Hi-Res audio with wired input on Sonos Ace

I have exactly the same questions, but I gotta tell you that I used mine with a Fiio KA11 and the sound difference was hughe. The only problem that I found is when listening at high volumes it would distort higher notes but I think that might be a DAC problem. As far as I know, the era 300 downsamples anything coming from line-in (3.5mm to USB-C)  to 24 bit 48Khz, so I guess the Ace headphones do the same. 

iPad Pro (3rd Gen) outputting over USB-C to UGreen DAC and using the 3.5mm to USB-C audio cable to the Sonos Ace, playing tracks from Neil Young & Crazy Horse ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ album streaming from Amazon Music UltraHD gives this ALAC audio output:

Hi @Ken_Griffiths, that is a spiffy little DAC! Is this the one you have?

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Adapter-Headphone-Converter-Compatible/dp/B0CG5FTHT9

The Bluetooth 5.4 audio chip in the Ace by the way is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound Apt-X HD audio and that’s considered as being lossless audio playback - see the attached chart. Some new Android phones support this Bluetooth audio playback quality - I’ve not got a supported Snapdragon device so can’t provide any further detail or comments on how it sounds, but I do have a couple of Bluetooth Apt-X HD TX’s (Fiio BTA30 Pro & 1Mii B03Pro) and even that quality audio sounds pretty good to my ears. 

Love the Ace by the way - think it’s build quality is great, really happy with its ANC noise cancelling and aware mode features, but the winner for me is the ‘TV Audio Swap’ with the Sonos Arc and the Head-Tracking ‘Spatial Audio’ - just great for immersive Movie streaming at Home.

Yes, I’m sure that’s the same one - here’s the actual link I purchased from on Amazon in the UK

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CG5FTHT9

UGreen also make this similar adapter aswell (see below link) for Apple iOS devices with the older lightning port - it works well too with the Ace, but just to say it’s limited to 24bit 48kHz audio quality - which is still good enough and I can’t tell the difference when using this with my old iPhone XR.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B086MLBB3F

Why would an analog connection need to go through a DAC?  It’s already analog. 

If I do a ‘straight through’ USB-C to USB-C connection from an iPad Pro direct to the Ace (no external DAC), using the other charger/data cable supplied with the Ace, I get 24/48 audio quality and that’s limited by the iPad Pro itself, looking at the image here below.

It’s the reason why I purchased the UGreen DAC mentioned earlier. Not that my hearing can tell the difference, but it was cheap, convenient, had some good reviews and I was really just curious if the Ace could achieve 24/192 audio quality, which from what I see here, it can.

It would be nice though to see some official comment about these things, as I’ve looked around online and could not find anything to confirm my own findings, as mentioned in my earlier posts. 

It seems this is how it is implemented though, and would explain why the Ace cannot be used in passive mode. I suspect that it might be done this way so that EQ settings modified in the Sonos app can be used in both wireless and wired connections, since it appears to save those settings in the Ace chipset itself.

Ken_Griffiths wrote:

If I do a ‘straight through’ USB-C to USB-C connection from an iPad Pro direct to the Ace (no external DAC), using the other charger/data cable supplied with the Ace, I get 24/48 audio quality and that’s limited by the iPad Pro itself, looking at the image here below.

It’s the reason why I purchased the UGreen DAC mentioned earlier. Not that my hearing can tell the difference, but it was cheap, convenient, had some good reviews and I was really just curious if the Ace could achieve 24/192 audio quality, which from what I see here, it can.

It would be nice though to see some official comment about these things, as I’ve looked around online and could not find anything to confirm my own findings, as mentioned in my earlier posts. 

 

How do you explain that when you connect the Ace to a Windows PC or Mac via USB the maximum sample rate you can select is 16-bit/48kHz?

Hi @HiFi Oasis, terminology correction to your thesis: your suggestion is that an analog signal goes through an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), then through EQ in the digital domain, and finally through a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) ...

        analog input > ADC > digital EQ > DAC

I cannot say if that is what happens in the Ace headphones, tho’ I know there are audio components that employ such a signal path.

This is what I’m seeing… I played the same Neil Young ‘Rust’ album tracks using Amazon Music UHD - the audio quality is shown as 24/192 on the AM UHD service (iPad Pro). I output that audio to the UGreen DAC and in-turn ran an analog audio cable into a Sonos Five line-in port and that gave me this display in the App…

I think 24/48 audio is what a Sonos S2 product is capable of these days and the older S1 system can apparently handle upto 16/44 audio IIRC. (I’m sure someone will correct me if I have these things wrong). I don’t have an S1 product with a line-in to test with the DAC to see if the output changes to 16/44.

Anyhow, if I leave the UGreen DAC connected to the iPad and remove the line-in analog cable linked to the Five and simply replace it with the 3.5mm to USB-C (ADC) cable (supplied with the Headphones) and connect it to the Ace and restart the same track, I then see this….

When I saw this, it led/leads me to believe that the Ace supports 24/192 audio… but if I ditch the UGreen DAC altogether and just do a straight through USB-C to USB-C link instead between the iPad & Ace, I see an output of 24/48 audio - so I think at the very least the Ace supports 24/48 audio quality - I’m just not sure why I’m seeing 24/192 when I use the UGreen DAC.

Someone might have to clear the mist for me, but at no point in my own tests, have I seen 16 bit audio when playing a 24 bit audio track. Even the lighting to 3.5mm iPhone adapter I also mentioned in my earlier post gave me a display showing 24/48 audio on the Ace when playing the ‘Rust’ album tracks.

I can only speak as I find, but I’ll be surprised if a wired Ace is just capable of playing upto 16/44 audio, rather than UHD 24/48, or higher, but maybe someone will go onto show evidence to prove me wrong. I should add that I am not in anyway obsessed by these things, labels/badges in Apps… and happy with CD Quality 16/44 audio anyway. I’m just curious to know the actual answer of what the Ace can/will support.

Hi @Ken_Griffiths, this discussion has kinda’ mixed-and-matched the two different ways to connect to Ace in a wired manner …

• Digital. This is what we normally think about when connecting over USB, a purely digital signal path from phone/tablet/computer to headphones. The digital-to-analog conversion is performed by the DAC inside Ace, and that DAC appears to be capable of 24bit/48kHz. Which is quite stellar audio quality my any measure!
• Analog. This is old school 3.5mm territory, an analog signal path from device to headphones. The digital-to-analog conversion is performed by a DAC inside the phone/tablet/computer … or by your UGreen DAC that is capable of 24bit/192kHz. In this case, it doesn’t make sense to talk about the Ace bitdepth/bitrate because it receives an analog signal.

It’s a fair bet that the DAC inside Ace is capable of 24bit/48kHz, based on everything you’ve shown. And your UGreen DAC may very well sound different, not so much because of the ‘better’ specs but because it has its own sonic characteristics.

Yes, makes sense, but just to say I don’t think the Ace Headset sounds any better with the UGreen adapter - it just sounds the same to me - Anything over and above 16/44 CD quality is lost on me as I’m just from the planet Earth. 😀

The one point I just want to raise here (causing myself some confusion) is when using the UGreen DAC, the cable from that to the Ace is 3.5mm analog to USB-C - I wonder why the Amazon Music App displays 24/192 in that instance on the Ace, but 24/48 for the line-in on the ‘Five’, when clearly the analog signal there (for each Sonos device) is a voltage wave form with no 0’s/1’s and therefore it’s not got a digital bitrate, or sample rate, but the App is able to distinguish that the line-in on the Five is capable of 24/48, but shows the Ace as capable of 24/192 - that’s where the mist is in my own case? I hope that makes sense. 

Anyhow, I too think the Ace is capable of handling 24/48 audio (currently) as the straight-through digital USB-C to USB-C link is suggesting that - it’s why I included it in my post earlier. I am still wondering though why I’m seeing 24/192 for the Ace with that DAC and it will keep niggling me until I see something that might help clear the mist.

Maybe it’s a case that the Ace’s own DAC is itself actually capable of 24/192 audio quality and is somehow reporting that fact, but it’s full potential has not yet been unleashed and Sonos have currently restricted it to 24/48 for the time being. That’s what my own thoughts are, but it’s just ‘blue sky’ thinking with nothing really tangible in support of the idea.

I was also hoping it would be capable of 24/48 (which seems to be the what the internal DAC of other Sonos products support), that’s why I was a bit surprised when I only see 16/48 on my Mac when using usb-c to usb-c (which correlates to what @HiFi Oasis also has found). But based on our screenshots, you were able to get 24/48 with usb-c to usb-c using iPad and Amazon Music?

I did test the 3.5 to usb-c cable included with Ace on my Era 300, and it works. Since the Era does require a digital input (afaik), it shows that this cable includes a ADC and there is a ADC/DAC conversion when using analog from source as well.

Hi

from mi MacBook Air M1 ace with USB C in midi Options I see 24 bit 48hz only one option.

Andrea.

I think that’s pretty much the consensus that the Ace supports up-to 24/48 lossless HiRes audio over a wired connection. 

Is this for Input or for Output in the MIDI Options? On input (mic) I also see 1ch 24bit, but for output I only get 2ch 16bit

Ken_Griffiths wrote:

Anyhow, if I leave the UGreen DAC connected to the iPad and remove the line-in analog cable linked to the Five and simply replace it with the 3.5mm to USB-C (ADC) cable (supplied with the Headphones) and connect it to the Ace and restart the same track, I then see this….

When I saw this, it led/leads me to believe that the Ace supports 24/192 audio… but if I ditch the UGreen DAC altogether and just do a straight through USB-C to USB-C link instead between the iPad & Ace, I see an output of 24/48 audio - so I think at the very least the Ace supports 24/48 audio quality - I’m just not sure why I’m seeing 24/192 when I use the UGreen DAC.

Someone might have to clear the mist for me, but at no point in my own tests, have I seen 16 bit audio when playing a 24 bit audio track. Even the lighting to 3.5mm iPhone adapter I also mentioned in my earlier post gave me a display showing 24/48 audio on the Ace when playing the ‘Rust’ album tracks.

I can only speak as I find, but I’ll be surprised if a wired Ace is just capable of playing upto 16/44 audio, rather than UHD 24/48, or higher, but maybe someone will go onto show evidence to prove me wrong. I should add that I am not in anyway obsessed by these things, labels/badges in Apps… and happy with CD Quality 16/44 audio anyway. I’m just curious to know the actual answer of what the Ace can/will support.

 

If it helps clear the mist, The above isn’t showing anything about the adc rates after the analogue cable, you are seeing the ugreen adapter input value. The ugreen adapter has no way to display what is happening inside the Ace or the ace 3.5mm to usb cable over the analogue connection.

If you have a 32bit/384Khz source going into the ugreen that output would list 32 bit/384 kHz.

What it is showing isn’t the full signal path which is

Source 24/192 — digital — iPad Pro 24/192 — digital — ugreen input 24/192 — ugreen DAC output (analogue) — 3.5mm analogue — ace cable ADC — ace 

What it does show is nothing has changed the bit size and sample rate (24/192) from the source to the ugreen adapter input. It isn’t showing you what happens after the ugreen converts it to analogue. So what the adc in the cable or the ace internal values are.

24 bit 48hz in the first voice Input…

But then the Sonos Ace connected via USB to the Mac book don't convey lossless audio?

With my EarPods usb c with my MacBook Air in midi output I see 2 ch 24 bit 48 Khz. instead Sonos Ace 16 bit 2 ch.

Not lossless?  A Mistake…

Define lossless audio.

According to Apple

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/118295

Apple Lossless is upto 24/48

Apple Hires Lossless is upto 24/192

“Lossless” has to do with the type of codec used to encode the audio, not the bit-depth or sample rate.  You can have lossless 16-bit 44.1 kHz, it doesn’t need to be 24-bit.  In fact, if you know about sampling (and this guy does: 24/192 Music Downloads), anything over 16-bit 44.1 kHz makes no sense because you are wasting bandwidth on dynamic range that, if used, could render you deaf, and a frequency range that no human can hear.