Longtermrenter Posted December 25, 2016 Share Posted December 25, 2016 At the risk of offending Sonos owning HPCers I have the following views to offer. Sister in law had a Sonos Play 5 given to her by her husband the Xmas. Apart from the excessive £400 splurge for two people who go on about watching their money, I thought the sound was atrocious. I know you can tune these to the room but I work in audio, know what sounds good and also know these room tuning algorithms are extremely limited by physics. Honestly, you could get yourself an amazing hi-fi second hand for this money , or countless other brands like JBL which offer serious performance to price ratios. Can't believe people are taken in by this crap. Hyped bass, brittle highs and lacking in midrange. Plastic turd in my opinion. Merry Christmas everybody. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abidova Posted December 25, 2016 Share Posted December 25, 2016 I recently bought an old pair of b & w 600s on ebay for about £20. Picked up a cheap Bluetooth amp from amazon (made by DROK for £22). For less than £45 I have a Bluetooth set up I imagine would be at least the equal of a sonos system. granted it is not multi room but as you say £400 should be getting you a pretty decent set up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeDavola Posted December 25, 2016 Share Posted December 25, 2016 F*ck me, £400? Had no idea they were that much. Mate of mine got one recently; he's generally far better at spending money than me! I have a little Cambridge Audio speaker that cost me £100 that I use on the rare occasion that I want to listen to music or a podcast through a speaker: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Audio-Minx-Universal-Bluetooth/dp/B00C0SGCLQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482709055&sr=8-1&keywords=cambridge+audio+speaker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted December 25, 2016 Share Posted December 25, 2016 There are often deails on hotukdeals but, even then, I think it is hugely over-priced for what appears to be a basic wireless speaker that has a radio app that you can stick on your phone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecrashingisles Posted December 25, 2016 Share Posted December 25, 2016 Sonos ought to be obsolete by now with their proprietary wireless standard that doesn't give you any benefit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clarky Cat Posted December 25, 2016 Share Posted December 25, 2016 £400? You can get a raspberry Pi, DAC, decent second hand amp + speakers for half that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnionTerror Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 I can see the point of Sonos (no, I dont have one), as you can have multiple speakers, and can stream one source to all of them..Bose do something similar with their SoundTouch. Thus, you could have a set of purely wireless 5.1 speakers...Admittedly with the Playbar thrown in, you could be looking at 1500 quid.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 Time that someone else such as Amazon knocked one out for £50. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikhail Liebenstein Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 31 minutes ago, The Masked Tulip said: Time that someone else such as Amazon knocked one out for £50. Well except for the fact that the sound on the Echo is shite too. I was having this exact discussion the other day with some fairly hardcore engineering colleagues. And to a man (well they were all men), everyone agreed that people were being some how siren like seduced into discussing sample rates and all the digital aspects, whilst ignoring some of the analogue basics like Amplifier and speaker response. So again, it probably falls to us guys in our early forties, who may have caught the last vestiges of the of the pre-CD world to explain this stuff. We are not anti-digital music, we are just anti the trend brought about by the portability of digital music and direct headphone use to then slip into selecting rubbish amps and speakers just because you are used to rubbish headphones. BTW, I also dislike headphones as they damage hearing. Early forties and I can hear unto about 15.4KHz, whereas I know late 20 years olds who can only manage 12KHz, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikhail Liebenstein Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 BTW, I love this sort of stuff: http://thevinylfactory.com/features/the-8-best-budget-valve-amplifiers-and-how-to-avoid-getting-ripped-off/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 Bang and Olufsen were always high priced and fashionable but IIRC rarely the best. I think you can get a variety of addins for the Sonos kit but the primary market for it seems to be streaming music with compressed sources like Spotify. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyguy Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 Digital sound reproduction dpends on a few things: Good speakers. Good quality DAC. Good (clean/not noisy) power supply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bossybabe Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 I think Bose have Sonos well and truly beaten on the overpriced shite market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si1 Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 Status symbol technology for the feeble minded. Both apple airplay and Google Chromecast audio beat sonos in the distributed digital audio realm, for sound quality and flexibility, at a much lower price. But you need to think a bit. I heard a sonos system and thought it sounded terrible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyguy Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 I have a Cowon MP3 player. I dont like the idea off using up my phone battery for music. Besides, the Cowon will last about 60h on one charge. The sound and music format support is great. However, the GUI was designed by Stevie Wonder and the touch screen is insane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
200p Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 Did you know Sonos is Sonos backwards like Soros like Aviva Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
200p Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 9 hours ago, Longtermrenter said: At the risk of offending Sonos owning HPCers I have the following views to offer. Lol, too late with the thread title! I feel people being triggered already! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chronyx Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 I plug my phone into a Sony portable speaker and stream off the PC. Works well enough for being in the kitchen or upstairs I think I need to spend more money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thombleached Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 10 hours ago, Clarky Cat said: £400? You can get a raspberry Pi, DAC, decent second hand amp + speakers for half that. Bob on. In fact you could get a decent set of wharfdales with a pi and decent amp x2 to go multiroom if you so desire for around £400 (well you might have to skimp on the amp a bit if you want 7.1 and more speakers) my friend was banging on about sonos but I've persuaded him to wire up each room with speaker cable and network cable so we can do it properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si1 Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 21 minutes ago, thombleached said: Bob on. In fact you could get a decent set of wharfdales with a pi and decent amp x2 to go multiroom if you so desire for around £400 (well you might have to skimp on the amp a bit if you want 7.1 and more speakers) my friend was banging on about sonos but I've persuaded him to wire up each room with speaker cable and network cable so we can do it properly. I have little problem streaming stereo hires over wifi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thombleached Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 6 minutes ago, Si1 said: I have little problem streaming stereo hires over wifi Network cables probably overkill for music, but it gives him the option to stream video should he want to add things overtime Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si1 Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 16 minutes ago, thombleached said: Network cables probably overkill for music, but it gives him the option to stream video should he want to add things overtime 16 minutes ago, thombleached said: Network cables probably overkill for music, but it gives him the option to stream video should he want to add things overtime Video too, in 720p hidef. Maybe hidef plus 7 channel hires audio woukd be different! Certainly Ethernet would improve on the odd dropped connection I get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snagger Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 11 hours ago, Longtermrenter said: At the risk of offending Sonos owning HPCers I have the following views to offer. Sister in law had a Sonos Play 5 given to her by her husband the Xmas. Apart from the excessive £400 splurge for two people who go on about watching their money, I thought the sound was atrocious. I know you can tune these to the room but I work in audio, know what sounds good and also know these room tuning algorithms are extremely limited by physics. Honestly, you could get yourself an amazing hi-fi second hand for this money , or countless other brands like JBL which offer serious performance to price ratios. Can't believe people are taken in by this crap. Hyped bass, brittle highs and lacking in midrange. Plastic turd in my opinion. Merry Christmas everybody. Should of got an Amazon Echo, brilliant piece of kit and the sound is perfectly adequate for a non-audiophile household like ours. But if you are an audiophile, you can always get the cheaper Echo Dot and connect to whatever sound sytem you already have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thombleached Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 12 minutes ago, Si1 said: Video too, in 720p hidef. Maybe hidef plus 7 channel hires audio woukd be different! Certainly Ethernet would improve on the odd dropped connection I get. I've got a network port in each room, most films/Tv on the NAS is 1080p DTS-HD. I doubt wireless would touch it. Like you say though, wireless works fine for most - certainly a lot better than it used to be and leccy ports can always take 10/100 fairly well. I just like knowing it'll work 100% of the time mind you, there's only one room that's got an amp/speakers that make use of the DTS. Next thing to upgrade is the NAS, 5TB runs out pretty quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted December 26, 2016 Share Posted December 26, 2016 If I want to hear music throughout the house, I turn the lounge set up and leave the doors open. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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