S2 Hi-Res false promise?

I was in the same situation - add a power conditioner the size of a footlocker to the above list, and a tube DAC with feet that changed colour to say that the tubes are warmed up. And silly things like a fancy cable to connect the optional external PSU of a Tube buffer to the Buffer which in itself was a non value adding item in the signal chain - at best. 

I held off on wireless streaming for some years, not trusting it to deliver the needed quality even if music play was stable, but once I got one Sonos Connect, it allowed me to run blind tests against my existing kit which convinced me to replace most of it to get Sonos front ends in every room. I have enjoyed the greatly bigger window to the world of music ever since, without ever feeling I have compromised on sound quality. Financially, I was ahead because the sale of the HiFi kit funded all Sonos purchases, while still leaving me with the units that mattered - passive speakers.

Now of course, the Echo products can take the place of Sonos front ends in many places for their added features, with similar results, in some zones with same old passive speakers.

In all this, a few test with SACDs back in the day convinced me that Hi Res was snake oil cleverly disguised and so the absence of it on both Sonos and Echo does not bother me at all. Subsequent research informs me that the science of Hi Res and human hearing supports this conclusion.

Feeling exposed here.  

It could very well be that the only real “problem” I’m trying to address is just the unwelcome intrusion of fond memory, or, if I’m completely honest, revisionist nostalgia. What I should probably do is take your advice and see what’s left of that nostalgia after it’s put through rigorous experimentation under bright klieg lights. And also as you suggest--and I know this to be at least partly true--it could be that my best experiences with that ridiculous system were more a function of the quality of the masters and original material I was listening to than its downstream reproduction in a living room. Thinking about labels like ECM, Deutsche Grammophone, Chesky, Denon, or artists like Roger Waters. So thank you for your comments. You may have saved me a few grand that I was getting ready to spend in pursuit of rainbows, unicorns and other chimeras. 

But if you don’t mind, may I impose on you to give me a brief explanation of how you set things up with the Connect (which I have) or the Echo Show devices in partnership with the Sonos hardware? You also mentioned “the magic of line in jacks,” but not all Sonos hardware has that functionality (except for ethernet) and I’m not entirely clear on what such a rig would look like. I’m not a very creative wirer so I’m not sure how one would use Sonos gear as “dumb hardware” as you mentioned. I have no experience at all with Echo Show devices so don’t quite see how that would mesh with a house-wide Sonos environment. 

Also, on the subject of photo equipment manufacturers, I was thinking about that subject less in the context of them competing with each other or with smart phones, but more in terms of the old Gillette razor marketing concept of “give them the razor and sell them the blades.” I don’t know this to be true, but I have long suspected that to be how most of the big photo manufacturers operate (at least the mass producers like Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus). The real juice for them is in selling glass, and it would not surprise me if they sold bodies--which they seem to come out with like mosquitos in the spring--at or very near break even. So I have thought about Sonos in that way. It’s a hardware company, and if hi res really is snake oil but it’s snake oil that their customers want, it would seem logical (from a business perspective) to provide that functionality to keep people like me buying their hardware and getting deeper and deeper into their ecosystem. 

Thanks for the colloquy. I wish more forums were like this. 

They know this - and if it were easy to do, then they’d already have done it. Thing is, Sonos is designed to run many devices (up to 32 IIRC) in perfect sync. This makes much bigger demands on a network than just a few devices. Hi-res files are much bigger than CD standard, so give Sonos that much more of a technical problem, which they know will turn into a huge support problem. And for what? They’ve already said (and many here have argued) that there is no audible benefit in using hi-res files. I’ve single blind tested 320k MP3s against CD quality FLACs, and I can’t hear the difference, so I certainly don’t believe that I’d hear anything different with high-res. So why would they risk their entire eco-system to provide something that is of zero audio benefit?

 Now that they’ve ditched older, less capable kit they may well do something - as you say, it’s a box to be ticked - but I doubt that it will be a priority when there are lots of other things to address.

In order of the above:

Nothing says that you cannot turn the lights down low after the experimentation:-)). Actually, that, with some wine/whisky is the most reliable way to get music to sound a lot better, I have found. At times I do miss the glowing tubes of my sold tube amp, but now that I have found out that the warmth it provides is just a mild layer of distortion at best, I don't need that glow.

I know the labels you refer to, and they are all there on Spotify. Streamed at its highest quality, 320 kbps, Spotify is also as good a service as sound quality at home demands. My finding tallies with that of @amun ; no difference between CDs/lossless CD rips/SACDs.

The magic of Sonos line in jacks lies in the fact that a source wired to them can be set up to play with a Sonos player that does not have them, via line in settings for the unit with jacks in the Sonos app. All one needs in a given space is one Sonos unit blessed with those jacks, like Connect, and if its line in is set to autoplay the Connect will come awake from standby whenever  the unit wired to it starts playing.

I came to Echo devices after losing patience with Sonos who have still to release the Alexa Sonos integration in India, three years after Amazon released Alexa in India. I don't use any of the other Alexa stuff except for a occasional time check, but as a dedicated source for music (and occasional use clock) commanded by voice it brings the next dimension to music delivery that I needed, and I discovered that even a simple Dot wired to line in jacks of Sonos brings me that for close to free - about USD 35 including the cost of a bog standard RCA to 3.5 stereo minijack cable, with no change in sound quality. Last year, Amazon released Echo Show 5, a well priced Echo that has a screen display. That gives me another feature - album art for whatever is playing, something that I have missed in Sonos from day one, having long been accustomed to the simple one line LED matrix displays in CD players. My open space living/dining area is served by a Connect Amp/legacy speakers, a play 1 pair+ Sub, and a couple of play 1 units, for an even spread of sound across the space when needed. With a Show 5 wired to the Connect Amp, the music it supplies can be heard across the space, from such Sonos units that are in the Connect Amp group. Using Spotify Connect or voice to command music play on the Show, bypassing the Sonos controller app. With album art of what is playing. And, the gimmick of lyrics.

With this background when Sonos pulled the S1/S2 stunt, I decided I would stay on S1 and not buy Sonos again in future because I saw nothing useful coming from them in future for music play. And I see no reason why I will lose anything by this, since I expect my Sonos hardware to function for many more years before it dies. I was very annoyed to be told by Sonos that if I wanted to stay abreast of future improvements, I need to dump hardware that is in excellent working condition. Even if the green thing was not a thing, I would be annoyed. Using line in jacks, the downstream Sonos kit turns into dumb hardware that will work as such with no support from Sonos, till the hardware dies a natural death. So, S1 for me, is the last Sonos version.

The above will give you insights on how a similar approach can be made to work for you.

As to photography, where the analogy breaks down is that cameras are active tools to take new pictures involving on going and extensive user interaction all the time with the device, while Sonos and all home audio is passive kit to deliver recorded music. There is no user interaction other than with the volume control sliders and track selection. A better comparison with cameras is music making instruments like guitars and the like. But that said, the legacy camera industry faces similar existential challenges from big tech now.

More on the subject, if you also have owned music on a NAS which was THE source of music for Sonos when we bought into it. Sonos now does not see NAS users as important, because by their reckoning, over 90% of listening on Sonos is now done via streaming services. This is why Sonos does not do much to support development of features for NAS use - I believe that voice commands to start music play from a NAS are still missing in Sonos, for example.

This is another Sonos issue I have been able to sidestep by using a USB stick with all my ripped music on it, plugged into a Raspberry PI. With an instance of My Media for Alexa on the PI, Echos now accept voice commands to play songs/albums/playlists wirelessly from the USB stick, with album art on screen equipped Echos. Piped via line in to any Sonos speaker I wish to hear it on. 

If Sonos sees our use cases as having become irrelevant to them, we can in turn make Sonos less relevant in our homes by various such cheap workarounds.

We have meandered a ways from the Hi Res subject, so apologies for that to any other readers on this thread. But if it helps some to see how much of a red herring/distraction this Hi Res issue is, and how irrelevant to music play/ listening pleasure on Echos/Sonos/legacy HiFi kit, I think I may be excused. 

Lots to consider. What do you use as a source into the Connect? Obviously any streaming service can do that, but assuming you have a million CD’s ripped over time and sitting in a file directory somewhere, do you have a dedicated laptop, NAS, the Echo accessing a HDD somewhere else in the house, or are you using the S1 library tool for that? I don’t suppose it matters really though if you can get a good enough signal from wifi. I have a couple of Synology NAS drives gathering dust, but I don’t like them because they’re too busy and noisy. Also, my very early experience with NAS as a Sonos source was discouraging, though both Synology and Sonos may have matured to a point where it’s worth another shot. That was 2009, so things have probably gotten better. 
 

Do you find the sound quality and power from the Connect is good enough for your legacy speakers, or do you have a higher end integrated amp dedicated to that? In this setup, it would seem that the only purpose of the Connect is to link to the Sonos environment—both in and out—so what would the point of the line in jacks be anyhow? Wouldn’t you just use the Connect as a source into an IA, and then get the benefits of the IA for a clean signal to the speakers? 
 

And what about the library function? Apple’s abandonment of iTunes, while neither surprising nor wrong—and frankly overdue given the “bloatware” problem— to me was a fail given what they replaced it with. I’ve been playing with J River Media Center, but that’s also bloated, and not (in my experience to date) very LAN friendly. But that’s a recent experiment and the jury is both out and under informed so far. VOX wants money, for no real product benefit that I can see, which is another reason I am considering Roon. 

I think I have answered most of your questions in preceding posts.

I have no idea of what JRiver/VOX/Roon do or will do for me when I have no perceived holes in my user experience so I can’t comment on these solutions.

Fair enough. Thank you.

Regarding Sonos HD Radio - we just canceled our subscription.  Even with all components upgraded to Gen2 and S2 compatible units, support team says it’s likely our set-up won’t handle Sonos HD Radio inter-transmission and they admit it’s not our system, house, or anything external it’s Sonos limitations period!  Might work for you - jolly good!  Bet many will find it does NOT work in its current state.