Hi-Resolution Audio and Sonos

Didn't it play hell with the record cutters to even get the JVC CD-4 or Quadradisc 18 to 45 KHz sub-carrier cut? And of course it took a special stylus shape to get it back off the records too as the conventional ones didn't fit in the 45 KHz grooves.

Internet bandwidth is not the issue. Witness the fact that people routinely stream 4K TV. It's the requirement to pump multiple streams around the house over the average DIY wireless network, whilst maintaining sub-millisecond sync, which could be compromised by potentially increasing per-stream bandwidth by a factor of 6.
I agree. I get flawless HD streams into the TV at home, but cannot stream the corresponding uncompressed - required for lip sync - audio around the home minus stuttering except where the Sonos units in the group have been wired to the home network.
Of course the problem there is the small buffer size, but I suspect even buffered Hi Res streams will run into headwinds that will negate even the psychological benefits of Hi Res. Nothing kills music enjoyment faster than stuttering.
PS: In some respects India = rural first world?!

For what it is worth, my Eureka moment:

The stair step/jaggies explanations had led me to believe that more the points sampled and known for a given sine wave, the more accurately it can be drawn, all the way to an infinite number of sampled points, but with an ever decreasing increase in accuracy - the marginal returns theory from economics that I am more familiar with than I am with signal processing. I had even convinced myself that the ever increasing accuracy was irrelevant only because it went beyond what a human could hear.

Conversations here - with a few stupid question on my part - resulted in the understanding that all it takes to perfectly reproduce a sine wave is the knowledge of just two points on it: its height and its width, to use non engineer terms. Any more information about the sine wave is superfluous to its perfect reproduction. With this understood, it was easy to grasp the theorem. For me, at any rate. Once that fundamental is clear, digital audio no longer remains a dark art of messing with the analog signal. Even without, as in my case even today, a full understanding of the Fourier thing.

It is however necessary to first empty the cup, which can be the difficult part. Because with a full one, there can be no progress.

20KHz is an example of one of the limits of frequency some people can hear. Sampling rate is how many samples are taken of the original analog sound source. By the very virtue of the fact “samples taken” means that only an approximation of the original signal can be reproduced at any point in time - rest is “filled in” = approximated. This is basic electronics. The more samples you take, the better you can reproduce the original signal irrespective of what frequency it has. Just means higher fidelity = HIFI.

Someone who has played a musical instrument is obviously going to have heard the “analog source” at a higher sampling rate direct from the source over time, so possibility is that she/ he can distinguish the differences at higher fidelity.

Nyquist-Shannon at work, demonstrating that the original band limited signal is reconstructed perfectly when sampled at a frequency 2x the band limit:

Yup. Monty linked that off his original article.

Pretty effective demo when the signal is put through an O-scope. If it is identical even when blown up on the O-scope, it's probably pretty good for the far more imprecise human ear.

Wow. Ok. In the meantime, here is how you can determine if high-res will make a difference to you. If you can make our differences between any of these, chances are high-res will make a difference for you:

1) 128 vs 320 vs CD Quality
2) Bluetooth headphones vs. same headphones connected via cable to the music player
3) Playing the CD on your kenwood head unit vs. playing music through HDMI adapter connected to your iPhone

i can hear differences in sound quality in all the above scenarios.

if high-res made no difference, then hearing music live and through a CD would be the same. Because you are comparing the original analog source with a recording of the same.

if high-res made no difference, how come all the samples from voice to instruments of sound libraries like east west audio came in 24 bit vs. 16 bit which supposedly is all we need?

the comparison I made of playing back CD quality vs. high-res of my mix was not on Sonos. It was on a regular wired system. I can sure make out the difference. So do all the sound engineers at the studio as well. We hear what we hear. Theory and books are not going to change our experience.

i do believe that good speakers make a difference. It is possible that you hear CD vs high-res on $ 20,000 reference speakers, and it makes not much of a difference. I don’t know - have not tried that. Sure the focals in my car sound better than Sonos play 5 at home for the exact same sound. So, there are various factors at play here.

i do believe that listening to music the way most people do, with regular speakers and regular sound systems, there is a difference between 24 vs. 16 bit I can hear myself.

Nyquist-Shannon has its place - but you have to consider that there are a lot more factors in play when music is played back which contribute to the overall experience - all of which can increase or decrease your musical experience. So, we can’t just quote theorems and generalize it for everyone in every context using a wide variety of equipment.

sonos at home is good enough for me as I don’t have to drill holes in walls, try to hide huge speakers, go through trying to get unplayable high-res music to play in some of the more exotic formats.

try it out yourself and make the choice. Don’t listen to what anybody says about it until you have heard it yourself.

i can hear differences in sound quality in all the above scenarios.

I don't doubt that you can hear these differences. But the question to be answered is how many of these will survive in a controlled single variable level matched blind test.

Until then, all I can say is that what your subjective experience is, is just that and therefore of not much use to me.

Particularly since I have been there, done that and I have come to realise what matters to my perceptions of sound quality. And what does not.

As a note, I never said “staircase”. I just talked about samples. And he says the exact same thing in the video as well - the spaces in between - is what I am talking about. You can get a perfect sine wave output from a low res recording as well, because it fills up the spaces exactly as he says in the video. The more sample you take, the less filling up you have to do, and so the higher fidelity you get.

The spaces in between is what is “filled in” or approximated. Nothing to do with staircase, sure it looks like a perfect sine wave, but nevertheless not the original recording - in audio terms. Just an approximation - albeit very good one. And audio recordings are not perfect sine waves which can be perfectly reproduced by approximations everytime.

So far, I see nothing in that video which proves anything wrong. All I said is that some people can make out a higher sampling rate - and the difference it makes.

thanks for the link. I trust my textbooks over some dude in a YouTube video - granted using the same equipment I used in first year of college.

As far as local bandwidth issues, take a look around here at the number of folks trying to add an audio device to their Connect that need to go to compressed audio to get it usable.

I'm a firm believer in Boost mode, with or without a Boost, and keeping my Sonos traffic off my LAN so I can configure my WiFi as I wish with no consideration of the Sonos restrictions/requirements. I'm a fan of wiring everything easy to connect to Ethernet too. These two solved long term aggravations here and with the addition of static/reserved IP addresses for all Sonos gear solved all my Sonos issues.

I guess I am extremely fortunate. My router is a bit outdated now, Apple Airport Extreme, but on a good day with like 23 connected devices I am pulling 700 mb per second.

Gentlemen, differing opinions aside, let's reel it in, shall we? Clearly this is a topic that you all feel passionate about but try to keep personal attacks out of it. Thanks.Nyquist-Shannon is not opinion, nor is the fact that the linked article is 100% hogwash.

Regardless of your respective standpoints, there's more polite ways to express them than some of what I've seen in the last dozen or so responses.

My impression is that Sonos is much more interested in the mass market than it is in the "specialty/hi-res" market. They'd rather sell a thousand speakers to your parents and their friends, than they would selling you and ten of your friends special speakers that can handle hi-res.

I'd guess that the margin of profit on a thousand speakers would be a larger amount of money than the margin on ten speakers.

At the end of the day, Sonos is in business to make money. I suspect that colors some of their decision making around what speakers and codecs they want to make and support.

But not being a Sonos employee, or even an investor, I don't know that for sure, it's just a logical deduction based on evidence that I can see. I have no insight into where Patrick Spence wants to take the company. For all I know, next week they'll introduce a new speaker, just to make me look silly.