[Willanhanyard]

A friend of mine bought some Sonos speakers/network thingy and it sounds like a really cool concept, but I am wondering how the quality actually is. Has anyone used it before and can tell how it works? Thanks.

 

[Bones13]

I have Sonos in my house, a couple of the portable units, and a couple of the white boxes feeding some stereos.  Plays music from my NAS, SiriusXM, Pandora, Spotify and local+internet radio.
 
While the wireless aspect, and the multitude of sources available, make this an easy to use unit, I don't think it really works that well for a critical use source.  It will only play 16/44.1 files.  Higher rez files are not played.  The on board DAC is generic, and the SPDIF is pretty jittery.  (one can get a modded one from Wyred4Sound with much improved SPDIF)
 
That being said, its absolutely wonderful for its designed purpose, music anywhere in your house, easy to use software, that is spouse friendly.   I heartily recommend for "house music" or playing outside in the garage and or barbeque.  If you are looking for a high end source for a headphone system, I would look elsewhere.

 

[Dr4Bob]

I use the Sonos for my two stereos and love the system's user interface. That said, for really good sound quality a good DAC is absolutely required. I agree with Bones regarding the jitter problem and had decent results with Monarchy's DIP but the system is, to me at least, as good as a CD source if one uses either the W4S reclocker mod or Empirical Audio's Syncromesh (both reclock and upsample to 24/96). I have the W4S solution on one system and Empirical's on the other and have been absolutely satisfied with the performance.
 
I only use ALAC ripped from CD's so the lack of HiRez file support is of no consequence to me.
 
Cheers

 

[iLikeItInTheEar]

I also have a few SONOS speakers in my house. I use PowerLine devices instead of the wireless mesh, which uses the electrical cabling in my house to transmit data. I've found it great and am very happy with it.



I stream via Spotify (make sure you tick the "High Quality Streaming" option in the app if listening via you're computer, etc). I absolutely love the convenience of Spotify, especially being able to sync music locally on my iDevice and play anywhere. I also play FLAC files via SONOS at home. When I get into this a bit more I'll probably look into their SONOS amp and buy some dedicated high end speakers instead of using their Play5.



The SONOS soundbar also looks interesting which is just being released.