line-In on a Port. 

If you don’t have a DAC or amplifier that you want to connect a Port to, then a Five would be much better value. You’d get a speaker as well as a Line-in.