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In Reply to: RE: Sound quality - Squeezebox vs Sonos Connect - digital out posted by kh6idf on May 02, 2015 at 19:16:31
> the digital outputs SHOULD be identical if they are just passing the stream through
No they won't sound the same as processing takes place - otherwise the Sonos wouldn't be doing anything and you could do away with it!
I don't know the SB3 but I've been very happy using a Sonos for many years. I trust you're using the RCA digital out, not the optical one.
However I've just replaced the Sonos with a much better and more costly new box of tricks - the NAD M12 with BluOS network board. This replaces the Sonos and my ancient Mark Levinson DAC and preamp. It makes a huge improvement in Red Book files on my NAS and of course it will handle higher resolution audio files which the Sonos won't.
I held back for years on replacing the Sonos because its user interface is so much better than any other streamer such as Naim, Linn or others who use the UPnP protocol. The NAD uses Bluesound software and they have taken a better route to finding and selecting NAS stored music, although still not as good as Sonos. They're getting there though and I hope future upgrades will get them to where Sonos has been for several years. Bluesound do their own streamers at much lower prices than NAD, so you might like to try one of their cubes.
Peter
Follow Ups:
Seems to add WiFi but does it allow streaming of Spotify/TIDAL/Etc. without a computer like the SONOS?
Thinking of adding a SONOS Connect to drive the Marantz NA-7004 in my main system drop Airplay as and input.
The AC Outlet Ethernet system I was using to get AirPlay to the Marantz causes digital noise in my new tube preamp. :-(
OK, it's likely a preamp problem but when I unplug the Ethernet adapter from the wall the digital noise goes away and the tube preamp sounds great with all of my sources.
In my system with Sonos streaming into a Schiit DAC, the optical out from the Sonos connector is superior to the coax.
I compared the optical and coaxial outputs from the Sonos, the coaxial was very slightly better to my ears.
Yes, that thought had occurred to me. The incoming bitstream is compressed MP3, and each respective player (Sonos or SB3) takes this bitstream, decompresses it and produces a 16 bit 44.1 KHz output. So as you say there is likely a difference in the digital processing. The SB3 seems to do a better job resulting in more/better bass and a more coherent sound, like all the different frequencies are better aligned in time with each other (if that makes sense). And yes, I am using the coaxial digital out in both players.This also agrees with my result using the uncompressed WAV file. Since there was probably NO additional processing required (no de-compressing), this bitstream was likely passed on unaltered in both players.
If this is the case I may end up returning the Sonos today and investigating other options such as the one you mentioned. If the SB3 would still support Rhapsody I would still be using it, the sound quality through the external DAC was very good. I want at least this same quality in its replacement.
Edits: 05/03/15 05/03/15
Is that really true of the SONOS Bridge?
SONOS goes to all the trouble of circumventing your home WiFi system in order to move CD quality music from your computer to the SONOS speaker system and then uses MP3 encoding to move the data?
Are you sure?
No, I am listening to Rhapsody and Pandora which are compressed streams. Pandora is 128k mp3 and I think Rhapsody is 192 AAC. When I listen to the WAV file I ripped on my computer as a test, there is no MP3 involved. The MP3 is between the music service (Pandora for example) and the Sonos.
Spotify premium is 320kbps Ogg Vorbis while TIDAL premium is hopefully Lossless FLAC.
What happens between the SONOS Bridge and the SONOS speakers or CONNECT I can only guess.
My Connect doesn't need the bridge, it connects directly to my wireless router. And its digital output goes into a Behringer SRC2496, which feeds a DEQ2496 (contains the DAC) where it is finally converted to analog and sent to the preamp. A convoluted path, but it allows room EQ in the digital domain. All my sources (Streamer/CD/SACD/phono) get the same EQ applied by the DEQ2496 to remove room resonances (it's a small room).
if I added the Connect.No need for competition with everything else in the house that's on WiFi.
Edits: 05/03/15
> The incoming bitstream is compressed MP3, and each respective player (Sonos or SB3) takes this bitstream, decompresses it and produces a 16 bit 44.1 KHz output
Well, I was under the impression that MP3 was a lossey format so, hard as one tries, the signal will never return to Red Book standard. I've ripped all my CDs to FLAC which is lossless and have found the Sonos to be pretty good, although not quite as good as putting the CD in the Mark Levinson player and pressing Play! Streamers need to do some processing whatever format the files are stored in. The streamer asks for packages of data from the NAS or other network-connected storage and processes it to provide an accurate digital stream of data for the next stage - the DAC. How well they do this determines the quality of the music.
Using the NAD to process the files offers a much better sound than the Sonos or other streamers I've tried.
I've not investigated the relatively budget streamers, but I hear good things of the Bluesound stuff and, as I mentioned before, their PC Controller is much better than most others, although I'm not so keen on their smartphone app.
Peter
I know the Sonos is putting 16-bit 44.1 KHz out on it's digital output (I can see this from the SRC2496 it is connected to), but as you say that 16-bit 44.1 KHz stream does not contain all the original redbook data. When the compression occurred at the source end some bits were thrown away and you can't get them back.
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