Question

No progress on key features

  • 3 December 2016
  • 12 replies
  • 456 views

So here we are 10 years after Sonos was introduced, library limit is still 65k tracks, no ability to stream 24 bit or DSD. Very very weak. Unfortunately there is not a better alternative -- but as we saw with the death of the squeezebox, this won't continue forever.

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12 replies

65k limit is irrelevant when millions of tracks are available for streaming. World has changed, get used to it.

DSD and 24 bit are irrelevant to playback, demonstrably no better than CD, pure marketing-driven.

Sonos still leads their market segment by concentrating on the things that actually matter, not wasting time and money on things that don't.
Millions of tracks are also not available for streaming. Get used to it.
Millions of tracks are also not available for streaming.
In 24 bit and DSD?
I think what may be meant is that many desired tracks are not available via any streaming service, though that is nowhere near even one million. A combination of NAS for these, and streaming service for the rest, serves the needs of even a much larger population than what Sonos considers as its market of interest.
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I shall have to sacrifice my time to trying to listen to the forty million tracks I can stream. As well as the 65,000...

I wonder which ones aren't available that will make my life unbearable and I will have to dispose of my Sonos gear in favour of...I wonder which ones will still be around in 5 years, let alone ten.

given that there is little or no difference between a 320kbs mp3 and a lossless file why would a higher bitrate file be even better. Only in critical listening and only with certain classical music can I detect a difference - and that depends heavily on the quality of listening equipment. Or is that because over a price gear just sounds different rather than better.
HiRes and bigger library limit are key features?? Possibly for 0.0000000001% of Sonos' target market. If you want to know why those features haven't been implemented, look no further than that.
Plex has already addressed the 65k limit, and Hires? Seriously?

Oh and by the way, if you were trying to make a point with the Squeezebox reference, you failed miserably. Squeezebox had no library limit and was able to play Hires audio. Still dead as a doornail.
You'd think SONOS would at least be able to downsample hires so that I can play it. Some of us low IQ people have invested in 24 bit music, and it would be rather nice to be able to play it without going through gymnastics. (E.g. I found this 'subsonic' thing which is far from a perfect solution.) Anyway: Sonos is a product that basically hasn't been updated in 15 years. That strikes me as an awfully long upgrade cycle for a technology product.
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You'd think SONOS would at least be able to downsample hires so that I can play it. Some of us low IQ people have invested in 24 bit music, and it would be rather nice to be able to play it without going through gymnastics. (E.g. I found this 'subsonic' thing which is far from a perfect solution.) Anyway: Sonos is a product that basically hasn't been updated in 15 years. That strikes me as an awfully long upgrade cycle for a technology product.

You can only claim "Sonos is a product that basically hasn't been updated in 15 years" if you've been living in a silver foil box for the last 15 years worrying about Major League Baseball spying on you.

There are NO gymnastics required to play your Hi-res music - Just re-code to a playable format - You will NOT notice any difference and it's a one off job.
There's a lot less 'gymnastics' involved in a simple one-time conversion than in using Subsonic or Plex. I buy little new music these days as it's all available to stream. However one FLAC album I could only find in 24/48. It really was an exercise of only a couple of minutes to run it through dBpoweramp into 16/48. Job done.

The idea of Sonos downsampling 'HiRes' on the fly every time it's played would be hugely wasteful of CPU and/or network bandwidth.

As for 'Sonos is a product that basically hasn't been updated in 15 years', since the company was only founded in 2002 and ZP100 released in 2005 that makes for an interesting interpretation.
The other important factor is larger than Sonos and concerns the entire home audio industry; that there has been no progress in improving the sound quality delivered by home audio systems other than tweaks here and there, for some decades now. Lots of cosmetic changes in the eye candy and audiophile gimmicks of course.

The last big breakthrough of note on the sound quality front was CDs.

Of course one could say that the availability of hifi quality sound at much lower price points than in the past is a breakthrough of sorts.
The title of this thread mentions "key features" and we're discussing hires?

Nothing more to be said.