Sonos S2 and audio quality from Vinyl

Enlarged broadband? Uncompressed Line-In uses 16/44 WAV encoding. That hasn’t changed. Since vinyl has, at best, a dynamic range equivalent to around 12 bits I hardly think it would be worth encoding at 24-bit resolution.

Sonos doesn’t support MQA. I’d be astonished if they ever did.

Apple Music streams to Sonos at AAC 256kbps. Qobuz streams to Sonos at CD quality (16-bit lossless). Nothing has changed in that regard with S2.

No that’s not completely true.

S2 now supports 24bit up to 41 kHz and can stream better than 16 bit from quboz.

ok for line in. Thanks 

The S2 announcement says

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.

Specifically Sonos have said that it does not apply to online services.

The Qobuz article says

What Qobuz sound quality is available on Sonos?

On Sonos you can stream 320 kbps MP3 streams through the Qobuz Premium Subscription and experience the world’s first FLAC streaming service on Sonos (16 bit /44.1 kHz FLAC) using the Qobuz Hi-Fi Subscription.

Up to 48 kHz. And only for local libraries.

To be completely honest I used Deezer hifi in the past that has same CD quality you mentioned and didn’t find any difference from Apple Music. Yesterday instead I tried both Apple Music and Quboz with same song and the difference was really big.

btw can you link the Sonos communication in which you read your quoting?

i also read this from quboz page:

”Another development for Qobuz is the announcement by Sonos – possibly the world’s best-known multi-room audio system – that its new S2 software will offer hi-res wireless audio on the new Sonos Play, One, Sonos Amp, and new Playbar with Atmos speakers. The S2 software will be able to stream full 24-bit audio. Currently, the Sonos can only handle Qobuz 44.1 kHz CD-quality stream, which is still a big step up from Spotify’s 320k MP3s, the arrival of S2 will mean that Sonos can deliver the full Qobuz hi-res experience on any compatible S2 speaker. Denis Thébaud is excited about the development and tells me: “It’s great that Sonos is adding 24-bit audio support to their platform. In 2020, it’s a must!”. 

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/introducing-s2-new-app-and-os-for-sonos-6841762

High Resolution Audio

 

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.

The Sonos Arc is a Dolby Atmos soundbar, and S2 brings support for that audio to Sonos for home theater and music. Dolby Atmos can be read from Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby MAT, and Dolby TrueHD. 

I too was really looking forward to the S2 update to play Tidal MQA files through my Sonos Beam only to be really disappointed like a lot of other people.  I already have a very annoying lip sync issue with my Beam and Sony Bravia TV and now still no ability to play Tidal MQA.  Will Sonos ever be able to play MQA as this is now a deal breaker for me and I’m seriously considering moving to other speakers that can?

Personally I wouldn’t be holding my breath waiting for MQA support. I’d be amazed if Sonos ever incorporated it. It’s proprietary, and regarded in certain parts of the industry as fundamentally flawed. It’s also increasingly a ‘solution’ to a problem (limited internet bandwidth) which is disappearing by the day. Some services already offer 'hi-res’ streams with simple lossless compression, foregoing all the MQA complexity.