Which Sonos pair is comparable to B&W 600s

@Kumar

That’s a good point.  A pair of Ones is not a large enough investment to become pot committed to an ecosystem.   A $1000 Russound multi-channel amp to power the new building vs 3 or 4 AMPS is sort of a no-brainer now though.  Even a Rotel multi-channel with enough zones to bridge the primary one for more juice would be about the same as 3 AMPS, would last forever and have excellent resale value long beyond my “end of life”, lol.

The service life has been quoted as “5 years after they stop selling” a unit, not 5 years total, and last I checked they are still selling Ones. 

I took the cue from how they have dealt with Connect Amps; they were still sold by Sonos in 2019, but ones made and sold in 2015 are going to lose support from May 2020. 

I would not count on more than 5 years post purchase now for any Sonos unit being sold, seeing this Sonos action.

Sonos has made it clear to those that understand these issues that if you want investment protection via long service life, do not go for integrated solutions that have different rates of technical obsolescence. A separate, cheap and throw away smart front end interface wired to a well built amp+speaker combination would be a safer approach at higher price points.

Akin in some ways to TVs where it is better to get a streaming dongle like Chromecast or Firestick than to buy a smart TV.

If you buy newer models, you should be able to count on over 5 years.  Buy One Gen 2 instead of Gen 1, etc.  So it is “at least 5 years, typically more” IMHO. 

Don’t, just don’t - your current system will still work in 6 years time………..

The Verdict

The pair of Sonos Ones showed up yesterday and I setup an audition last night.

The Sonos Ones were setup and TruePlay was run.  TP did make a modest improvement.  Does anyone know if you play to the Sonos speakers directly through Spotify instead of through the Sonos app if true play still gets used?  The difference was clear toggling it on and off  but more difficult to discern when I switched apps.

The B&Ws were powered by a small Fosi mini-amp as I didn’t feel like relocating the larger receiver and unhook everything.  I expect this was/is a significant handicap for these speakers potential but also levels the playing field a bit in terms of quality of amplification.  Streaming/DAC was via Google Chromecast Audio (I fortunately purchased 6 of these when they were discontinued).

I also setup a pair of active M-Audio AV40s I had lying around, streaming/DAC via Google Chromecast Audio.

All three pairs were setup at ear level, side-by-side with about 8 ft of separation and we were about 10ft away. I do think not running the B&W passive speakers off a high-end amp/DAC keeps the tests pretty even on the front-end and more isolated to just the loudspeakers themselves.  I was switching between all three directly through the Spotify app with their highest quality streams and my wife was “blind”.  

We both thought the Sonos speakers sounded pretty good for their size and had the largest sound field of all three.  I would consider it relatively neutral which I like and didn’t sound overly processed like some other small smart speakers in this form-factor.  It did sound the “smallest” of all three and expectedly lacked deeper punch.  It tended to hold up best with pop music vs classical, jazz, and hip-hop (yes, occasionally lol) and fell further behind the louder the music got.  All expected really from this size speaker.  From a value perspective, I feel like these sound like about $200 worth of speaker so you are paying about half for the loud speaker and half for the ecosystem, amplification, dac, in my opinion.

The B&Ws are about 15 years old and I probably paid $750ish for them, don’t really remember but somewhere in that range.  These were the largest speakers but still only 5” drivers, rear ported.  These obviously had the best punch on the lower end and very clean, crisp highs.  The tweeters aren’t harsh but could certainly get there with bad or aggressive eq.  Beethoven’s 5th, for example really sounded much, much better on these and jazzy vocal stuff like Norah Jones, Amy Winehouse, etc. really excelled on these as did bass-heavier pop and hip-hop.  What did surprise me in the side-by-side tests is there is a “hollowness” in the upper mid-range of these speakers I had never noticed. I suspect with a sub, the 5” driver would round this out more but as-is, the B&Ws were giving up a bit of mid-range in exchange for that clarity and crispness.

Probably what surprised us most was the $150-$200 active M-Audios.  These were marketed as computer ”monitors” back around 2008 or so when I bought them for a computer in fact but always thought they sounded pretty good for what I paid.  4” rear-ported driver, not sure what wattage their internal amp claims.  The mids on these were much more well-rounded than both of the other speakers, but they lacked some of the punch and crisp highs of the B&Ws but a normal listening volumes for “most” genre’s, it was right up there and sometimes better.  They did tend to get a bit muddy at higher volumes and with more complex tracks sometimes and I think that has to do with the tuning that has those 4” drivers doing a whole lot of work whereas the B&Ws chose to sacrifice some of those mids to keep clarity high.

Pretty fun experiment and we were impressed by the Sonos.  They do a great job at that size but I think the wife has come around to living with slightly larger bookshelf speakers now that she can specifically hear the difference.  I do think we can buy better sound with $400 in an active bookshelf speaker and I’m just not sure the Sonos ecosytem and app are worth the premium any longer in light of the recent EoL developments and that I can pretty much reproduce the functionality with Chromecast Audios and the Google Home app which creates speaker groups that Spotify can see.

To be fair, I also don’t hear the B&Ws premium over the M-Audios with this particular setup at normal listening volumes on most tracks.  When pushed, yes, of course, but probably no more than a pair of Kanto YU6s or similar with the same size driver.

Don't go just by speaker price points. Modern manufacturing in China allied to state of the art dsp capability can make for fantastic value. 

Trust your ears if you can find a way to isolate them from all  influences other than sound.