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Sonos - overpriced shite


Longtermrenter

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HOLA441
On 26/12/2016 at 11:26 PM, The XYY Man said:

No problem bicycle-repair man..!

 

XYY

                                                                                                               

The dog's kennel is not the place to keep a sausage - Danish proverb

 

 

Eh? Am i missing something there?

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HOLA444
On 27/12/2016 at 11:53 AM, dgul said:

IMO this is about how you listen to 'music'.

If I want to listen to music I put some on and listen to it.  Doesn't matter if it is CD or vinyl, etc -- it is about listening.

I think what Sonos et al offer is some kind of background-music in every room, like we need to think we're in a cafe or shop at all times.  This isn't about listening, but about drowning out the emptiness of a soundless environment*.  It sounds like you don't suffer from this, so only need music on when you want to listen to it -- hence you found your old Sonos useless.

* I don't know what this is about.  Perhaps it has something to do with the sound environment during the very early years.

^ Nail on the head - I sold a sonos for the same reason, it was rubbish and so I never really used it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the desire for constand background noise is related to low level tinitus, which is caused by overuse of headphones.

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HOLA445
6 hours ago, Longtermrenter said:

Eh? Am i missing something there?

Yes.

And now I'm sober, I don't understand what I typed it for either. 

I know the Monty Python sketch well - but don't see a connection with you, or any of your posts.

I'll go and get Mrs XYY's vodka and see if we can refresh my memory...

;)

 

 

XYY

 

                                                                                                               

The dog's kennel is not the place to keep a sausage - Danish proverb

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HOLA446
6 hours ago, MrPin said:

Nothing wrong with valve amplifiers, just that you get to pay an extra lot for them.:huh:

Years and years ago I built a pair of Mullard 5-20s -- didn't cost that much, but I did get some of the more expensive bits from the dustier shelves in stores....  I've still got them in the attic -- occasionally I think of dusting them down, but really there isn't enough time in the world (and frankly they weren't as good (or convenient) as the solid-state amp that usurped them).

I note you can now get the book online http://www.sowter.co.uk/pdf/Mullard-Circuits-for-Audio-Amplifiers.pdf -- not sure how easy it is to get the output transformers these days (they were useless old-stock when I put them together).

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HOLA447
On 25/12/2016 at 11:15 PM, 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.

 

 

I have a pair of JBL duet speakers - the original model. Mains powered, plugs into the headphone socket on phone etc. Also have a second pair used with my Mac Mini.  Great sound quality, go loud, and about £20 on ebay. Keeps me happy whilst my Rega/Naim HiFi is in storage

 

 

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HOLA448
On 26/12/2016 at 11:26 PM, spunko2010 said:

So what do you all recommend for someone starting out anew? I've got an older system that needs replacing (Panasonic). Did buy a sonos 3 a few years ago but never used it so sold it. 

If you can do without streaming etc, I would either get a copy of WhatHifi award winners from 5/10/15 years ago and look for well regarded kit on ebay. Or got to Richer Sounds and get a CD/Amp/Speaker combo within your budget. Marantz CD players and amps were always well regarded.

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HOLA449
11 minutes ago, Kiwi_Muncher said:

If you can do without streaming etc, I would either get a copy of WhatHifi award winners from 5/10/15 years ago and look for well regarded kit on ebay. Or got to Richer Sounds and get a CD/Amp/Speaker combo within your budget. Marantz CD players and amps were always well regarded.

Richer Sounds (with which I have no connection, apart from them remembering my debit card number) have some good stuff, and I have had no problem with Marantz. I have one of the SACD players. But do get some decent speakers, and job sorted.

And Mr Longterm, yes we are being sold plastic turds as the "next greatest thing".

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HOLA4410
13 hours ago, Habeas Domus said:

^ Nail on the head - I sold a sonos for the same reason, it was rubbish and so I never really used it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the desire for constand background noise is related to low level tinitus, which is caused by overuse of headphones.

Exactly this. My wife has bad tinnitus (from chemo rather than headphones) and she loves the Amazon echo as she can quickly choose music and volume according to how bad it is.  Sometimes it's classical music, sometimes pop.  There's no way she's going to faff around with a decent audio system. 

Personally, I like peace and quiet. 

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HOLA4411
3 hours ago, Kiwi_Muncher said:

If you can do without streaming etc, I would either get a copy of WhatHifi award winners from 5/10/15 years ago and look for well regarded kit on ebay. Or got to Richer Sounds and get a CD/Amp/Speaker combo within your budget. Marantz CD players and amps were always well regarded.

The disturbing thing for me is the likes of What HiFi are reviewing this Sonos stuff and giving it 4 or 5 stars. I don't trust many reviews any more.

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There appears to be a logic in this thread, like many others on the forum, that unless somebody makes the most frugal, most overcomplicated and/or most cost effective choice that their decision is purely based on vanity or naivety. 

Maybe people don't want a 1980s HiFi separates set-up sitting in their living room. Maybe they don't have the technical knowledge or desire to configure a NAS connection via a raspberry pi. Maybe they genuinely don't have the ear to require every ounce of audio quality squeezed out of their media sources.

They might just want something that fits in with their current set-up, connects to media services that they might subscribe to and has a reasonable (in their opinion) sound quality.

On the price point, are they overpriced? Most probably, like Apple products they do appear to command a premium and hold their prices, but again, maybe people are aware of this and happy to pay it, rather than blind to the fact which seems to be inferred here.

 

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I've got a Sonos 3, suits my needs perfectly. 

I've no doubt the sound quality is crap compared to plenty of other alternatives now on the market, but it's not about that for me, it connects to my extensive music library easily, comes with a number of apps I use anyway (Deezer mainly) and is small and contained which is perfect for my tiny one bed flat. 

Thing is that it's been surpassed by plenty of other better alternatives, but when it came out it was the only thing like it at the time. Wouldn't buy one now, but that doesn't stop it being useful and suitable for my needs. 

 

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4 minutes ago, Bradbury Robinson said:

There appears to be a logic in this thread, like many others on the forum, that unless somebody makes the most frugal, most overcomplicated and/or most cost effective choice that their decision is purely based on vanity or naivety. 

Maybe people don't want a 1980s HiFi separates set-up sitting in their living room. Maybe they don't have the technical knowledge or desire to configure a NAS connection via a raspberry pi. Maybe they genuinely don't have the ear to require every ounce of audio quality squeezed out of their media sources.

They might just want something that fits in with their current set-up, connects to media services that they might subscribe to and has a reasonable (in their opinion) sound quality.

On the price point, are they overpriced? Most probably, like Apple products they do appear to command a premium and hold their prices, but again, maybe people are aware of this and happy to pay it, rather than blind to the fact which seems to be inferred here.

 

Was writing my response at the same time, perfectly sums up my thoughts on it. 

If I was looking for something similar today I expect I wouldn't bother with a Sonos, at the time it perfectly met my needs and still does. 

I'd love a big Hi-Fi set up, but I simply don't have the room. 

 

 

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7 minutes ago, Bradbury Robinson said:

There appears to be a logic in this thread, like many others on the forum, that unless somebody makes the most frugal, most overcomplicated and/or most cost effective choice that their decision is purely based on vanity or naivety. 

Maybe people don't want a 1980s HiFi separates set-up sitting in their living room. Maybe they don't have the technical knowledge or desire to configure a NAS connection via a raspberry pi. Maybe they genuinely don't have the ear to require every ounce of audio quality squeezed out of their media sources.

They might just want something that fits in with their current set-up, connects to media services that they might subscribe to and has a reasonable (in their opinion) sound quality.

On the price point, are they overpriced? Most probably, like Apple products they do appear to command a premium and hold their prices, but again, maybe people are aware of this and happy to pay it, rather than blind to the fact which seems to be inferred here.

 

Well naturally, you want a separate room for that ;)

Actually we're moving and having such a thing is a consideration.

Having played around with various bits of kit, where the Sonos box and one other the name of which escapes me win are in the ease of setup.

If I want to play something digital I have to plug my laptop or phone into the amplifier and end up with a cable trailing across the living room.

If I buy a nice high end DAC like the Mytek Brooklyn which has MQA built in and is only one of two DACs to have that I'm then still left wanting some kind of streaming source, preferably one which works with a mobile phone.

A laptop on the coffee table is not the answer not least because it gets in the way of the stereo image and mine has no optical output anyway. I had resigned myself to having to build a full Windows PC (not into Apple) to provide the source and to also put a TV capture card in it so it also replaces the Humax PVR box thus selections can be made from the TV screen.

The "ease of use" and the "high end" still don't really seem to meet in the middle yet. It's a bit DIY and I don't think many people want to go down that route.

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On ‎27‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 5:53 PM, SpectrumFX said:

What's wrong with the old system? 

I've been meaning to rip all my CDs for many a year, but never seem to get around to it. Are you currently keeping all your stuff on hard drives, or listening to actual CDs and/or LPs?

 

 

I have a pile of maybe 40 CDs which were ripped to the network and live on a NAS drive. I can play them on the computer in the home office.

I don't know why I keep the actual discs, I keep meaning to have a clear-out. We don't even have a CD player. Only one or two have something approaching "sentimental value" that I might keep. I would try to sell them but most would barely be worth 50p each.

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17 minutes ago, DTMark said:

I have a pile of maybe 40 CDs which were ripped to the network and live on a NAS drive. I can play them on the computer in the home office.

I don't know why I keep the actual discs, I keep meaning to have a clear-out. We don't even have a CD player. Only one or two have something approaching "sentimental value" that I might keep. I would try to sell them but most would barely be worth 50p each.

I've got something like 500. After my response above I got off my **** and actually started ripping them. I'm about 60 in.

I've gone for flac rather than mp3. Hopefully I won't regret that. My intention is to put them all on my phone (or as much as I can fit) so I can listen on the go. I've got a 126 GB card in it, so should fit quite a bit. 

My CD player is nakered, so I've got a new one coming. Cheapest one I could find, just to have something for my wife to play the CDs on. 

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HOLA4419
11 minutes ago, SpectrumFX said:

I've got something like 500. After my response above I got off my **** and actually started ripping them. I'm about 60 in.

I've gone for flac rather than mp3. Hopefully I won't regret that. My intention is to put them all on my phone (or as much as I can fit) so I can listen on the go. I've got a 126 GB card in it, so should fit quite a bit. 

My CD player is nakered, so I've got a new one coming. Cheapest one I could find, just to have something for my wife to play the CDs on. 

I think you'll get about 150 CD's onto 64gb, so you'll be most way there.

Hifi changed with the Walkman/Ipod/MP3 player then phone, music and the controls for playing it went mobile, sound quality expectations were effectively reset at that point and often pretty horrible sound quality was the trade off that people accepted. Similar with flat screen tv's, no space for a decent speaker - accept the results or buy a surround sound system. I think over time a desire for the sound quality back will emerge when there are no more usability/portability benefits to be extracted. 

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27 minutes ago, SpectrumFX said:

I've got something like 500. After my response above I got off my **** and actually started ripping them. I'm about 60 in.

I've gone for flac rather than mp3. Hopefully I won't regret that. My intention is to put them all on my phone (or as much as I can fit) so I can listen on the go. I've got a 126 GB card in it, so should fit quite a bit. 

My CD player is nakered, so I've got a new one coming. Cheapest one I could find, just to have something for my wife to play the CDs on. 

My iPhone wouldn't play (or even recognise) FLAC files (only WAV) nor anything above IIRC 16 bit 48k, nor will the Apple TV box.

My Windows phone will play FLAC and 24bit 192k.

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11 minutes ago, onlyme2 said:

I think you'll get about 150 CD's onto 64gb, so you'll be most way there.

Hifi changed with the Walkman/Ipod/MP3 player then phone, music and the controls for playing it went mobile, sound quality expectations were effectively reset at that point and often pretty horrible sound quality was the trade off that people accepted. Similar with flat screen tv's, no space for a decent speaker - accept the results or buy a surround sound system. I think over time a desire for the sound quality back will emerge when there are no more usability/portability benefits to be extracted. 

I think they've always been willing to sacrifice quality for portability and convenience - cf cassettes v vinyl.  With living spaces getting smaller, I think the days of room hogging audio equipment for many are numbered.  I guess it remains to be seen how much quality you can wring out smaller and smaller devices. 

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3 minutes ago, MrPin said:

Winkie! Are you taking up the guitar?

Wish I could, said I wanted to play an instrument at school but they could not stretch to teaching anyone anything, but still got the rhythm.....my father can play music by ear mainly accordion and piano, listens to a tune and picks it up quickly and plays, but can't read a word of music.....other family members play guitar, little one picked up an old Spanish guitar and started playing at age seven, self taught now lead guitarist in band.:)

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