My great Vinyl dilemma: the line in source level Bug and sonos lack of response

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So I am ecstatic over using a new play 5 gen 2 as my sweet little hi fi compact setup in my bedroom for playing vinyl and digital there. sonos does a better job translating vinyl to the digital realm and back than any other sub $1000 system. I bought and returned a few, including the Bluesound. play 5 gen 2 a BIG step up in SQ.

But I now have a 2 month problem that Sonos is aware of and won’t fix. my turntable has always had better than cd fidelity at source level set to level 9. well now level 9 is with a bug and won’t work. levels 1-8 work fine, but at a cost of lower fidelity from the digital volume reduction, making it pointless to spin records. yes, level 10 is still operative, but only if you select 9. selecting 10 leaves you at the last level you were on. thus 9 is now skipped altogether. the end result is if you toggle from 8 to 9, what is really happening is (listening) you are going from 8 to 10. closing app and reopening verifies all this.

why the big deal? because level 10 distorts with my albums and 8 or less sacrifices fidelity. this all started about 2 months ago.

so...I have emailed and called Sonos REPEATEDLY about this problem. they keep giving a standard line that it’s identified as a bug to fix and prioritized to fix it. but after one month of calls and emails (they know me well now) nothing fixed. finally in exasperation I asked for an engineer to call me. after no less than 3 separate requests for this, finally a Kevin C. from software engineering calls me. he’s very nice, but explains that he cannot divulge where the team is in the process. he states essentially he’s not allowed. when I stated that I just wanted to know if the bug will be fixed in a month or two more, he states he can’t tell me. when I asked if he can reassure me that it will EVER get fixed, he states he cannot.

so I am going to the Community on this. Is ANYONE else observing this bug and bothered by it enough to speak up here? PLEASE POST HERE IF YOU FEEL THE WAY I DO ABOUT THIS BUG. I clearly need a louder megaphone to move the needle on this issue.

Thanks to all!

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Ryan SAnswer

Retired Sonos Staff

Hey Tlcocks, I just checked in for you with the team on that ticket and the status. It is still being investigated and worked on. I know it’s frustrating not having an ETA or not knowing what the exact status is, but those things can change and we don’t want to give an ETA that isn’t definite. The right team is on it, but they have other things on their plate as well. The support team will make sure to let you know when it’s resolved, but they can’t keep you updated with every change that the ticket goes through.

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TlcocksAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Yes, personal email with Robert C contradicts what I was told previously. Now I am told the source level is adjusted in analog.
think I’ll take your advice Ratty. Your audio verbiage was eloquently succinct. Not being sarcastic. I promise. I enjoyed reading it. we’ll put.
but… the thrust of my thread is STILL that I want to hear from others that this little glitch reproduces on their devices or not.
I still want to hear from more, as testing it is exceedingly easy and quick.
again, thanks to all!

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TlcocksAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Oh, the tt has been cartridge upgraded, optimally aligned (Baerwald), optimally anti skate set. It does sound great, and with well conditioned albums, there’s scant little distortion. The at vm540ml is a great cart for the money. Absolutely obliterates inner groove distortion.

Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

The way I understand it, line-in level addresses the line in sensitivity, and overall gain applied to the signal received from the line-in device. And regarding your question, this is happening on the analog line before it gets converted to a digital signal as far as I know.

The line level is important because at some levels the audio signal may be too faint for the line input to even hear it. However, if you increase sensitivity and apply to much gain to a signal, it may cause it to be too loud and get distorted if the line signal is much stronger. Now this shouldn’t be extremely apparent between what we call line-in level 9 (0.8V) and line-in level 10 (0.6V), but it may be just enough distortion on the audio line to cause issues.

The issue at hand it pretty straightforward, when setting the source level to level 9, the app changes the level to 10 when you return to settings. When setting source level to level 10, the app reverts the line level back to the previous setting when you return to settings. They’re working on it currently.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

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TlcocksAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Thanks Ryan so much for clarification here. I was initially told it was digital domain, but am hearing clearly today it’s analog. Sorry to jgatie, who was right all along.

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TlcocksAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

I still feel however the suboptimal sensitivity of 8 vs 9 is an audible difference. When it’s fixed and I get 9 back, I’ll seriously give an honest listen

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Kumar

Now this shouldn’t be extremely apparent between what we call line-in level 9 (0.8V) and line-in level 10 (0.6V), but it may be just enough distortion on the audio line to cause issues.

That is very useful Ryan, thanks; can you find out and let us know what line in level at 1 is? Just curious.

I have to say that 0.6V isn't all that high; I had a Quad preamp that provide a range of input sensitivities where the highest sensitivity option went down to 0.1. I doubt that 0.6V at 10 will cause input signal clipping and bears out why I don't hear any distortion at 10 on my Connect Amps/Connects.

My experience also suggests that any speaker sound level differences between 8, 9 and 10 are not large and there is enough left in the volume sliders of the Sonos kit to compensate for these; to me the advantage of 10 is it leaves levels closer to those obtained from the NAS or the net for a given slider position.

ratty

I seem to recall the lowest sensitivity, at level 1, corresponds to 2V. There used to be a FAQ on this, but it’s been pulled.

I’ll bow to Ryan’s wisdom but if the front-end scaling is analog it would surprise me as it would surely make more sense to go ADC to 24 or 32bit and then scale digitally to align with 16bit. The Port might do it differently to, say, the ZP80.

The at vm540ml is a great cart for the money. Absolutely obliterates inner groove distortion.

“Mitigates” maybe. “Obliterates” is challenged by the laws of physics, given the linear resolution and tracking geometry issues inherent in the medium.