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Hi,

I have a Stereo Pair of Sonos Fives and wanted to know if i used them as line in would they drastically sound better than using Air Play 2?

I have a DAC which is a FiiO K7, so i was going to run this from my Mac or IPhone to line in to the 5’s. Do the 5’s have an internal DAC and will this be a problem using my K7?

Also, I’m wondering if i can’t be bothered to hook up my devices, could still use Airplay? This will be mainly for my partner who doesn’t care about sound quality. I dont want her going anywhere near my DAC while it is connected to my 5’s = Volume blown 

The answer is: it depends on the source.

If it’s Apple Music, then AirPlay will stream in lossy AAC 256kbps to Sonos. By using your K7 into the Line-In you might therefore be able to go lossless (give or take one or two digital<->analog conversions) all the way. 

Other services may AirPlay in lossless ALAC 16/44.1 directly. Amazon, Deezer and Qobuz evidently do. (There could well be truncation from 24-bit and sample rate conversion first, but that’s presumably liveable with.)

 

Line-In involves an AD conversion to 16/44.1 PCM on input. Irrespective of the source there’s obviously a DA conversion before the audio can be reproduced by the speaker drivers.

 

On your last point AirPlay will continue to be available whatever you might hook to the Line-In jacks.

Hey Ratty,

Thanks for your reply. 

I will be using Apple Music and will be using Lossless. My only concern is using the two DAC’s, the K7 and then the internal DAC of the speakers. In a normal set up there wouldn’t be DAC’s in the speakers. Processing the DA from the K7, the input source would then be converted to analog, so would the internal DAC be processing anything as the input would be Analog from the K7? Sorry, my knowledge is lacking. 

My K7 DAC is a semi decent unit for the price and outputs a nice enough sound. I dont want to be in a position which its not even worth hooking up my DAC as the sound would be handled by the Sonos and be inferior to the K7? 

Apple Music lossless is not directly supported on Sonos. And even if you play lossless using the native Apple Music app it will AirPlay to Sonos in lossy AAC. 

Experiment and see which you prefer. There is always a DA conversion in the Sonos speakers. The internals are digital; there’s no ‘analog bypass’ as such.

So via your K7 the path would be:

iDevice → <digital lossless> → K7 → <analog> → Sonos Five

and inside the Sonos Five:

<analog> → AD conversion to 16/44.1 PCM → <digital lossless> → DAC → <analog> → drivers

Hi Ratty,

Yes, i know that Apple Music won’t play Lossless if it is through Airplay to Sonos whatever. 

I will give it a whirl and see what happens. At the end of the day the sonos fives aren’t audiophile grade speakers, but if i can squeeze better sound out of them, i will try it. 

 

Thanks for your help

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