Replaced my PLAYBAR...

This is an interesting thread, but there are lots of things in here that I don't agree with, and seem just pure conjecture. To caveat, I have both a "proper" wired 5.1 AV setup in my main TV room, as well as Sonos throughout the house (including 2x 5.0 Sonos setups). So I feel fairly well placed to make comparisons.

Firstly, a Sonos 5.1 setup is crazy expensive. Just looking at the online shop, a Playbar/Playbase, Sub and 2 surrounds (Play 1s) costs £1,736. You could easily spend that money on a wired setup, as well as an AV Pro to come round, trunk the speaker cabling, set everything up and then have at least £200-300 left to spare. It would support all sound formats, and I would say arguably give you slightly better sound (but it's negligible).

But set a Sonos surround system up, feed it a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal and it does a great job (as it should do, because it's crazy expensive). You can get a decent amount of bass without the Sub too (quite why it needs to cost £600 is really beyond me). So the "low quality Dolby Digital" comment is just pointless and incorrect. Sonos has superb software and the technology of SonosNet is fantastic, but comes at a hefty cost.

Saying "I actually use fewer wires" for a Denos/Q Acoustics setup just means you didn't do your research properly. Any LG TV will pass on a 5.1 signal either from an internal or external source (and most Samsung or Sony ones do too), and differentiating between "thick" and "thin" cabling is seriously clutching.

I fully agree that you can have issues if you're a serial DVD/Blu-Ray watcher, and I agree you can get pesky lip-sync issues. I'm wondering how many folk bought the last Star Wars films (DTS only for the main soundtrack, DD for description only!), plugged it in and realised they couldn't hear anything (although out the box, most TV/Sonos setups seem to default to 2.0 anyway). Lipsync issues though, in my experience, are more down to the TV manufacturer than Sonos (but it absolutely is a pain).

It is patently obvious that home theatre was an afterthought for Sonos, else there is no other reason to begin with a purely optical soundbar and charge £650. If I was a betting man, I'd give it a 90-95% chance that Sonos is R&D'ing a HDMI Soundbar. There is just no other way to take that product line forwards, but how they would make it work for surround sound is another thing. I'm guessing there would be serious bandwidth issues for anything beyond DD5.1 with non-wired surrounds.

And just 2 points to make to the OP - if we want to start talking about so-called "true" AV setups, then things such as clear speech shouldn't even be an issue and you should be watching everything in Pure Direct mode. If you're having to make adjustments for this, it's not setup properly in the first place (save for the odd show/film with really bad mixing). Also, Sonos quite literally has a Speech Enhancement function! And buying speakers such as the (excellent) Q Acoustics ones and then quite literally dumping them all next to each other on your TV stand with little space between them (thus, little audio separation) and at a low level which must be way below your ear level, is just wrong - you might as well have just got a Playbar.

I also must say the people who seem to be worried about sound formats, etc IMO is a vast minority of overall Sonos users. Every single other person I know who has it simply connects to their WiFi and is done with it. Most don't even know about DTS, DD+, Atmos, etc. And if you care that much about it, I find it odd you'd run through all these hoops to get surround sound and not want a "proper" wired setup in the first place.

Sonos is a music streamer and simple soundbar first, and an extension into Home Theatre second. It's the best in the market at the first, and does an admirable (if very very costly) job at the second.

This is an interesting thread, but there are lots of things in here that I don't agree with, and seem just pure conjecture. To caveat, I have both a "proper" wired 5.1 AV setup in my main TV room, as well as Sonos throughout the house (including 2x 5.0 Sonos setups). So I feel fairly well placed to make comparisons.


Thanks for the response, I hoped this thread would provoke good discussion and feedback.

Firstly, a Sonos 5.1 setup is crazy expensive. Just looking at the online shop, a Playbar/Playbase, Sub and 2 surrounds (Play 1s) costs £1,736. You could easily spend that money on a wired setup, as well as an AV Pro to come round, trunk the speaker cabling, set everything up and then have at least £200-300 left to spare. It would support all sound formats, and I would say arguably give you slightly better sound (but it's negligible).

I couldn't agree more, except the "slightly better" part. Modern audio codecs are way better. The Sonos speakers are more than capable, but simply can't accept a high quality TV source.

But set a Sonos surround system up, feed it a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal and it does a great job (as it should do, because it's crazy expensive). You can get a decent amount of bass without the Sub too (quite why it needs to cost £600 is really beyond me). So the "low quality Dolby Digital" comment is just pointless and incorrect. Sonos has superb software and the technology of SonosNet is fantastic, but comes at a hefty cost.

There are two ways to interpret my "low quality" comment. The first, what I intended, is that Dolby Digital itself is low quality compared to other formats. I'm genuinely surprised how much better other codecs sound. I've protested about DTS support for many years, purely for convenience. A lot of the time I simply couldn't get 5.1 when the movie came in a DTS format and it was a pain. I never realised how much better quality DTS was.

Dolby digital has a maximum bitrate of 640kbps - for FIVE (and a bit) channels. That gives you about 120kbps per channel. Did you rip your CD music in 128kbps? Most people rip their CD music much higher than that as 128kbps MP3s sound awful. Spotify and others suggest their music is "CD quality" as they support 256kbps or higher. Dolby Digital does not. On the other hand, DTS streams in movies are up to around 1500kbps - around double that of Dolby Digital. The difference is clearly noticeable, even by my wife.

Sonos is a great music system, you can clearly hear the difference between a 128kbps and a 256kbps mp3. Sonos could clearly show the quality of DTS, but it doesn't support it.

Neither can Sonos support (for hardware reasons) any of the newer uncompressed audio codecs like Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio. The different in quality between these and the compressed formats is outstanding. I doubt a PLAYBAR set-up could fully demonstrate this though, especially with P1 or P3 surrounds.

So we have "gold medal" Atmos/DTS:X format, "silver medal" uncompressed DTS-HD/Dolby THD format and "bronze medal" DTS compressed audio. Legacy Dolby Digital doesn't even get a medal these days, it's OK but 128kbps cannot be regarded as high quality in 2017.

The second way of interpreting my "low quality" comment is that Sonos does a bad job of reproducing Dolby Digital. You say it does a "great" job. I'd say it does a good job, but it's not great. The main compromise is with the surround speakers, which are good but nothing like the front channels on an acoustic level. Most 5.1 set-ups will use identical drivers front and rear. The Sonos ones are nothing like each other and you get totally different tone. A good DD 5.1 set-up sounds a lot better, especially on the surround and center channels.

Saying "I actually use fewer wires" for a Denos/Q Acoustics setup just means you didn't do your research properly. Any LG TV will pass on a 5.1 signal either from an internal or external source (and most Samsung or Sony ones do too), and differentiating between "thick" and "thin" cabling is seriously clutching.

My LGTV will (with an unsupported engineer hack) pass a 5.1 signal from up to 3 sources, I have more than that. Sadly those HDMI ports are also on the left hand edge of the screen and stick out a bit, it's not good TV design. The design of my OLED, as you'll see above, has a clear stand with the panel visually "floating" above. The cables going to the cabinet are clearly visible and fewer cables is way better visually.

It's not just about "thick" and "thin" cabling. Speaker wires aren't just thin, they're also safe. Mains cables carry a mains current and voltage. As a result, it's illegal in most building codes to bury them in walls and health and safety prevents them being put under carpets or rugs. You can put speaker wires anywhere you like. Simply not the case with mains cables.

In my case, I removed an HDMI switch, an optical switch and a co-ax optical converter - it's still ironic that the only compatible blu-ray player at the time didn't have an optical port. These devices had 3 mains plugs between them, which meant an extra strip adapter behind my TV. It's all gone now. UK plugs are huge, so the saving was massive.

I fully agree that you can have issues if you're a serial DVD/Blu-Ray watcher, and I agree you can get pesky lip-sync issues. I'm wondering how many folk bought the last Star Wars films (DTS only for the main soundtrack, DD for description only!), plugged it in and realised they couldn't hear anything (although out the box, most TV/Sonos setups seem to default to 2.0 anyway). Lipsync issues though, in my experience, are more down to the TV manufacturer than Sonos (but it absolutely is a pain).

I believe many Sonos owners don't realise they are listening in 2.0. The basic Dolby pro-logic encoding usually present gives them a bit of sound from the rear so I think they believe it's working. It's not though and, critically, they're losing the discreet centre channel. End result is muffled speech and constantly having to turn the volume up and down during loud/quiet scenes.

I first got burned by the Superman blu-ray box set. It has Dolby Digital 5.1 in French and for commentary tracks. But the English movie audio was DTS only. It was a Birthday gift and I'd planned to watch all the films that day. I got silence. Ruined birthday, axe to grind. A new BD player kinda resolved the issue though, so it took many years to justify replacing my PLAYBAR - although I'd have done it sooner had I realised how poor the transcoded audio was compared to the original.

It is patently obvious that home theatre was an afterthought for Sonos, else there is no other reason to begin with a purely optical soundbar and charge £650. If I was a betting man, I'd give it a 90-95% chance that Sonos is R&D'ing a HDMI Soundbar. There is just no other way to take that product line forwards, but how they would make it work for surround sound is another thing. I'm guessing there would be serious bandwidth issues for anything beyond DD5.1 with non-wired surrounds.

PLAYBAR made sense and it fitted the market well. But they tried too hard and ticked too many boxes. It didn't need 5.1 support and the addition of this is what caused the problem. I guess without it they struggled with the price point, but adding on two more speakers for surrounds made this a major ticket item. At the time I was running a Bose Lifestyle cinema system and a Sonos Connect (ZP80). It worked but was fiddly as the Bose didn't support IR control and I was constantly juggling two controllers. PLAYBAR felt like a way out of that and I expected it would add newer codec support - my 1998 Bose system only supported Dolby Digital and I was already feeling DTS pain from some DVDs of the time. However PLAYBAR didn't live up to its home theatre promises - they swiftly change the website details after launch following complaints that it couldn't live up to the claims. A refund programme followed.

If they'd just offered good TV audio with Sonos music integration it would have been a fairly flawless product.

And just 2 points to make to the OP - if we want to start talking about so-called "true" AV setups, then things such as clear speech shouldn't even be an issue and you should be watching everything in Pure Direct mode. If you're having to make adjustments for this, it's not setup properly in the first place (save for the odd show/film with really bad mixing).

Also, Sonos quite literally has a Speech Enhancement function!

Totally agree, although Pure Direct is for people with a dedicated room. The Denon Audyssey tuning makes adjustments to compensate for varied speaker distances and furniture placement. After that, it just works. Sonos constantly needed the speech enhancement and, even then, there was a lot of yo-yo with the volume. The upgrade makes things clear at all times.

And buying speakers such as the (excellent) Q Acoustics ones and then quite literally dumping them all next to each other on your TV stand with little space between them (thus, little audio separation) and at a low level which must be way below your ear level, is just wrong - you might as well have just got a Playbar.

We all have to live with what we have. Compromises due to space and family life. It's not fully visible, but my TV is squeezed in a corner between a fireplace and a window. In the past I used to have my Bose cubes on floor stands either side of the screen. However I've since upgraded to a 55" panel and there is no room for the Q floor stands either side. They still sound amazing though, the Audyssey tuning does a way better job than TRUEPLAY to ensure the audio reaches the viewer as intended. The only change I may make is to buy two additional centre speakers to use on that shelf, instead of the supplied left/right speakers. The centre has an identical driver, but a better stand. I can then use the left/right speakers I free up for Atmos audio, which will be more balanced than my current set-up.

I also must say the people who seem to be worried about sound formats, etc IMO is a vast minority of overall Sonos users. Every single other person I know who has it simply connects to their WiFi and is done with it. Most don't even know about DTS, DD+, Atmos, etc. And if you care that much about it, I find it odd you'd run through all these hoops to get surround sound and not want a "proper" wired setup in the first place.

Indeed, the majority of people watch all their movies from low quality streaming these days and don't care about 5.1. A "proper" set-up will likely only appeal to disc buyers, a somewhat decreasing market although 4k blu-ray seems to be increasingly popular. Netflix now streams in Dolby Atmos on supported kit, so maybe demand will grow from streaming owners.

Jumping through hoops is never anybody's choice but with a family and a limited budget, you do what you can. I saw PLAYBAR as the ultimate solution but it never quite delivered - largely due to the DTS limitation. Other Soundbars wouldn't integrate with Sonos well and separate speaker solutions were very large or compromising on sound. We're in a position now though where good quality sound does fit in a small package. I put my Q speakers next to my old Bose and the difference in quality is amazing for something of around the same price point. Sure, they're a little bigger, but still plenty small enough to keep my wife happier. They fit on the TV stand and the built in stands create great value for the package - you usually end up spending £££ more for wall brackets.

Sonos is a music streamer and simple soundbar first, and an extension into Home Theatre second. It's the best in the market at the first, and does an admirable (if very very costly) job at the second.

Never going to dispute Sonos as a music device, been solidly the best in my 12 years of ownership. I think they need to ditch Home Theatre though and focus on the core market. The creation of PLAYBASE surprised me, especially given it too stuck to 90s codecs. The time would have been better spent on a battery powered Play:1 or something.

Nope.

Yes, I've gone full dedicated Denon AVR-X3300W and Q Accoustic speakers...but I actually use fewer wires overall without all the messy optical switches etc.

Just out of interest, how have you got fewer wires. Are the speakers wireless on your new Denon based setup?

The Sonos system requires me to wire my devices separately for video (hdmi) and audio (optical) separately. Add on to this the required hdmi and optical switches.

The speakers I am using on the Denon are not wireless (although such speakers are available) but they only need thin speaker wire, not thick power cables like the Sonos surrounds did.

The Sonos system requires me to wire my devices separately for video (hdmi) and audio (optical) separately. Add on to this the required hdmi and optical switches.

That's surprising. I found I was able to significantly reduce my number of cables because I used HDMI to carry audio/video into the television for the devices and a single optical down to the Sonos Playbase. With just 3 different sources there was more than enough connectivity built-in to my tv.

The Sonos system requires me to wire my devices separately for video (hdmi) and audio (optical) separately. Add on to this the required hdmi and optical switches.

That's surprising. I found I was able to significantly reduce my number of cables because I used HDMI to carry audio/video into the television for the devices and a single optical down to the Sonos Playbase. With just 3 different sources there was more than enough connectivity built-in to my tv.

Yes, if you have enough HDMI inputs in your TV, you can do that. Not everybody does.

You also need a TV that will pass-thru Dolby 5.1. Not everybody does.

You also need a TV which will manage the lipsync properly. Not everybody does.

You also need a DVD/blu-ray/4k player which won't try and pass DTS or just 2 channel PCM over the HDMI link. Not everybody does.

All of the above were challenges I had during PLAYBAR usage. My original Panasonic plasma would only pass-thru 2.0 audio, or silence. I couldn't do 5.1 without a load of external adapters.

My original blu-ray player would output DTS, or silence. So I had to get a Samsung, which used a co-ax digital audio connection. So I needed to buy an optical converter.

I didn't have enough HDMI inputs, so i had to use a switch.

My LG OLED TV fixed my 5.1 pass-thru problem but still couldn't handle DTS elegantly. It also has terrible lipsync problems when using optical. It also didn't have enough inputs, so I still had to use an HDMI switch.

We had numerous problems from lipsync, no audio due to DTS, no audio due to the optical switch being on the wrong selection, no video due to the HDMI switch being on the wrong selection and no audio because the optical cable fell out the PLAYBAR...again...as the socket broke within weeks of use and the plug would no longer click in - a fairly common fault.

So, yes, if you only have 3 sources and none of them are DTS and none of them are a Wii U, you can probably manage OK with PLAYBAR.

My LG OLED TV fixed my 5.1 pass-thru problem but still couldn't handle DTS elegantly. It also has terrible lipsync problems when using optical.

That's unfortunate. I was able to get mine synced up nicely.

Aside from having 2 surround speakers that will give you low quality Dolby Digital?

That's unfortunate. I was able to get mine synced up nicely.


Mine synced up just fine, most of the time. It just randomly had annoying faults, even when using internal apps like Netflix. Sometimes rebooting the TV fixed it, other times rebooting the PLAYBAR did.

Aside from having 2 surround speakers that will give you low quality Dolby Digital?

Lots of axes to grind - there really was never any good reason why a £2000 5.1 system couldn't at least support basic DTS. If it did, I'd have really struggled to replace it. Kudos to Sonos for offering a refund to mislead buyers but, at the time, there really were no decent alternatives on the market. Now pretty much everything includes Spotify, digital radio, WiFi and other options - it's USP has been eroded and now it's just a legacy soundbar.

In a word: wires. I don't want to run wires for surrounds and then try to hide them. Our living room is fully carpeted and I can't squeeze any wires between the carpet and baseboard.

For the Sonos I'd just need to get an audio extractor for the optical as my TV doesn't pass through 5.1. I could hide the extractor/switch in my entertainment center and just run one HDMI out to my TV and the optical to the Playbar. And the switch is compatible with my Harmony remote so no worries with switching inputs.

We watch 95% of our TV through a 4th gen Apple TV so I'm not as concerned with the lack of audio formats supported. Plus I have a Play:1 in our dining room and a Play:1 in the home office downstairs, so it'd be nice if they were connected to the TV (music through Apple TV, football games, etc.). I know I could get a connect but then it would only play in stereo versus 5.1 if we had the Sonos setup.

Could you not use something like the wireless surround speaker device I linked above? Although I've never seen a carpet under which you can't hide wires - they're thinner than the gripper around the edge of the room.

I've thought about a wireless adapter but was concerned about audio quality, delay, etc. I'm just not looking to do any major work to hide the wires.

What it really comes down to for me is to make up my mind on what I want to do. It would be much more cost effective for me to keep the AVR setup I have and figure out the surrounds, Connect, etc. issue versus going all in on the Sonos 5.1.

What it really comes down to for me is to make up my mind on what I want to do. It would be much more cost effective for me to keep the AVR setup I have and figure out the surrounds, Connect, etc. issue versus going all in on the Sonos 5.1.

I personally think you'll save so much money by running a wire that you could even buy a new carpet if needed. Likely it may just need refitting.

Your audio codec requirements are apparently minimal but pretty much every blu-ray is now DTS based and doesn't contain a Dolby Digital track. This may not be an issue though.

What will be an issue is the center speaker. You're used to having one that provided a very clear vocal track from whatever you watch. PLAYBAR won't do this so well. They offer a speech enhancement mode for a reason, without it you may find dialog very hard to hear. Even with it on we struggled a fair amount on TV shows - movies generally have a better mix. On a true AVR set-up, you can adjust the EQ and balance on the speakers as required. With PLAYBAR you're limited to the preset it arrives with, or using TRUEPLAY tuning which can be hit and miss - it changes slightly every time you tune it, even in the same room.

Valid points. I have both an Xbox One S and a PS4. Couldn't I just change the output settings on the device if watching blu ray? Genuine question. Or would the audio extractor help there?

I'm not familiar with watching blu-ray on a games console, I've always found them too noisy for that purpose. I understand there are some functions that may help, I think there is another thread which may contain this information.

The extractors are fairly basic, they will create an optical output of the audio data that is present in the HDMI stream. If that data is Dolby Digital (AC3) it will work. If it's DTS, it won't. Ensuring it is DTS is the tricky part.

Optical links are easy, you put a flashing light in one end, it comes out the other. That's it. With HDMI there is a big handshake, it's a two way thing. The devices talk to each other and discuss compatible video and audio formats - so if you plug a 4k player into a TV, it switches to 4k mode. But if you put the same player into a 1080p TV then it will automatically realise the TV can't handle 4k and send 1080p instead.

The same goes for audio. On my old Panasonic TV, I used to put on a blu-ray and it would talk to the TV and ask "do you support DTS?". The TV said "no, I don't understand DTS do you have a Dolby audio track?" If it did, I got Dolby (2.0) through the TV and 5.1 out of the digital audio port. If there was no Dolby track though, I got silence. It could only output DTS and Sonos didn't support it. The only option was buying a different Blu-ray player which allowed me to over-ride this.

On my LG panel, the blu-ray asks "can you handle DTS?". It says yes, so the output comes through DTS - which Sonos can't understand. Again, fiddling is required on a compatible player.

So extracting the audio is only half the game, you need to ensure that audio is in the right format and the HDMI handshake may complicate that.