Sonos 'S2' ... on the roadmap?

Absolutely. And a stereo pair of Ikea / Sonos Symfonisk speakers for £200. I’ve only heard in single mode and it sounded perfectly reasonable.

I think for a lot fo people, Sonos is the gateway into Hifi, especially their Connect and Amp line. I am still very happy with their speakers, but I will most likely replace my Connect in the near future as that is the weakest link in my system.

My inner audiophile did not buy the speakers. It was in a moment of weakness after I gave away a Naim speaker trying to convert a relative. The Sonos were super on-sale and I needed something for my office. I twinge a little whenever I hit play though. Really miss that Naim speaker.

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I bought most of my Sonos gear close to 10 years ago, when there weren’t that many options around for multi-room, wireless streaming. Bose were making something that was the most clunky system imaginable and didn’t sound any better to my ears either - so I don’t regret buying Sonos at all.

I invested in Roon to stream to my “better kit” sure, but the fact that it worked with my existing Sonos gear for bedrooms, the kitchen, the conservatory etc was a major selling point for me.

The only bit of Sonos kit I bought recently was their new “Amp”, which is unrivalled at its price point I think. HDMI ARC for the telly, 100+ watts to drive some big speakers for TV and Roon, autoswitches between the telly and Roon, one plug socket + one ethernet feed and you have a completely fool-proof, user friendly solution for the missus in the living room. And it all fits in a neat little single black box too!

Hell yeah I’m defending it :smiley: Je ne regrette rien!

I have 3 Play:5s, 2 Play:1s, a Play:3, a Sub and a Playbase (and a Boost). All works great and my family and I love it all for background listening.

Well, I just discovered that S2 is out and I was all excited to update…only to learn that 2 of my Play:5s are Gen 1, so no S2 update for me. My whole house system is suddenly obsolete :wink:

Funny thing is, my living room stereo-paired Play:5s aren’t that old and have the updated cabinet design, so I assumed they were Gen 2. Nope, but thanks for playing (and recommending) Sonos.

Oh well… it’s for lifestyle music, so who cares?

Then, my wife says: why don’t you move your 2-channel system (my words, obviously) down to the living room and listen to that with the family?

Me: Cool idea!! Can I rearrange the living room furniture to accommodate the narrow sweet spot produced by the Magnepan speakers, along with the rack full of black boxes and their associate cables and speaker wires, as well as the big ugly black panels for the Maggies themselves?

Wife:

Me: And, because our living room has a huge bank of windows, along with large, glass fireplace doors, I will need to put up room treatments and fabric covers for the all the glass when listening to music.

Wife: do you really need anything that is in the new Sonos release? Can’t we just leave everything as it is?

Me: Uh-huh.

We had a similar conversation when I suggested we use Roon for playing music through the Sonos speakers.

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I have never had a Hi Fi room dedicated to music, nor would I want one. From day one, it’s been in the main living room and incorporated into everyday life.
I paid good money for it, and it sounds amazing, and as such it gets used all the time.
Yes the room isn’t perfect but I have got away with room treatment on the back wall. Meridians room position compensation built in works great.
We watch all our TV in the living room through my Meridian DSPs as well as Music etc and over the years SWMBO has become very used to amazing sound. (No separate amps and clutter to worry about)
Bluesound is the kitchen and conservatory sound, and the Pulse 2 is an amazing sounding piece of kit for TV, Radio and Music.

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I have a couple of Sonos speakers for the extra rooms, my Livingroom has a hifi setup fed by RopieeeXL.

Great thing is, I use all Sonos speakers via Airplay and have created an extra Zone for Ropieee using Airplay - that way all speakers around my place can play in synch. For my normal music listening I use Raat via Ropiee. So the best of both worlds. I hardly ever use the speakers with the Sonos protocol. Therefore the S2 version does not make a difference in my setup. HiRes is downsampled anyway - but to be honest I would never hear the difference on the Sonos in my kitchen.

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Sorry Guys, Noob here!
Am I right in saying that the Bit depth Conversion does not need to happen if Sonos extended 24 bit to streaming services And Roon needs to update so that local files can do 24bit on Sonos.

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I had a look through sonos support to see what they support and I found this. If I am interpreting this correctly, high res tracks are supported only when stored and accessed in the local library. My understanding is that Sonos requires high res tracks to be stored locally / Nas and then (probably but not sure without testing) use the Sonos app to play them. That would explain why Roon streaming to sonos falls out of what is supported currently for high rest playback. Unfortunate but I think this is reason you are seeing downsampling.

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