Sonos really that bad?

  • 12 August 2021
  • 57 replies
  • 2258 views
N
Userlevel 3
Badge +9

Hi all!

Yesterday I had a friend at my home. He is a true audiophile. He owns a Sonus Faber speakers with Mcintosh amp and a whole lot more really expensive equipment (DAC, cords...). But, he used to own a system 5 or 10 times cheaper so I think he knows what he is hearing/saying. I myself listened to his newest system. I went speechless. 

I told him numerous time: Sonos is not for critical music listening, but my 5.1 setup for movies: it can hold its own. So, yesterday he had his ears on my Playbar, rear 3’s and a SUB. 

First, Eric Clapton’s Layla, unplugged through Spotify. After 10 seconds, he went: “Whoa, someone killed the musicians”. I LOLed but even before I had a chance to “tweak” the sound he kindly asked me to turn it off :-) 

Ok, how about some movies. The plane hijacking scene of The Dark Knight Rises was our choice. He let me go a bit longer than Layla but he said: Do you know how much sound you are missing here? So, I pushed mute, and replied: I don’t agree, I thing that movies sound good. Also, the music is adequate for background listening. His conclusion was: ignorance is bliss…

Is Sonos really that bad for music and movies as well? I have no aspire to become an audiophile of any sort, but I was thinking of a pair of Fives in a near future to sit down in front and enjoy the sound. 

Neven

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57 replies

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Not ear buds but I can easily stream audio or TV to my hearing aids. Sounds pretty decent but eats a set of batteries quickly.

Before I got them I tried a few ear buds and a number of headphones and I just don’t like the way the music sounds. Open-air were better than closed, noise cancelling were worse for me in a quiet room but great on a plane or in a noisy workshop.

J

Yes Sonos is that bad! Not because of the sound quality but because, if you get a multi-room system, you’ll discover it never works and no one can offer a long-term fix. Just have a look at Sonos’ reviews on Trust Pilot…

ratty

Yes Sonos is that bad! Not because of the sound quality but because, if you get a multi-room system, you’ll discover it never works and no one can offer a long-term fix.

Really? I’ve had a Sonos system working fine for 14 years, and for all that time it’s been multi-room. If it was as bad as you make out, Sonos would have been out of business long ago.

To judge by your other thread you simply have a broken local network.

A

 

Is Sonos really that bad for music and movies as well? I have no aspire to become an audiophile of any sort, but I was thinking of a pair of Fives in a near future to sit down in front and enjoy the sound. 


I am an audiophile and have owned McIntosh gear as well as Accuphase gear which is even pricier and better.  I have had a wide range of speakers, some of which were Stereophile Class A rated.  I think the original Sonus Faber Cremona Auditor and Cremona line were superb.

I had Devialet Phantom Silvers and currently have Sonos Fives with a Sub Gen 3.

There is a lot of snake oil in “audiophile circles” but one of the reasons McIntosh has been in business for so long is that their products are genuinely reliable and good.  Everyone will criticize their cost but that is a different question.  Sonus Faber is also a very well respected brand with some exceptional speakers in the past, and a mix of good and bad speakers today.  Craftsmanship is very nice although some of the older designs were better.

The premium setup is like flying First Class on a commercial airline.  It is objectively better, but that doesn’t mean that Economy Plus is horrible.  If you paired McIntosh electronics with something like the Revel Ultima Salon 2 speakers, you would have something that would always be superior to a Sonos in sound quality in blind testing.

For movies, the sky is the limit and reaching movie theater level volumes is harder the bigger your room is.  In the same way, a 55” TV is not as good as a 75” TV which isn’t as good as an 100” TV (if you are looking at the best representatives from each side).  You can still enjoy the TV show or movie on all systems *and* how close you sit to the TV matters. In the same way, the size of your audio room matters.

All that said, Sonos gives you exceptional performance and an exceptional price.  You need to move up to the price points of 2-3X the Sonos to get appreciably consistently better sound.

Sonos gives you economy plus airline performance for the price of a bus fare if you think about it that way.  That is how it is possible to be one of the best “values” yet still come short against a First Class experience.

The Sonos Five is a big actual dollar investment the way that a McIntosh/Sonus Faber setup is priced above a first clas air ticket, but I think even your friend would be impressed if you had a pair of Sonos Fives, properly placed on stands, a Sub, Trueplay enabled and used something like Amazon Music HD as a source.   The Sub adds bass but the big advantage is that it allows the Five to use its efforts on a narrower range of audio which improves sound quality.

K

 

All that said, Sonos gives you exceptional performance and an exceptional price.  You need to move up to the price points of 2-3X the Sonos to get appreciably consistently better sound.

 

Fair summary on the audio side - though in response to the quoted I will say that moving up the price points as referred won't give you better sound automatically. One still needs to pick the right set up for the target room. And there are many mediocre systems out there, especially speakers, even at those prices.

The other point is that what Sonos offers in source quality is now equalled by devices such as Chromecast/Echo Dots. One can then wire these in to good downstream kit to get Sonos quality at prices that may at times even be significantly lower than Sonos.

For someone picking with some care, there has never been a time when excellent sound quality at home is as affordable as it is today, coupled with the huge access to music on the cheap, via streaming services.

A

The other point is that what Sonos offers in source quality is now equalled by devices such as Chromecast/Echo Dots. One can then wire these in to good downstream kit to get Sonos quality at prices that may at times even be significantly lower than Sonos.

The source is less of an issue for streaming services since it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish between 16/44 and 24/96 “high resolution” audio on anything but the most premium setup and even then, under strict ABX testing, it is a challenge. There can be differences in the mastering and that can indeed play a big difference.  I have asked Sonos to consider playback of high resolution audio by truncating or downsampling since one would still benefit from different mastering.

 

Trueplay is really helpful.  For the room, dedicated room correction like Anthem ARC Genesis, DIRAC, RoomPerfect and Trinnov Optimizer are all very good especially when correcting to a single listening position.  Even then, Trueplay does a good job with moving mic strategy to correct large room nodes for a wider range of listeners.


I had the Devialet Phantom Silvers which all-in, was a $5k setup.  It is superior to the Sonos Five in sound quality which is easily validated in a blind test.  However, after five years of ownership, Devialet is still perpetually “one software update from being good.”  It has a nasty bug where it randomly will reset the volume to full blast due to how it interacts with iOS and full volume on the Phantoms is a ear damaging 105 dB at close range.

 

The Sonos is a step down in sound quality but it adds a lot more reliability.  That trade off is well worth it.  This is because Sonos is good enough to meet the standards for enjoying quality music (I’ll use the analogy of a bus vs. economy plus airflight).  

 

Software reliability is a key benefit of Sonos over Chromecast/Echo Dot and other premium streaming methods (BluOS, Devialet, HEOS, MusicCast).  The Sonos hardware, in my opinion, is able to reach the point of diminishing returns.  The enhanced midrange clarity from adding the sub to the Five is “well worth it to me” but is already clearly in the range of diminishing returns given its price.  (the same way that First Class airflight is in the range of diminishing returns, but is something everyone would gladly take if offered at the same price as Economy Plus).

 

I still have my first class setup when I really want to listen with the maximum level of quality but the Sonos is very good and enjoyable.

K

 

Software reliability is a key benefit of Sonos over Chromecast/Echo Dot and other premium streaming methods (BluOS, Devialet, HEOS, MusicCast).

Again, I agree with all except the quoted - I use Echo devices extensively as sources to line in on my Sonos and Studio monitor equipped zones, and I find them to be just as reliable as Sonos where music play stability etc is concerned. Even when the multi room perfect sync play heavy lifting is being done by Echo groups.

I can't speak from experience to the other methods you refer to - but they seem to have stability issues which more than offset any theoretical benefits they may offer by their offering higher density bit streams  carrying the music.

Similarly with the Devialets - given the bug you describe I would always be on tenterhooks while listening to them as to when it will strike, and that cannot be good for the music listening experience.

Once I moved to Sonos at the end of my audiophile days, I realised that for me there was nothing in my high end kit that was giving me greater listening pleasure once I sorted out the few music play stability issues in Sonos, so it did not take me long to sell all of it except for some well sized speakers that still remain in some Sonos zones. I haven’t regretted this decision even once in the last ten years.

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