Sonos has transformed my house!

[ric71]

Hi all I had posted similar on computer based music thread but feel it is more appropriate here.

I spent weeks ripping my CD collection to ALAC in prep for my Sonos and Qnap NAS. I bought the ZP90 yesterday and installed it.

Streamed some stuff from the MacBook Pro all good. Listened to our Napster account good fun my wife loves Napster using the iOS on iPhone which is a first her playing loads of music as she couldn't be bothered with hunting down CD's.

I signed up for Spotify premium and wow amazing. I have spent hours listening to music that I haven't heard for years and never owned. The SQ is fantastic at 320kbps maybe not as good as lossless but I don't care can not really tell much of a difference.

What I can say is I have never enjoyed any system I have owned as much as I am now. This is fantastic. Millions of tracks at my disposal in v good SQ all controlled from my iPhone.

My point is my Micromega CD transport is now on eBay and I can't see any reason for buying the NAS for my rippedI CD collection as I can have all I want to play through Spotify premium. It is liberating.

Any views people? No debates on 320kbps vs lossless formats as it sounds great to me maybe because I am enjoying the music rather than studying the sound for once. Plus there are all the Internet radio stations and other music sources plus multiroom. No I don't work for Sonos but it is the best bit of kit I have bought for years!!

 

[nads]

same here but with the Squeezeboxes except that I have ripped to a nas and it is easier to take my CD collection with me as I move about.

 

[Anonymous]

Dead right Sonos transforms ones listening. Its a battle now in our house as to who gets to the controller first! Just in process of completing CD ripping to the NAS drive. I find 320 kbps quite acceptable and at the end of the day if the original recording is rubbish doesn't matter what bit rate it is. Great fun!

 

[Anonymous]

I think your post demonstrates how exciting the hifi world is these days, there are now more than a few ways to get high quality sound.

I use an ipod classic with files converted to AIFF and love the flexibility of having my whole collection available instantly, I wouldn't use streaming services myself but it's good that these things exist.

The most important thing in owning a hifi is having a smile on your face because of the music, if your system does that then something must be right.

 

[Lee H]

Welcome to the club

:dance:

As for the ripping... It depends on your musical tastes. There are some things just not on Spotify. There are some things that are but are then withdrawn. For me, ripping is still part of the process.

Parties are a joy though. I just leave the iPad on the worktop and people treat it like a jukebox. People play songs they haven't heard for years.

 

[John Duncan]

Have been sold for some time on the benefits of a centralised library and/or Spotify Premium. I think there's a way togo before SP becomes my only source of listening, as there are some artists/albums I like who/which simply aren't on there. For the time being though, it covers about 95% of it...

 

[gowiththeflow]

Sonus has transformed listening in our house too, although my 16 year old would rather listen to her iPod via headphones, or it's dock.

I've also spent more time listening to streaming services and internet radio channels, than listening to the CD's I've ripped to ALAC or our two iTunes libraries.

Regarding 320 kbps steams, just remember that the Premium service promises "up to 320 kbps....".

Back in July, it was reported that only about a third of Spotify Premium content was being pushed out at that bit rate, with two thirds being at a lower 160 kbps.

Spotify have since said that they now have approximately 60% of their catalogue available in 320 kbps, so if that's correct the situation is improving.

Other 320 kbps services such as Deezer, also say "up to 320 kbps...." so Spotify are not unique in this.

.

 

[Andy H]

Get a dac, will improve the sound of a Z90 a lot.

Agree with all you said, after a while, just getting up to put a cd on became a pain (I'm lazy).

 

[pwiles1968]

I converted to straming a year ago and not looked back it is so simple and I can have misic in 1 or 4 rooms in the house .

Not gone for spotify I still Buy CD's usually used from Amazon but they go no where near a CD player they get ripped and put away.

 

[PEAYEL]

I agree totally. Just finished ripping 2095 cds in FLAC to my server- boring but worth it. I "Sonosed" the whole house (See signature) after playing with a friend's system in the states, I took me two years to make the leap - nearly buying into the NaimUniti system in the meantime. I kept speakers and amps, sold everything else. The ease of use across the whole concept is great, everybody can't believe how well it works. Try the Aupeo game, type in any genre or artist/band into the search function and see what comes up. I have just re-bought The Congos-Heart of the Congos as a result of this. My wife thinks of it as a giant Ipod, my son (13) is now into retro rock (old AC/DC/Thin Lizzy etc), and I have a new taste for reggae (last listened to in the 70s). Found some great radio stations in Australia and the USA, punk fm being one of them, and New Zealand Radio was great during their quakes - some mad/bad ones out there also, so beware. We wake up to the Sonos alarm and house work is a blast in "party" mode. :dance: homework with my son starts with a discussion on which albums and in what order. also catching up on missed BBC Radio is now just a case of searching and adding to a playlist. How easy is that for a bit of GQT, Friday Night Comedy or Woman's Hour.

As far as I am concerned there are not enough hours in the day. I am thinking of adding a Cambridge DAC to feed from the ZP90 into the Linn Amp, but even that can wait as we are just enjoying, enjoying, enjoying. :rockout: Well off now as I am about to listen to the Kaiser Chiefs - The Future is Medieval. Spread the word............. and the word is Sonos. Enjoy.

 

[Anonymous]

Spotify streams in the ogg vorbis format....and as I can see from my 3000 downloads I have most stuff, including streams is 256.

But then, most of my music is 40s 50s 60s and 70s and digital wasn't about. I lost interest in most music after those years.

I want to be able to listen to real singers recording in a real studio with real musicians. This was being lost from the 60s onwards.

Just listen to some albums which showed the likes of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Little Richard doing a few takes with live musicians untill they got it just right.... Raw unadulerated music....MAGIC!

Now a lot of music is just on a loop with not a real musician in sight! And even some singing is 'doctored'!

Of course this is just my subjective view...so please do not try and squeeze my nuts!

Anyway, back to the point... ....I use Wireworld Ultraviolet USB cable from my Laptop to my Arcam RDAC Converter sent down my QED Quinex phono cable to my Arcam A85 amplifier outed to my KEF Model ONE-2 Floorstanding Speakers.

Sounds good to me.

 

[Amadeus1756]

Out of interest, what do people use to rip their music?

I'm thinking of iTunes so that I have one central location for all my music which I can load on to iPhone, iPad, play on the computer, display artwork etc, but if there is something better, please say.

thanks

 

[The_Lhc]

if you have a number of iThings then I guess iTunes is the best thing to use, personally I wouldn't have it in the house but I don't have any Apple products. I use dbPowerAmp.

 

[woodster]

if you have a number of iThings then I guess iTunes is the best thing to use, personally I wouldn't have it in the house but I don't have any Apple products. I use dbPowerAmp.

Good for you, but all those people cant be wrong?

Or can they?

Sonos and Apple/itunes works for me too I have to admit.

 

[bigboss]

if you have a number of iThings then I guess iTunes is the best thing to use, personally I wouldn't have it in the house but I don't have any Apple products. I use dbPowerAmp.

Good for you, but all those people cant be wrong?

Or can they?

Sonos and Apple/itunes works for me too I have to admit.

I don't think The_Lhc said people using iTunes are wrong. He merely stated his preference, & the reasoning for not using iTunes.

 

[The_Lhc]

if you have a number of iThings then I guess iTunes is the best thing to use, personally I wouldn't have it in the house but I don't have any Apple products. I use dbPowerAmp.

Good for you, but all those people cant be wrong?
Or can they?

Of course they can, have you seen how much money the Transformers films make?

Anyway, what bigboss said...

 

[Amadeus1756]

I must admit, I don't really like iTunes tho I'm forced to use it. I was thinking that the ripping was separate from the management - once ripped I could point iTunes to it to get the music on my I devices but also point my sonos at it.

Thamks for the info - will look at the other application mentioned and also just seen media monkey so will look at that. Which nas is another question entirely!

Thanks all

 

[Amadeus1756]

Just bought a couple of Play3's and a sub today. Sub not in stock so picking it all up in the week (actually probably next weekend).

As I currently don't have a NAS, I thought I'd use spotify. I changed my mind when I found out that to use Spotify you must have a facebook account, which I don't have.

Guess I'll need to buy a NAS more soon thatn I anticipated.

Shame there don't seem to be any comprehensive CD rippers on the Mac, so I'll need to rip on my PC then migrate to the NAS.

Rgds

 

[Mr Steve]

Just remember that for iTunes, and presumably other ripping software, you should be able to configure the file destination as the NAS at the beginning of the ripping process (assuming the ripping device is connected to the same network as the NAS) and then your rip goes directly to the NAS and no further migration of files will be needed.

Obviously, any music you have already ripped which is not on the NAS will have to be moved or copied over.

Steve

 

[Amadeus1756]

Thanks Steve.

Do you know about the metadata associated with an iTunes (or I guess otherwise) ripped album/track such as album art? Is it like images which have exif data which would be convenient if inefficient in terms of space used or is there and additional repository?

Thanks

 

[scene]

If you use iTunes to rip straight to Apple lossless on the NAS, and have iTunes manage your music, the the sonos will pick things, including the track names, artist and album from the folder/file names used. However, sonos won't pick up the artwork from iTunes. You need to add the artwork yourself. You can do this manually, or extract the artwork and add it to the ripped tracks using a utility. There's one on the sonos forums - don't have the link to hand.

 

[Amadeus1756]

Thanks Scene. I found the link: https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/688/related/1/

I still don't understand where where the art goes but I will look into it more if it starts to bother me that much!

 

[Amadeus1756]

Spent a couple of hours looking at both dbPowerAmp and MediaMonkey. Seemingly both have their faults. dbpowerAmp doesn't seem to actively manage your library (so if the format changes, it won't rearrange the structure on disk, but Media monkey is crippleware and couldn't identify the composer of Beethoven's 9th (which dbPowerAmp did, seemingly from the same source).

Guess I'll continue to look for now.

 

[Amadeus1756]

Picked up my stuff (2xPlay3, 1xbridge, 1xsub) yesterday and had it working an hour later.

Played radio fine. Used wifes PC laptop to play music and hed frequent breakups due to network bandwidth. Seems this is a regular problem with Sonos when using grouped devices. Could be an issue with PC of course.

Current house is timber framed (so walls are basically a token gesture) - wondering how (if?) it will perform when I move house in a weeks time (house built in 1928, very solid).

When it does work, it's wonderful!

 

[The_Lhc]

Played radio fine. Used wifes PC laptop to play music and hed frequent breakups due to network bandwidth. Seems this is a regular problem with Sonos when using grouped devices. Could be an issue with PC of course.

Presumably you mean playing music stored on your wife's PC? Is the PC connected to your router wirelessly? If it is then you're running an unsupported configuration, Sonos will insist you wire the music source (the PC). This is why most people end up buying a NAS to store the music on. Alternatively you may be experiencing wireless interference, have you checked which channels your router and Sonos are using, they need to be different channels, either 1, 6 or 11, also turn off any wide-band or "turbo" modes on your router as they use multiple channels.

Current house is timber framed (so walls are basically a token gesture) - wondering how (if?) it will perform when I move house in a weeks time (house built in 1928, very solid).

Shouldn't really be an issue, I use it in a stone walled house, as long as you place the components carefully it works fine, I never have any issues streaming multiple streams to different ZPs.