S2 app and Qobuz Hi-Res

Hi @Johnsalmon 

Thanks for your post.

Not at this time, no, though you should be receiving 24bit sound if you have the correct subscription from Qobuz. I’ll mark this topic as a feature request and it will be considered.

AirPlay is not capable of 24-bit playback, it’s limited to 16 bits at 48Kbps.

@Johnsalmon

Apologies - I re-read my reply and realised that what I meant to say is that there is no current way to tell if you’re getting 24bit sound, in the Sonos app. You can get 24bit streams from Qobuz via the Sonos S2 app, with the right subscription and compatible speakers.

There’s a thread here on 24bit AirPlay support: 

That’s very helpful, thank you. Streaming directly through the S2 app rather than through AirPlay seems more stable anyway so I’ll use that from now on. 

With regard to chicks comment, I realise that I am completely out of my depth here but hasn’t AirPlay 2 significantly increased the playback over AirPlay 1 from 16 to 24? 

Thanks again, John Salmon

There’s no evidence anywhere that I can find that AirPlay 2 supports 24 bits.  AirPlay 2 added multi-room and larger buffers (as dropouts were a SIGNIFICANT problem originally), but no indication it supports more than 16 bits.

You mean the enhanced audio quality is not startlingly obvious? 

(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Tee hee 😊an apt comment! Put it down to a lack of confidence and knowledge that human psychology can have a powerful effect. A classical music loving doctor lost his hearing and subsequently used hearing aids. He told me that within a short time he could appreciate the music as before the hearing loss. I assumed his brain adapted to the hearing aid generated music and that story made me realise the perception of the quality of sound might not be entirely straight forward!

I would also like to request this as a feature. Similar to now how you show what tv audio is playing, it would be nice to see how the various music services play. 

It is just one aspect of that which is not entirely straightforward, which is the perception of reality.

As to sound quality, many people will tell you that the sound from a better looking speaker/hifi kit is better; others, that the more expensive ones sound better. All these foibles are taught to marketing folks that then exploit these to collect more money than may be objectively deserved.

In this case, the other problem is the lack of a robust baseline for comparisons, done via blind listening test under controlled conditions. Since that is not practical at home, I suppose paying as much as you can afford for music that sounds good to you is a good guideline.

Or are you saying that if you knew how many bits were in the stream, the music would sound better?

One “work around” would be to go on the Qobuz app and add songs to your created playlists that you can see are High Rez. Then when you are on the SONOS App you can play from your created playlist that you know is Hi Rez