There may be solution for you in the attached thread - I have not tried it out, but it seems to work.

https://en.community.sonos.com/speakers-228992/sonos-5-line-only-no-delay-6872736?postid=16607951#post16607951

Thanks, that might work. I already found that thread earlier. As the thread has been closed, no one knows if this is a legit usecase that works for everyone. I might go to a local store to try this. But it should not have to be this difficult and unreliable. 

To clarify just this: The line in is to allow an external audio source such as a turntable to play via Sonos without having to invest in a Port to get just that capability. The Port is to incorporate a legacy sound system to a Sonos environment in the home; if one wanted to just add streaming capability to such standalone kit, an Echo dot will do the same for a lot less. In my case, since I prefer the Echo user interface, I have Echo Show devices wired to the line in jacks on my Sonos amps. Since all suffer the same delay when more than one unit is being used, music still remains in sync.

You are absolutely right. I’ve used a wrong usecase example. The vinyl usecase is actually thrown around a lot in threads about line-in in combination with delay. Though, why does Sonos not offer pre-amp functionality if their sole purpose for the line-in is suposed to be for vinyl. Now that would be user friendly! 
 

My best guess is that they don’t remove the delay in standalone to ‘force’ people to buy an amp or soundbar instead of hooking up their Five’s via line-out on their tv’s. 
 

I’d love it if Sonos would just honestly tell us the delay in standalone situations is here to stay and will never be removed because they just don’t want to. I could finally have peace

Use case:

Playing Line-In on Five in your bedroom with no delay.  You leave the bedroom and wish to shift the music to kitchen while you make your coffee.  You either have to:

• Delay the shift, resulting in a drop off.
• Put up with stuttering as the buffer builds up

Neither of which are the seamless Sonos experience.  Question answered.  Go buy the Denon.

What ludicrous paranoia.  The line-in was included on Sonos’ earliest products - the ZP80 and ZP100 and the gen 1 Play:5 because it was, at that time, a big leap for many potential customers to totally abandon their physical media.  Sonos has maintained the line-in on the successors to those products and left it off all subsequent new products.  So it is there if people still want to play physical media through their multiroom audio system, but Sonos is not going to go to any effort to change it,  No pre-amp (which would be unsuitable for CD players anyway), no standalone version, no removal.

But I am sure that is too simple and innocent an explanation for you to accept.

Because there are plenty of other devices (CD players, digital media players, etc) that don’t require a preamp.  There are even plenty of turntables that don’t need a preamp.  And of course, plenty of folks that buy a Five, Amp, or Port and don’t use the aux input at all, and thus it’s a useless cost.

Considering the prevalence of TV audio formats beyond stereo these days, I don’t think that’s really much of a motivation.  Besides, people who are fine with stereo audio can usually adjust the delay slightly, and get used to things being out of sync a bit, to get used to it.

The reasons you already provided are good enough.  Sure, it’s technically possible, and proof since Denon did it, but you can’t really say it’s a killer feature that’s driving sales, as I don’t think Heos is really competing that well with Sonos.  Instead of working on this feature, Sonos is working on others that they think will be useful for more customers and drive more sales.  Maybe they are right, maybe wrong.  

Never say never.  Sonos can’t predict the future, and if stand alone without delay suddenly becomes I highly desired feature by millions of customers, they are going to do it.   But that is highly unlikely, so it’s probably best to assume the feature won’t be added, be at peace with that,  and carry on with your decisions accordingly.    

Again, from regular actual use, of a TV wired via its audio out jacks to a Connect and thence to an amp and via ethernet wire to other Sonos units: I see no intrusive delay even when I look for it, and grouped play when needed is very reliable. Many people do see the delay, I do not, so YMMV.

The ethernet wire is to ensure stable music play; nothing to do with delay.

@John B that’s actually one of the best explanations I’ve read thusfar. Instead of people saying it isn’t possible for reason x or y. 
 

I guess I’m just kind of hooked to the Sonos experience and sound. That’s why I would love it to also work for my other musical endeavours. 
 

If this makes any sense: it feels like having a 4 lane road paved and ready for use, but only allowing all people to drive on 1 single lane. 

That is very generous of you considering the rather aggressive tone of my reply (for which I apologise).  I think this is fundamentally a result of the history.  I really don’t know if it would be easy for Sonos to add a ‘no delay’ option, but if it would be then Sonos clearly doesn’t think the pros outweigh the cons or that it would have any significant positive impact on revenue.

If Sonos were starting now I doubt that any product would have an analog line in, so i agree with @melvimbe that your life would be better if you gave up hope on this one!  Sorry!

I don’t fully agree with @John B’s take on this. Yes, Sonos original was designed for local library playback primary, and then streaming services when they started becoming available, but I don’t think they were fully trying to discourage use of aux input sources.  Well maybe they were, but the reason is a bit more complicated maybe.

I think that Sonos sees the user experience as very important as a means of advertising.  They want customers to use their products as intended, a multiroom audio system.  If a customer buys Sonos and essentially uses as just a PA speaker, they won’t see the point of buying additional Sonos speakers when they have the need for more speakers.  Perhaps worse, other people who visit your home and see Sonos used as a PA speaker will not be impressed.  I see it as the same reason why Sonos took so long to add bluetooth to some options.  It’s not that they couldn’t, but that they wanted to control the user experience and the products used for the intended purpose.  We still see people who buy Sonos portables and use them just for bluetooth.  Or Apple folks who use them for airplay only.  And even folks who use Amps/ports only connected to Echos.  It doesn’t display the full potential of Sonos.

But that’s my theory, and I get why people would want Sonos to just be as flexible as possible.

Also worth noting that if Sonos had this standalone mode, you could more easily integrate Sonos speakers with other brands for your whole home system.  You could theoritically use an RCA splitter to make a system with a Sonos Five, third party receiver, a PA speaker, anything else that plays audio without delay from a single RCA source.  Sounds great, but doesn’t build out the Sonos brand.  Sonos took a hint from Apple about walled gardens.

I see them more as dirt path off the shoulder that people want Sonos to pave over.  Maybe they should, but it certainly wasn’t part of the original design.

I don’t think I was suggesting there was or is any attempt to discourage use of aux input sources, just that Sonos saw it as a marketing necessity to accommodate such sources.  On further reflection I am not sure I was right to suggest that if launching today Sonos would not bother with line in - but that is a hypothetical to which we will never know the answer.  

But it is still there almost entirely for its original purpose - to allow physical music media to be played across a multiroom system.

@melvimbe I actually used to have a Chromecast audio hooked up to my Play 5’s so I could cast youtube audio and cast from Google Chrome. Creating a Frankenstein audio system has always been possible since Airplay and chromecast etc became available.

Anyhow, like you guys say; it’s a decision that is  platform/experience/marketing oriented. A solution for people like me is to switch to Denon or buy a hybrid amplifier from NAD and extend it with a Bluesound module, etc… 

I just hope this thread is another reason for Sonos to consider standalone mode for Sonos Five and Sonos Amp. 

@Martech - I do get why you want this.  I just think you are destined for disappointment.  But who knows?

I have just registered the fact that you also mention digital inputs.  The delays here should be smaller than for analog inputs - to the point of being unnoticeable.  Has that not been your experience?

As far as I know there will always be a minimum of 50-75ms delay. Correct me if i’m wrong. HDMI is supposed to negotiate with your television to achieve ‘lip-sync). And I must admit, it took me a few days to get used to ‘lip-sync grade delay’. In the beginning I would notice, but after some time I didn’t bother anymore. 

But for live instruments (keyboard, drum machine) where you have to time your input based on the sound, a delay of 50ms+ is to high. 

For the Beam / Arc the delay should be of the order of 30-35ms.  Delivery to the speaker is effectively instantaneous.  The 30-35ms is to allow for surrounds to sync - even if there are no surrounds! - while being small enough for no noticeable lip sync issues.

This is why if you group another room to a HT room you get an echo effect for TV sound - it’s the difference between the delay within the HT room and the room grouping delay.

But I assume that for your purposes you have tried it and it is still too much?

When you are using a musical instrument are you still sending the audio through the TV?  

First of all, thanks for your help and thinking with me. 

No, I have not tried this. I actually sold my Sonos Amp only to read a few days later that digital inputs are supposed  to be faster than analog. But I did read mixed experiences about this on this forum and Reddit. Also I owned a Sonos Beam where I also noticed the lip-sync ‘issue’. The lip-sync was not to bad, but sold that one because I did not like the sound and bought the Amp instead.  
 

If anyone has input on this, and also on the Five ‘trick’ that @Kumar mentioned, that’d be great. Currently I only own sonos One’s because I had to buy other speakers for my usecase. 

Lip sync problems experienced with Sonos are almost invariably (possibly scrap the ‘almost’) by the timing of the audio feed from the TV versus the video.  It has nothing to do with Sonos.  Many of us have completely eliminated detectable lip sync issues by by-passing the TV for audio.  This requires an audio device like an HDFury Arcana.   Cheaper options do exist but I can never remember what they are.

The Beam / Arc will still introduce the 30-35ms delay and that might still be too much for your use case.

This is all a bit academic for you now!

Sorry - thinking as I go…

I suspect that if you had an electric piano or drum machine with optical out (if such exist) and ran it direct to a Playbar / Playbase / Ray (or Beam / Arc with supplied adapter) this might give an acceptable result.  Don’t know though!  Anyone out there doing that?

I tend to use specialized for purpose tools for each task, audio and otherwise. For me there are much better approaches to sound reinforcement than attempting to paste a microphone and a couple instruments on to a home audio system. Many years ago (before SONOS existed) I attempted this and quickly became bored because the results were not very good. I suppose that part of my issue, was and still is, that I’ve used professional sound reinforcement equipment and there is a world of difference in the results. By the way I would not enjoy using pro sound reinforcement speakers for home audio listening -- these speakers are designed for large areas and sound awful in a small room. Currently, there are compact, reasonably priced mixer/processors that can be used at home for your instruments, feeding into a basic power amplifier or powered speakers. What had required a whole rack of boxes and thousands of dollars, can now be done in a compact box for a few hundred dollars.

There is also a generational bias to this discussion. More and more the younger attitude is “isn’t everything wireless now -- Bluetooth or Airplay?”, but older folk chafe at this. And technology is constantly evolving. Techniques that were impossible, impractical, or enormously expensive only a few years ago are now cheap and trivial. An example is the $10 Bluetooth speaker I saw hanging on a peg at a clothing store checkout. I’m not suggesting that this would be a great sounding or preforming product, but ten years ago you’d be laughed off a design team for even suggesting this sort of product.

Martech,

I’m aligned with those who suggest that SONOS is not intended for your proposed use case. In fairness to SONOS, in 2005 when SONOS hit the market, WiFI was not as advanced as now and SONOS designed a robust multiroom wireless audio system that no one else was able to achieve. You may be familiar with the latest darling of WiFi -- the mesh. SONOS has used mesh since inception and has a ton of audio related patients in this area -- many now licensed to others. Starting fresh and using the latest WiFi6 and soon to be introduced WiFi7 SONOS could probably reduce the 75ms latency somewhat, but this would require abandoning the older WiFi4 and WiFi5 units already in the field. The reason for the 75ms latency is to give players some time to work around local interference issues. SONOS will rearrange the mesh topology as necessary to work around issues. Muting a player because of a nearby burst or new source of interference avoids unnecessary loss of audio. 

@buzz I get what you say. Of course, my Yamaha Monitor speakers are built for my live music usecase. So now I have sonos in my living room, and yamaha’s at my desk. You could argue this is the best setup.

Sonos is intended for multi-room usage after all. And I totally understand there has to be a delay to make this work reliable. Nevertheless, when only using one speaker (or 2+ when using Sonos Amp with wires speakers in 2.1 setup) connected via digital or analog input, there is simply no need for delay. The delay can be added as soon as needed: when streaming from or to other (grouped/stereo) speakers. For example: the sonos amp in 2.1 does not need any delay. As soon as you add rear speakers or group it with an other room. Then yes, you need the delay for it to function. 

To be clear, in your 2.1 setup, the 30-25 ms delay is needed to wirelessly communicate to the sub.  If you were using a wired sub, then perhaps not.

And to flesh out the stuff that John couldn’t think of offhand:

There is the HD Fury Arcana, the Feintech VAX04101k, and the latest, and least expensive, I think,  is the OREI HDA-935. Check your local retailers for availability, or Amazon. You can also order from those links from the companies directly, I think. 

It seems to me that you can have cheap, quality, and easy to use, but you can only have 2 of the 3.  I think there’s a saying in automotive circles similar to that.  Anyway, I think people tend to highly favor ease of use today and don’t always have much appreciation for quality, which is why the ‘impulse buy’ BT player exists.  You could argue it’s the motivation for the digital revolution to begin with, and quality has been playing catch up.

And really, I think you could add ‘snake oil’ to the list of options, but you can still only have 2.