Please Sonos 24bit support

[True Blue]

Today I have seen (heard) the future. Just downloaded a 24bit FLAC track form the Naim label, to give it a go. Sounds awesome on my Laptop - > Beresford Caiman - > Headphone.

Added it to my SONOS music folder..............aghhhhhh doesnt support the bit rate.

Come on SONOS.

 

[The_Lhc]

This has been mentioned quite a lot on here. Whether Sonos will do anything is debatable, bringing out a 24-bit capable ZP would lead to some files that will play on some ZPs but not on others, which goes counter to Sonos' philosophy of everything working on everything. You couldn't group the new ZP with an old one and play a 24-bit file on both for example. It's also possible the Sonos mesh network couldn't handle 24-bit audio to multiple zones.

 

[Dan Turner]

It is annoying that Sonos can't handle 24 bit audio, but for now it's not a major issue for me as I think i've only ever seen one album that I would actually want to listen to available in high-res. Still I've downloaded some free samplers and they generally sound stunning, so I'd like to think that more and more music will become available in high-res formats. I'm hoping that by the time it becomes a real niggle, then Sonos will have addressed it.

 

[The_Lhc]

Dan Turner:It is annoying that Sonos can't handle 24 bit audio, but for now it's not a major issue for me as I think i've only ever seen one album that I would actually want to listen to available in high-res. Still I've downloaded some free samplers and they generally sound stunning,

It might be worth popping over to the Sonos forums to tell them that as the moderators there (who aren't Sonos employees to be fair) will just tell you that nobody can hear any differences at all with 24-bit audio, it's all in your head, so there's no need for Sonos to support it, it's quite frustrating.

Sonos themselves are making no comment on it but they never do.

 

[Anonymous]

As daft as it might sound, lack of 24bit support is just about the only thing stopping me getting sonos today. i don't want to invest a sizeable chunk of money only to discover in 12 months time that 24bit is everywhere and i've got to go upgrade a bunch of equipment. I heard a demo at my local dealers of some 24bit linn files and it is the *only* time i've stood in a dealership with my mouth hanging open like some kind of fool.

I don't want the cost of shoving a linn ds in every room, and a lot of the other solutions fall into the same price bracket Sonos would be perfect because i'd buy a decent dac (rega perhaps) for the main system, and the other rooms would get either a zp90 plugged into the existing system or one of the s5 zoneplayers. Still not cheap though, so i'd be very grumpy if it was obsolete next year. In the meantime, i continue to sit out til after the next big trade show to see if anyone announced anything that catches my eye.

I know people will point out that there's not a lot of 24bit music out there, but my prediction (always a dangerous game!) is that it will change rapidly once the labels realise that people are prepared to pay for the extra quality. That's the history of technology, the most obvious recent example being the proliferation of hd and bluray.

 

[The_Lhc]

mightyredchris:I know people will point out that there's not a lot of 24bit music out there, but my prediction (always a dangerous game!) is that it will change rapidly once the labels realise that people are prepared to pay for the extra quality.

Trouble is when it comes to music most people AREN'T prepared to pay extra (A lot of people now aren't prepared to pay at all!).

That's the history of technology, the most obvious recent example being the proliferation of hd and bluray.

That's a very different market, you really can't compare the two properly.

 

[cram]

mightyredchris: Still not cheap though, so i'd be very grumpy if it was obsolete next year. In the meantime, i continue to sit out til after the next big trade show to see if anyone announced anything that catches my eye.

It's not going to be obsolete next year though at a minimum it will continue to play everything that it can play today

mightyredchris: I know people will point out that there's not a lot of 24bit music out there, but my prediction (always a dangerous game!) is that it will change rapidly once the labels realise that people are prepared to pay for the extra quality. That's the history of technology, the most obvious recent example being the proliferation of hd and bluray.

Whilst I'm sure the amount of 24-bit music will increase I really can't see it becoming mainstream.

 

[nads]

cram:
Whilst I'm sure the amount of 24-bit music will increase I really can't see it becoming mainstream.

yep just like HDCD and SACD and DVDA.

 

[Anonymous]

All valid points. I just think there's a market for 24bit that will grow. But i take the point that it's probably not mass market appeal.

And yeah, my choice of the word 'obsolete' is a bad one, but you get what i'm saying. It's annoying to buy something then find out that there's a newer, shinier one out six months later that does something you wish that yours did. Upgrade-itis

 

[The_Lhc]

mightyredchris:my choice of the word 'obsolete' is a bad one, but you get what i'm saying. It's annoying to buy something then find out that there's a newer, shinier one out six months later that does something you wish that yours did. Upgrade-itis

It's not a bad point but possibly less applicable to Sonos than most manufacturers, if you look at their release history they're not the sort of company that refreshes their models every year, never mind every 6 months (there's only been 2 iterations of the "normal" zoneplayers for example).

However if a new ZP does get released that supports 24-bit audio you can guarantee it'll still work with the rest of the system, so if you replace an existing ZP90 (for example), you'll still be able to use that elsewhere in the house (which is what I'll probably do, as and when (if) Sonos do release a 24-bit ZP).

 

[david_tring]

I recently followed the link on other blogs here to HDtracks in the States, downloaded a sampler and then found out the hard way that 24/192 tracks won't play on my Sonos ZP-90/CR200 combo.... groan....

The ZP90 is great in so many ways - just falls down on this. I had hoped (for a nano-second) that adding 24/192 could be a free firmware update, but then reality struck and I realised that its existing DAC would have to be physically changed. Maybe if a Mk2 ZP90 used the same case, Sonos could organise a refurb/exchange program for Mk1s?

David

 

[The_Lhc]

Well, they might (not) but that still wouldn't help all the ZP120s and S5s out there.

 

[manicm]

I think Sonos is targeting a certain buyer for whom hi-res is not a high priority. They're not alone in this either - Arcam's Neo is the same.

 

[The_Lhc]

manicm:I think Sonos is targeting a certain buyer for whom hi-res is not a high priority.

I don't know if "targetting" is quite the right word, when Sonos designed their original components 24-bit music really didn't exist (in any meaningful sense), even when the ZP90/120 was introduced (which is what, 3 years ago?), it still wasn't really much of an option for >99% of users.

Now they're in a situation where the current hardware doesn't support it (the output is actually 24-bits wide, however 8 of those bits are used for volume control) but they know there's some demand there, however the ethos has always been "all your music everywhere", so whilst they could introduce a 24-bit player that'll leave them in a situation where it'll be more like "all your music in one play and the rest everywhere" and that will lead to complaints (it will, check the Sonos forums now if you don't believe me), which they'll try to avoid if possible. If they don't support 24-bit though, they will start to lose sales.

I don't really know how they get around that though, it must be a real headache for them at the moment.

 

[Dan Turner]

If they were confident that the bandwidth of their wireless network were sufficient to move the 24 bit files around and they released a '24bit compatible' zone player, then maybe incompatible receiving zones could transcode to 16 bit on the fly? If the Zone players are all 24 bit capable now, but 8 bit are used for volume then maybe they could enable 24 bit compatibility for any zone set to a fixed output level and have the rest transcode 24 bit files to 16 bit.

Obviously I'm making all sorts of assumptions there. I'm saying this more in hope than expectation....

 

[The_Lhc]

Dan Turner:
If they were confident that the bandwidth of their wireless network were sufficient to move the 24 bit files around and they released a '24bit compatible' zone player, then maybe incompatible receiving zones could transcode to 16 bit on the fly?

I wondered that myself but I really don't know how much they can introduce into existing ZPs just by firmware updates alone. Transcoding must require a fair chunk of CPU and I don't know if the ZPs are that well equipped. For example they can't do anything about the 65k track limit due to the limited amount of RAM in each ZP, RAM is cheap(er) now, so they could increase it in new models but that still doesn't help existing ZPs.

If the Zone players are all 24 bit capable now, but 8 bit are used for volume then maybe they could enable 24 bit compatibility for any zone set to a fixed output level

That would be ZP90s only, obviously, can't fix the volume on a 120 or S5.

and have the rest transcode 24 bit files to 16 bit.

Obviously I'm making all sorts of assumptions there. I'm saying this more in hope than expectation....

Tell me about it!