Delay compensation when used with AV receivers

+1. I love my Sonos system (3x Play:5 and 2x Connect), but the Sonos speakers don't come close to the sound quality of my main Rotel/Dynaudio combo with a Connect box.

Without delay compensation on the 5's I'm getting fustrated enough that I might sell the lot and run wires and speakers throughout the house instead.

Come on guys, this has been an open request since 2005 (according to this thread...) and it isn't that difficult to fix in software

+1. I love my Sonos system (3x Play:5 and 2x Connect), but the Sonos speakers don't come close to the sound quality of my main Rotel/Dynaudio combo with a Connect box.

Without delay compensation on the 5's I'm getting fustrated enough that I might sell the lot and run wires and speakers throughout the house instead.

Come on guys, this has been an open request since 2005 (according to this thread...) and it isn't that difficult to fix in software

Other than my Play5, all my cables are hom erun, but I still want delay option as my HT speakers have delays for surround so when standing where I can here the HT speakers and kitchen speakers they are out of sync. I need to put the same delay on my Sonos so it's in Sync with receiver

So I'm waiting on the delivery of a Playbar and while doing a bit of research I came across this:

http://forums.sonos.com/showthread.php?t=33830&highlight=lip-sync

and so immediately returned to this evergreen thread (actually first checked my remote to see if it was an option that had been slipped into ver 4 software, no).

I sincerely hope now that the feature has actually been CODED and RELEASED that Sonos will correct this idiocy and apply it to the connect as well.

Can someone who's used this feature in the Playbar confirm how the lipsync works? I'd venture to guess that unlike the lipsync setting on a TV or Receiver, the sonos can only DELAY the sound, since it has no control over the video. So it probably works best in cases where the audio comes straight from a component and not from the TV (since I wouldn't think a TV would send audio SOONER than it's showing the accompanying video).

What we need for the CONNECT issue is more or less the same thing but for all the OTHER zones. We need every zone EXCEPT the connect to slow down to account for what's happening in the receiver.

Buzz, I am an authorized SONOS dealer and user. The idea isn't to remove the digital processing from the receiver by switching modes; it's to add a delay into the SONOS zone player to be able to continue using the DSP in the receiver without sync problems. If I bypass the receivers DSP using direct or pure settings on the receiver, I'm losing my sub woofer and enhanced sounds for that zone that sometimes I and others enjoy. I'm also frustrating my customers because they need to switch between sound formats when grouping zones as opposed to listening to the single zone. This makes no sense to my customers who barely know how to use a universal remote, never mind the settings on a receiver.

johnrist,

I'm trying to work through how this delay compensation might work. Since the follow-on equipment, in your case a YAMAHA receiver, is adding its own delay, SONOS would need to add a negative delay. SONOS cannot know the receiver's delay, which might vary by program type. The SONOS system would need to delay the other SONOS units, not the unit wired to the YAMAHA. While I'm not sure if SONOS could devise a timing adjustment scheme that your customers could work with, if the receiver timing changes and the system timing is skewed (again!), customers will blame you or the SONOS system.

... if it did then we just tell them not to. 🙂

So it's OK to tell them not to *change* DSP, but not OK to tell them not to use it in the first place. Got it. :)

I just can't see Sonos implementing something that requires 'regular tune-ups'. They've always defaulted to 'easy to use' over 'does everything possible'. I look at feature requests through my wife's eyes. She never used my pre-Sonos equipment -- too many buttons and knobs and dials and meters -- but she uses Sonos literally every day, because it just works, all the time, every time. If I have to tell her she can group the family room to the living room but it requires occasionally adjusting some geek setting buried somewhere in the Controller, she just won't use it.

I hope they figure out something; some of us have receivers with everything in the digital domain -- even volume -- so sync with one of those is impossible even when the DSP is off. But it won't be at the expense of the user experience.

... their system might have to be "tuned up" every once in awhile to keep it aligned. Especially since that tune up would only take a couple of minutes to do.



A few of the geek types might tune up, but I don't think that a majority of users would view this as a "feature". Personally, I can be "geek" when I need to be, but I just want the music to play -- while I'm geeking something else. For me the music system setup should be a one time event.

With respect to 200ms here and 100ms there, one would need to delay everything by the longest latency, then add the difference in individual rooms. Changing the global delay as rooms are added or deleted from a Group would create a little glitch that sticklers like me would not appreciate.

So it's OK to tell them not to *change* DSP, but not OK to tell them not to use it in the first place. Got it. :)

Except that on some receivers it's not simply a matter of turning off DSP. Some receivers will introduce a delay no matter what the settings which is why every quality television these days features a lip-sync setting -- to delay the picture enough to match what sound the receiver is playing.

I just can't see Sonos implementing something that requires 'regular tune-ups'. They've always defaulted to 'easy to use' over 'does everything possible'.

In fairness, I don't actually BELIEVE that it would require any tuning up. Buzz presented a scenario (which I think unlikely) and I responded with a just-in-case fix. Dismissing the feature based on the existence of a fix for a remote scenario would be like me suggesting we have steak on the grill for dinner, Buzz asking what happens if the steak is undercooked and we get food poisoning and me responding that while I don't think it's likely, if it does happen we'd either vomit or go to the hospital and have our stomachs pumped out. Then you step in and say, "I don't think we should plan dinner around something that makes us vomit or visit the ER." :-)

I hope they figure out something; some of us have receivers with everything in the digital domain -- even volume -- so sync with one of those is impossible even when the DSP is off. But it won't be at the expense of the user experience.

Not sure what you mean by sync being impossible unless you're saying that your receiver is like the ones I described above where there's always a delay in which case, let's be honest . . . slowing down the other zones by SOME mechanism is the only thing that's ever going to solve it.

For those who disagree with me that the "tune up" is actually a highly unlikely need, ask yourself this: "Other than when you got your TV, when was the last time you had to "tune up" the lip sync setting on your TV. Once the timing is right it stays right.

A few of the geek types might tune up, but I don't think that a majority of users would view this as a "feature".

Per my answer above, I DO think it would be a one-time event and like all the other equalization settings it would only be there for when someone needs it. Again, this is FAR better than the current scenario of those who have the delay being unable to use their systems fully.

With respect to 200ms here and 100ms there, one would need to delay everything by the longest latency, then add the difference in individual rooms. Changing the global delay as rooms are added or deleted from a Group would create a little glitch that sticklers like me would not appreciate.

I think either way could work, the reason I preferred mine is that 99% of the time I'll bet most zones are NOT grouped with a delayed zone so there would be no need to buffer at all. By your method every zone would have to be buffered at every moment of play, even in rooms that were never part of a group. While the processing overhead is probably minimal, remember that the buffer will also affect (necessarily) control. So when you switch to a different song manually in a 300 ms delayed zone group, there is by necessity a 300 ms delay before Sonos can start playing that song (it can't buffer what it doesn't know you're going to select).

Since the delays we're talking about are all measured in milliseconds, in reality adding an extra 100 ms delay to the music when you bring in a new zone is inaudible. Spread it out over the 2 or 3 seconds it takes to bring the new zone online and you're talking about (100 ms / 2500 ms = 4%) a 4% slowdown in the pace of the music across a few seconds.

Slingbox does this when you first connect to a box, but they're doing it with 15 seconds of content building up in buffer across the first minute or two and it's still barely noticeable in the playback speed. In short, there wouldn't need to be a glitch/silence/gap/hiccup. More like a few seconds of an imperceptible shift in tempo.

Again, either method would work, but mine improves control responsiveness during what (for my clients at least) is the 99% of time when they're listening in a zone or group of zones that do NOT include a delay.

BTW, I realize in pointing out that the majority of listening is not affected by this issue (my 99% comment) that I open myself to the valid point that this is a minor issue. The problem is that the 1% of the time where all the zones are grouped together is for parties. And when 100 people are mingling through a Sonos customer's house, that would seem to be the EXACT time that Sonos would not want their system to sound like some crummy out-of-sync system with an aggravating "echo".

... ask yourself this: "Other than when you got your TV, when was the last time you had to "tune up" the lip sync setting on your TV. Once the timing is right it stays right.

One of the reasons that I rarely watch TV is poor lip sync. In my experience it varies from station to station and often from show to show or commercial to show. I'll sometimes watch or listen, but doing both simultaneously is too distracting for me. Curiously, the movie channels and streaming services usually have better sync.