Sonos and Hifi compatibilty

I had the time to read people on the community and i found easily at least 6 topics of people describing my problem 100 % exactly in details. So i can remove a hardware issue on my checklist.Sadly, after at least 1 hour or reading i understand that maybe sonos are just not capable to perform well without ethernet cable for hifi music on multi devices.

If the service bitrate is high enough, it can cause sync (with dropouts) errors on some (or all) of the members in a large group because the group coordinator's wireless card cannot accommodate a high bitrate multiplied by the number of grouped players and result of lack of buffer.

As being said sonos services as tidal and deezer should be more optimized to fit to the sonos devices specs capabilities and not be overwhelmed like this.

Maybe adding a bitrate preset on the next app update? @Jeff S @Simon B 

Sonos has always stuck to the line that it won’t support any content with a sampling rate higher than 48kHz. This has been the case since 2005. 

If you really want to use higher sampling rates from selected services (presumably delivered to a suitable third party DAC) I suggest you look outside Sonos.  

BTW both the gentlemen you @mentioned no longer work for Sonos, as you’d find if you followed the links to their profiles. 

@ratty I never asked for an higher rate than 48kHZ.

I thought you did. What do the higher bitrates, e.g. 9216 kbps from Tidal, imply? 24 bits x 192 kHz x 2 channels = 9216 kbps

@ratty maybe you should read more carefuly what i said. I never asked a higher bitrate i asked for a better compatibility with third party services.

Well in truth I did try to figure out your initial post yesterday evening, and I couldn’t grasp the point you were trying to make. Sonos is already compatible with the services in question. It simply requests a format -- bit depth, sampling rate -- which it does support, i.e. nothing over 48kHz. 

@ratty This is why i asked to the sonos team to optimize the fact that hifi plus streaming services should be locked to the maximum capability of sonos devices. This look like not the case and this is why issues comes in.

And unlock it for those who want to ethernet cables their devices. This is just an idea.

So you are asking for higher sampling rates to be supported?

As you have already noted, 24 bits x 48 kHz x 2 channels = 2304 kbps. Bit rates above that -- you cited 9216 kbps -- imply sampling rates greater than 48 kHz.

It doesn’t matter how the Sonos player is connected -- wired or wireless -- it will still only request up to 48 kHz content from the service. It doesn’t -- and possibly won’t ever -- support sampling rates greater than 48 kHz internally. 

Even at 24 bits 48kHz its do not works well on multi devices without ethernet cable. I believe that is the main reason off all topics of unsync issue of the community. Maybe a hardware upgrade for a 4th generation? I don't know... wireless technology is extremely unstable in all kind of systems. Since all streaming app make the step for the hi res, with dolby, 360 and master records i don't believe that help a lot. Just my opinion.

Sonos works fine with 24/48 wirelessly, unless perhaps there are a lot of players grouped and the wireless bandwidth is constrained, whether due to interference, distance, or the legacy of SonosNet.

With an increasing tendency for Sonos users to run systems on WiFi meshes, and at 5GHz, such wireless issues can be resolved anyway. My system of course started out on SonosNet back in 2007. Today it runs much better on a 5GHz WiFi mesh.