Morning,
Perhaps you all know this already, but we’ve just been bitten by Sonos marketing.
Just had an experience with Sonos for the first time and thought it might be a good idea to share. We’re music lovers (not ‘audiophiles’ by any means, but we like our music).
First, a bit of background. We (my dad and I) generally tend to listen to 70s glam rock/90s indie and American pop punk, among a variety of other genres. We like to listen loud and love a good sound. I’m an avid Spotify fan and use the 320kbit (ogg/mp3? Can’t remember) streamed stuff along with Napster (now Rhapsody) tracks at 192kbit/s WMA. On our systems we can’t tell a difference between the two formats. We also have ripped CD collections (generally WMA lossless or FLAC) and my dad likes to use his turntable. We both generally use the PC for playback.
Firstly, my setup (newer than my dad’s, though still approx. ten years old). I have a PC with a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro, though it’s wasted at the minute as I’m only using an optical out to my receiver, which is a Yamaha RX-V657, currently driving two Axiom M3Ti speakers (I have more for rears but don’t have the room for them at the house I’m in at the minute so it’s now a two-speaker, music-only setup. I have an Axiom EP-350 subwoofer as well, however that’s crap. I have the receiver’s crossover set at 70hz but the auto switching on the sub isn’t sensitive enough, it rarely cuts in unless the music is loud enough to rip your face off, unless I’m putting out a real LFE channel. Use the pure direct mode on the received and it won’t cut in at all, for obvious reasons. With the two-speaker setup, I have never had the receiver at maximum volume as it’s plenty loud enough. I’ve gone probably to about 85% for incredibly short periods, by which point the radiators and floor boards upstairs are rattling beyond belief and it’s not comfortable being in the room.
Next, my dad’s setup. He’s using an analogue out from a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro to a VERY old (bought 1985 ish, though it cost a grand then, so it was probably VERY good for its day, and I think it sounded as good as mine with no trouble whatsoever) Pioneer separates system. It has a CD player which doesn’t work any more, two tape decks, a radio tuner and a turntable, which has also had its days. It outputs 50w per channel at 6ohms, the speakers handle 70w and are square bookshelf type with square, metal drivers. My dad had no intention of changing this system, but the CD and turntable were barely working and to add insult to injury he just built his own house and the speakers perished whilst in storage, almost as though the cold had eaten the rubber away. This made for interesting sound to say the least, so it was time to get something new.
He’s settled on an Audio Technica DJ turntable (It needed to have a built in preamp to keep costs down, and also needed to be able to play 78s). I won’t go into the turntable as it’s mostly irrelevant here.
I was enlisted to try and find something new which also went with the new house. Space for amps and various boxes is limited in the new place, and my mum wasn’t going to be happy with ‘boxes everywhere’. All it needed to do was play music from online services and the local music collection on the network. The Sonos Play:5’s measured in at roughly the same size as the average bookshelf and the reviews all over the internet said that for the size, they sounded remarkable. We trawled the internet and was unable to find anything that suggested the Play:5 speakers wouldn’t cope with what we threw at them. Quotes like ‘never any distortion, at any volume’ spring to mind. There’s also heaps of people on the Sonos forum claiming to be professionals using the same speakers to ‘fill entire cathedrals’ or ‘blow heads off in community halls’. It sounded too good to be true, but for the size and convenience of the system we were willing to take a punt.
We ordered my dad a pair of Play:5s to use as a stereo pair. They came a few days later and we set them up without issue, all very impressive, quick and efficient. iPad app worked great with hardly any lag through my dad’s 10 year old router. Sound-wise, also pretty impressive. But ‘mind-blowing’?! No. Not in the slightest. The sound was very clear. We’ll give it that. The bass was loud, if a little too loud, but wasn’t low. Maybe this was to be expected given the 5 is made up of 5 small (ish) drivers. Anyway, it was liveable. We’ll sort that out later. Now to whack it up a bit. We found that listening to Del Amitri’s This Side of the Morning (WMA at 192kbit/s on the local PC) was very pleasurable, but not loud enough. We pushed the slider to approx. 70%, could still hold a conversation comfortably without raising our voices at 2.5m away from each speaker, in the sweet spot. 80%? A bit louder, some flattening, ‘tinny’ sound. Stuff it, this isn’t loud enough. 100%. Horrible sound. No distortion, granted. But it was like a very, very loud iPhone. Tinny, flat, all treble & lacking in bass, midrange almost totally gone. Fair enough, speakers that sound full and deep in my house sound lousy and tinny in my dad’s bigger, tiled, echoey room. But from what we remembered my system didn’t when we tried it in the same place, nor did his old one, even with the broken speakers (when you listened past the hopeless vibration from the broken drivers). It was impractical to drag my entire setup through to try them alongside the Sonos in the same environment, so the very portable Sonos was boxed up and taken through to my house, to listen alongside my Yammy receiver and M3 speakers. The sub was switched off for comparison and the Sonos was placed alongside my speakers. I didn’t change the crossover setting on the receiver, 70hz was probably lower than the Sonos would ever get to, so we didn’t make it a competition of which one would go lower. We tried the same song on both systems. At a normal, background-music type volume, The Sonos was far more impressive in my living room. So much so that the music had more clarity in the midrange than it did on my system (smaller drivers, anyone?). The tinny sound had all but gone and the music sounded wonderful. Whack it up to 100% and the music flattened, midrange disappearing and exaggerated, somewhat false bass appearing with an emphasis on the trebles again. Fair enough, it did get to a slightly higher volume in my room before the flattening became noticeable. But it STILL wasn’t loud enough! This is pathetic! What about the shaking walls on the churches and community halls?! It wasn’t the volume of the source file, either. Time to whack mine up. Sonos = totally and utterly defeated by a system that cost £200 less, a decade ago. Probably would have been licked by a more expensive system from three decades ago as well. Fair enough, I don’t have built-in Spotify or network access but the new version of my receiver is available for £250 with network capability, smartphone apps and built in Spotify and Airplay. No fantastic multiroom, though.
For me as well, at a price of £700 for two speakers the total lack of a proper EQ is scandalous. It’s beyond a joke, quite frankly. The Sonos is going back under the 60 day refund. My dad has now ordered a pair of Monitor Audio BX5’s (fortunately they look nice enough for my mum to allow them in the house) and a Yamaha RX-V675, for the same outlay as the two Play:5s. Other than the multiroom support, the capability is the same with what we hope will be a far superior sound. Granted we could get the multiroom support by using Sonos:Connect devices but for what they do, those look like a total rip-off. Maybe we’ll wait for the Beep.
What’s getting me is that I’m well aware my stereo is nothing special, and I’m no audiophile. The convenience and wireless ability of Sonos is brilliant, unless you don’t have a power outlet where you want the speakers to go, in which case you’ll find yourself running wires anyway. Other than that, it’s really nothing it’s hyped up to be. If you like music, save a few quid and get AV receivers and use Airplay or similar for multiroom.
The next time someone tells me a system with tiny speakers such as a Bose Acoustimass or some little Kefs will outperform some bookshelf separates I’ll proceed to smack my head against the nearest wall.
Perhaps you all know this already, but we’ve just been bitten by Sonos marketing.
Just had an experience with Sonos for the first time and thought it might be a good idea to share. We’re music lovers (not ‘audiophiles’ by any means, but we like our music).
First, a bit of background. We (my dad and I) generally tend to listen to 70s glam rock/90s indie and American pop punk, among a variety of other genres. We like to listen loud and love a good sound. I’m an avid Spotify fan and use the 320kbit (ogg/mp3? Can’t remember) streamed stuff along with Napster (now Rhapsody) tracks at 192kbit/s WMA. On our systems we can’t tell a difference between the two formats. We also have ripped CD collections (generally WMA lossless or FLAC) and my dad likes to use his turntable. We both generally use the PC for playback.
Firstly, my setup (newer than my dad’s, though still approx. ten years old). I have a PC with a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro, though it’s wasted at the minute as I’m only using an optical out to my receiver, which is a Yamaha RX-V657, currently driving two Axiom M3Ti speakers (I have more for rears but don’t have the room for them at the house I’m in at the minute so it’s now a two-speaker, music-only setup. I have an Axiom EP-350 subwoofer as well, however that’s crap. I have the receiver’s crossover set at 70hz but the auto switching on the sub isn’t sensitive enough, it rarely cuts in unless the music is loud enough to rip your face off, unless I’m putting out a real LFE channel. Use the pure direct mode on the received and it won’t cut in at all, for obvious reasons. With the two-speaker setup, I have never had the receiver at maximum volume as it’s plenty loud enough. I’ve gone probably to about 85% for incredibly short periods, by which point the radiators and floor boards upstairs are rattling beyond belief and it’s not comfortable being in the room.
Next, my dad’s setup. He’s using an analogue out from a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro to a VERY old (bought 1985 ish, though it cost a grand then, so it was probably VERY good for its day, and I think it sounded as good as mine with no trouble whatsoever) Pioneer separates system. It has a CD player which doesn’t work any more, two tape decks, a radio tuner and a turntable, which has also had its days. It outputs 50w per channel at 6ohms, the speakers handle 70w and are square bookshelf type with square, metal drivers. My dad had no intention of changing this system, but the CD and turntable were barely working and to add insult to injury he just built his own house and the speakers perished whilst in storage, almost as though the cold had eaten the rubber away. This made for interesting sound to say the least, so it was time to get something new.
He’s settled on an Audio Technica DJ turntable (It needed to have a built in preamp to keep costs down, and also needed to be able to play 78s). I won’t go into the turntable as it’s mostly irrelevant here.
I was enlisted to try and find something new which also went with the new house. Space for amps and various boxes is limited in the new place, and my mum wasn’t going to be happy with ‘boxes everywhere’. All it needed to do was play music from online services and the local music collection on the network. The Sonos Play:5’s measured in at roughly the same size as the average bookshelf and the reviews all over the internet said that for the size, they sounded remarkable. We trawled the internet and was unable to find anything that suggested the Play:5 speakers wouldn’t cope with what we threw at them. Quotes like ‘never any distortion, at any volume’ spring to mind. There’s also heaps of people on the Sonos forum claiming to be professionals using the same speakers to ‘fill entire cathedrals’ or ‘blow heads off in community halls’. It sounded too good to be true, but for the size and convenience of the system we were willing to take a punt.
We ordered my dad a pair of Play:5s to use as a stereo pair. They came a few days later and we set them up without issue, all very impressive, quick and efficient. iPad app worked great with hardly any lag through my dad’s 10 year old router. Sound-wise, also pretty impressive. But ‘mind-blowing’?! No. Not in the slightest. The sound was very clear. We’ll give it that. The bass was loud, if a little too loud, but wasn’t low. Maybe this was to be expected given the 5 is made up of 5 small (ish) drivers. Anyway, it was liveable. We’ll sort that out later. Now to whack it up a bit. We found that listening to Del Amitri’s This Side of the Morning (WMA at 192kbit/s on the local PC) was very pleasurable, but not loud enough. We pushed the slider to approx. 70%, could still hold a conversation comfortably without raising our voices at 2.5m away from each speaker, in the sweet spot. 80%? A bit louder, some flattening, ‘tinny’ sound. Stuff it, this isn’t loud enough. 100%. Horrible sound. No distortion, granted. But it was like a very, very loud iPhone. Tinny, flat, all treble & lacking in bass, midrange almost totally gone. Fair enough, speakers that sound full and deep in my house sound lousy and tinny in my dad’s bigger, tiled, echoey room. But from what we remembered my system didn’t when we tried it in the same place, nor did his old one, even with the broken speakers (when you listened past the hopeless vibration from the broken drivers). It was impractical to drag my entire setup through to try them alongside the Sonos in the same environment, so the very portable Sonos was boxed up and taken through to my house, to listen alongside my Yammy receiver and M3 speakers. The sub was switched off for comparison and the Sonos was placed alongside my speakers. I didn’t change the crossover setting on the receiver, 70hz was probably lower than the Sonos would ever get to, so we didn’t make it a competition of which one would go lower. We tried the same song on both systems. At a normal, background-music type volume, The Sonos was far more impressive in my living room. So much so that the music had more clarity in the midrange than it did on my system (smaller drivers, anyone?). The tinny sound had all but gone and the music sounded wonderful. Whack it up to 100% and the music flattened, midrange disappearing and exaggerated, somewhat false bass appearing with an emphasis on the trebles again. Fair enough, it did get to a slightly higher volume in my room before the flattening became noticeable. But it STILL wasn’t loud enough! This is pathetic! What about the shaking walls on the churches and community halls?! It wasn’t the volume of the source file, either. Time to whack mine up. Sonos = totally and utterly defeated by a system that cost £200 less, a decade ago. Probably would have been licked by a more expensive system from three decades ago as well. Fair enough, I don’t have built-in Spotify or network access but the new version of my receiver is available for £250 with network capability, smartphone apps and built in Spotify and Airplay. No fantastic multiroom, though.
For me as well, at a price of £700 for two speakers the total lack of a proper EQ is scandalous. It’s beyond a joke, quite frankly. The Sonos is going back under the 60 day refund. My dad has now ordered a pair of Monitor Audio BX5’s (fortunately they look nice enough for my mum to allow them in the house) and a Yamaha RX-V675, for the same outlay as the two Play:5s. Other than the multiroom support, the capability is the same with what we hope will be a far superior sound. Granted we could get the multiroom support by using Sonos:Connect devices but for what they do, those look like a total rip-off. Maybe we’ll wait for the Beep.
What’s getting me is that I’m well aware my stereo is nothing special, and I’m no audiophile. The convenience and wireless ability of Sonos is brilliant, unless you don’t have a power outlet where you want the speakers to go, in which case you’ll find yourself running wires anyway. Other than that, it’s really nothing it’s hyped up to be. If you like music, save a few quid and get AV receivers and use Airplay or similar for multiroom.
The next time someone tells me a system with tiny speakers such as a Bose Acoustimass or some little Kefs will outperform some bookshelf separates I’ll proceed to smack my head against the nearest wall.
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