Does upsampling or other DSP make sense w/Sonos

[RobOK]

Can Roon upsampling or DSP improve Sonos sound quality or is Sonos limited by its hardware?

Also, if Roon is playing to Sonos endpoints, will Sonos Room corrections be in play? (I think yes)

Rob.

[Marco_de_Jonge]

Sonos devices do not accept/play any stream with a higher sample rate than 48kHz.
They have a native sample rate of 44.1kHz; the device ‘internally’ resamples everything to 44.1kHz when it needs to.

As such, upsampling in Roon would not very useful : it would be downsampled by Sonos, later on.
I doubt if there is an audible effect. But if there is, it can never be an improvement (at least, not in the technical sense. Your own preference may of course say something different).

(It might even be that Roon already resamples everything to 44.1 for Sonos. I haven’t checked that, but it would be logical).

Using other Roon DSP features for Sonos, definitely makes a lot of sense. I for instance use convolution in my shower room Sonos (doesn’t that sound crazy ?), and it has a dramatic and positive effect.

What do you mean by "Sonos Room Correction", the bass/treble knobs in Sonos maybe ?
I haven’t touched the Sonos controller in ages, so I don’t know if that correction is also applied. I think so.
If you already have such a setup, it’s an easy thing to check. Alternatively, I can try to check that for you later on ?

[zappyroon]

Roon automatically downsamples to 48 or 44.1 depending on the original material. This makes it effortless to play my HiRes tracks directly on Sonos, without needing to transcode externally as I used to have to do. (Sonos itself does not downsample, at least on the earlier hardware)

Also, be aware that Sonos accepts a maximum of 16 bit signals, bur Roon will also take care of that if you are playing tracks at 24 bit or higher.

Unfortunately, I still find that the stability of Roon/Sonos is not as robust as when using just the Sonos controller, but I can live with that in exchange for everything else that Roon provides.

[RobOK]

Sonos devices do not accept/play any stream with a higher sample rate than 48kHz.

They have a native sample rate of 44.1kHz; the device ‘internally’ resamples everything to 44.1kHz when it needs to.

As such, upsampling in Roon would not very useful : it would be downsampled by Sonos, later on.

I doubt if there is an audible effect. But if there is, it can never be an improvement (at least, not in the technical sense

That is what I thought, thanks for confirming!

Sonos Room [quote=“Marco_de_Jonge, post:2, topic:34019”]
What do you mean by “Sonos Room Correction”,
[/quote]
Sonos has True Play Room correction.

Trueplay Speaker Tuning Software | Sonos

I’m thinking once tuned they would play that way even with a Roon stream, no reason to think otherwise.

[Marco_de_Jonge]

You’re welcome. I wasn’t aware of TruePlay (have only year-2006 Sonos devices), so I cannot comment on that question.

Please note that @zappyroon had formulated his reponse better, than I did. Sonos will indeed not downsample bitrates >48kHz : it will simply reject them. Same for bitdepths >16bit : rejected, instead of being reduced in bitdepth.
But Roon takes care of both.

Unfortunately, I still find that the stability of Roon/Sonos is not as robust as when using just the Sonos controller, but I can live with that in exchange for everything else that Roon provides.

I agree with this. Although I personally do not experience SO much instability; I know some other people do, and strictly-Sonos is indeed a bit more tolerant to bad WiFi, than the Sonos-Roon combo.