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Enthusiast II
July 29, 2018

Sonos doesn’t really do “5.1”

Before you buy any SONOS equipment to achieve a 5.1 setup please consider this: a Denon AVRX2400 AV Amp, Elac CINEMA 5.1 speaker system, all cables professionally installed behind the walls gives you true home cinema with all the surround sound codecs you could ever want with no cables showing for way less than £1000 (see Richer Sound web site for prices). Or spend £1700 on a SONOS setup and get stereo or Dolby Digital only plus you may have to buy a new DVD player to play your UHD DVD’s, a HDMI Switch then deal with lip sync issues etc, etc.

SONOS do speakers, great speakers, but only for music. They are stealing money from people wanting 5.1 for their TV. The system I suggest costs at least £700 less, hides all the wires (what we all want) and sounds much, much better. Go mad, stick a couple of speakers in the ceiling and get real Dolby Atmos for £150 more and still save yourself £550. I have begged SONOS to tell me if they are developing a surround sound product with HDMI and more choice of listening eg DTS, Dolby X etc but they point blank refuse to discuss future products stating they are catering for the “modern listener”. That put me in my place. SONOS remind me of great companies who made world class products like Blackberry, Blockbuster, Compaq and SAAB, just a minute, they all went out of business because they didn’t produce what their customers wanted at a competitive price (no pedants please, I know there were other factors which meant these companies went bust, I am just illustrating a point). Are SONOS going down the same route? Think about it while you are watching your new laser disc.

I would be interested to hear any arguments against my proposed SONOS alternative system.
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150 replies

Lyricist III
February 28, 2019
I hope im not coming across as aggressive it is not my intention.
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melvimbe
February 28, 2019
People assume that in today's world, research shouldn't be required, particularly with high end equipment. I would bet that the average consumer may have heard of DTS, Dolby, but have no idea what it is or that it even matters. If all the plugs connect together, than it should just work. With a lot of home theater equipment, that is definitely the case as they'll support every codec that's reasonably popular. It's really not even accurate to say people assume, because they don't know enough about the tech to really make an assumption.

I don't think blame really needs to be applied anywhere with this. People are going to get frustrated, and that's reasonable. Not every problem has to be someone's fault.
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Danny
March 4, 2019
I rent and can't rip out the walls... So case closed as far as I am concerned... 😃
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Lyricist III
June 5, 2019
june 2019. I just bought Denon professional DN-500BD MKII disc player (at B&H Photo in NYC) and, out of the box, plays dvd dts 5.1 over my bravia/sonos sound bar with surround speakers listening now. easy! (couldnt really tell from the online research i did, so i just went for it and it works. about $400
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Airgetlam
June 5, 2019
Note: if it is playing on a Sonos soundbar of any type, the the receiver is altering the signal to Dolby Digital, and not sending a DTS signal.
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Bruce
Lyricist III
June 5, 2019
YES!!! thats what it does
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Contributor I
July 16, 2019
I'm of mixed views. I just purchased a Playbar with sub and two One's for surrounds. When I'm sourcing DD 5.1 from my BD player, the sound is fantastic, and I love being able to integrate the media room sound with the other rooms equipped with Sonos. Love my Sonos speakers, which is why I splurged on the Playbar.

That said, I've spent the better part of the last 3 days trying to get the Playbar to play 5.1 and have only managed to get that done if I'm using my BD player to play certain discs or the limited 5.1 content available to stream through it from Prime.

My Roku UItra? Absolutely useless with the Playbar as far as I've been able to tell, unless I want to listen to simulated surround. My DTS discs? Same thing. I'm not sure that I'd have opted for a different system if I'd have known a week ago what I know now (probably couldn't have convinced me NOT to go with Sonos since I was so utterly enamored with it), but I wish I'd have understood better the limitations. That's on me and a lack of research, I guess.

If Sonos comes out with a Playbar that can manage true surround signals other than DD5.1, I'll really be miffed that I didn't wait. Anyhow. A certain amount of buyer remorse coupled with tech hookup fatigue speaking here.
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Lyricist III
August 1, 2019
Here are two reasons. First, the licensing and support costs might significantly raise the price of the products. Obviously, customers don't want that. You could argue that Sonos could be 'less greedy' eat those costs themselves, but without knowing the costs or the current profit margin, it's a mute point. Who are we to say what a fair profit margin is anyway? As well, if you're invested in Sonos, either by stocks or product purchases, it's in your best interest for Sonos to be profitable so that they can continue to support existing products as well as develop new products. Even if you don't have many Sonos products, they clearly are a good competitor in the market, which pushes the whole market forward.

The second would be that standards are most beneficial when there is only one or few standards out there. Limiting standards means customers have to worry less about whether product X works with product Y. It means manufacturers can keep costs lower if they don't need to have products handle a high volume of standards to be compatible with. As an example consider other standards like USB or Bluetooth. If there were multiple standards out there that did the same thing, this would raise the cost of any product using these standards as well as making life more complicated for the consumer. And yes, competing standard would bring innovation, but these 2 standards seem to be improving without the presence of competition.

Admittedly these aren't terribly strong reasons, particularly the last one. They are reasons though. And of course, Sonos is allowed to have their own reasons that don't have to do with customer satisfaction. There are in business for a reason after all.


These are ridiculous reasons. Firstly cheaper products than Sonos support more codecs. Secondly Sonos only supports Dolby Digital 5.1. A 30 year old standard. Sonos does not even support Dolby Digital 5.1 plus.

So since the introduction of DD 5.1, maybe 3 generations of new audio codecs have been released by Dolby: DD+, Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos. None of which is supported by Sonos. I don't even need to mention DTS, the de facto standard for Blurays/DVDs.

50% of Sonos costs are marketing. Maybe they should spend less money on marketing and a bit more on making great products.
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jgatie
August 1, 2019


These are ridiculous reasons. Firstly cheaper products than Sonos support more codecs. Secondly Sonos only supports Dolby Digital 5.1. A 30 year old standard. Sonos does not even support Dolby Digital 5.1 plus.

So since the introduction of DD 5.1, maybe 3 generations of new audio codecs have been released by Dolby: DD+, Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos. None of which is supported by Sonos. I don't even need to mention DTS, the de facto standard for Blurays/DVDs.

50% of Sonos costs are marketing. Maybe they should spend less money on marketing and a bit more on making great products.


I see by your history that you've been posting this type of complaint for over 2 years, which begs the question: Why would you keep a product that is clearly unfit for your purpose over 2 years? Do you seriously think Sonos is going to suddenly release DTS support?
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Senior Virtuoso
August 1, 2019


I see by your history that you've been posting this type of complaint for over 2 years, which begs the question: Why would you keep a product that is clearly unfit for your purpose over 2 years? Do you seriously think Sonos is going to suddenly release DTS support?


Hey - they might!

But not because of this thread.
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