Sonos Radio HD-Thoughts?

Free Sonos radio has been a major bust in my house so not that excited. It’s free so no shade on sonos just not to my taste.

$7.99 is more than double what I would pay.

If the content is good I would pay for human curated content. But this is competing with several on demand services, nuggs.net, sirius and my own music so for me to buy in it would need to be very good and cheap. But I probably can’t have both.

For the monthly fee I would expect mobile and web apps. I do more listening on my phone/car/laptop than sonos.

What’s the HD content here? Reading the release I see CD quality, not HD. I don’t think I am being pedantic by bringing this up. 

Finally, this is pure speculation but with Sonos moving to optional (for now) monthly service fees and adding newer speakers to upgrade program they are signalling some future changes that make me nervous.

I hope I am wrong but past behavior doesn’t make me confident. I am definitely rethinking purchases for family christmas. Kids will get cheaper small Homepods and I won’t replace my Raspberry Pi players.  

I have signed up to the free trial, but am unlikely to renew for these reasons:

• Half my listening is to classical, but only two classical stations available,
• Sonos HD is not HD but lossless CD quality (which is what I had assumed the free Sonos radio to be anyway, disappointing),
• Too expensive for what it is, unless Sonos significantly increase the content, especially classical,
• Sonos are ripping-off the British consumer: $8.00 in the US, $10.50 in Britain.

I’ve generally been happy with Sonos radio, and I haven’t found the ads to be too annoying.  I don’t know that the HD quality, and the hours I listen each month, is going to justify $8 a month.

Yes, the ability to use the service while not at home would make a big difference for me.

HD isn’t a definite term that corresponds to any specific audio quality.  Sonos HD is actually the same exact quality as Amazon’s HD.  You’re correct though that others will assume HD means 24 bit.  

https://www.amazon.com/music/unlimited/why-hd?ref=dmm_LP_WHYHD

I do think that the upgrade program could be an indication of future system features to come, but I can’t imagine it’s going to mean a repeat of the S1/S2 split.   It obviously couldn’t be about HD quality audio, but it could be a feature that only works on the more modern speakers...that I can’t really imagine right now.

It could also be just a customer loyalty program, perhaps trying to fix some bad relationships.  And other thought I had, is that perhaps Sonos isn’t getting sales from existing customers like they want, and this just boosts the numbers.  

I am most curious with how the speakers actually support HD as I thought everyone was making a stink about them not supporting various high def formats. As far as the service, they will just need to continue adding more variety stations so it takes the place of my SiriusXM online subscription. I see this as a compliment to my Apple Music subscription. I wish you could have the ability to use it with the Move with Bluetooth as well as having an outside home service as well. Also as I play with it I wish you could save songs into a playlist as well. Just initial thoughts. 

The older speakers, the ones that can now only work in an S1 system, can not support HD.  That’s the reason why Sonos Radio HD is only available in S2.

Before I posted I googled HD audio to see what it meant and saw that Wikipedia says its HiRes. Not that this is the definitive word, I mean it’s wikipedia, but I had never heard CD quality referred to as HD Quality and wikipedia was backing it up. But by your comment I take it to mean that Sonos Radio HD - the HD is part of the name, a marketing term, not an indication of bit depth or whatever. Which I can understand

Amazon was the first to pull this stunt of labelling what they do - CD quality - as HD to suit their marketing convenience, so why can't Sonos?!

But then why can't S1 play Sonos Radio HD? The ability to play CD quality has been there in Sonos from day 1. Only to force upgrades therefore?

Not that personally I care or need it, I find that both Spotify 320 kbps and apple music 256 kbps music sounds just as good as lossless cd rips from my server.

Aside from content and hardware issues don’t forget your ears.

Can you actually hear a difference in the plain versus HD music?

I can’t, so why would I pay more for it?

What do you mean plain and what do you mean HD?

Good question; unlike in the world of TV where things like HD Ready, HD, 4K and now 8K are clearly defined, HD audio is not. So Amazon and now Sonos can attach HD to whatever suits them at the time.

Perhaps because the resolving power of the human ear is much lower than that of the human eye, this fuzzy situation has long prevailed, even for things like a common definition for “audiophile kit”, for which there is none in technical terms, leaving that to be understood as whatever is more expensive than kit at mass manufacture scale benefited price points of makes like Sonos.