Sonos turns your house into an ipod

Don't fool yourself about Sonos not being HiFi. I tested the ZP80 against a variety of high-end transports (Wadia, Meridian, Levinson, etc.) and its coax digital output equaled or beat them all.

In my system (Meridian-based), I now listen to lossless audio streamed through a Sonos ZP80 for critical listening.

BTW - the fact that I now have the rest of my house connected to my music library and running on Sonos ZP80s and ZP100s is an added bonus!

I too believe the Zp80 is extremely good. But when I use the built in DAC of the Zp100 ,it was not true perfection. When the Zp80 was connected digitally to a good DAC, in my case Levinson 390S, there was no reduction in sound Quality. And perhaps better. What was improved was the ability to change CD's from a slick wireless remote, never Leaving my couch. I still prefer LP's to CD's and will relinquish the comfort of the remote control only when playing vinyl. Ps. most reviews compare the slim box to the sonos. What really should be done is comparing the Sono with best available DAC to the best CD transport/DAC combination. If it is equal or close then Sonos wins for ease and Cool factor. They should do the Same for Slimbox as well.

Good point... interestingly, most of the time spent in audio publications on the Sonos and Slim Devices competitors is related to the cool factor. I really would like to see a serious evaluation of the audio quality along the lines you suggest:

1) Very high caliber CD transport
2) Sonos ZP80
3) Squeezebox 3

all fed into a few very high class DACs. Then we could lay much of this "is the ZP80 a good transport" issue to rest, and focus on the cool factor without someone thinking that we're sacrificing quality for ease! This is the next generation of high end audio. Someone needs to write a manifesto...

And the next step is for the Sonos and Squeezebox to start accepting 24/96 flac streams (even if passed to DAC rather than decoded on board) so that we can actually go hi-rez without investing in more hardware to play new formats! But that's another story (and yes, I know Transporter can do it, but I do not want to add a Slim Devices device to my already very nice Sonos system).

J

PS Don't suppose anyone will ever build a truly high end LP machine that has the ease of the Sonos interface, will they? ;-)

The quality of these stock Wi-Fi converters just isn't quite up to a good transport or a good USB converter, yet. Even modded, they fall behind some USB solutions. However, the Pace Car I2S reclocker could change all that. Hopefully, Slim-Devices will do a SB4 this year with 24/96 capability. If they do, you will see a product based on this from me.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer

If you do your searches on Audiocircle you will find that no one mods the Sonos and that the squeezeboxes sound better out the digital output. I run my Squeezebox into a 10k DAC and I am quite amazed at the quality. It did require a Bolder Modified powersupply to make it all worthwhile.

I would have loved to have the Sonos Remote control and simplicity but the sound quality was not at the same level versus using Flac files on the SB3. So for now I'll stick with my TablePC choicing album covers from the slimserver software.

I know the USB Dac's are suppose to be the good, but the thought of connecting my noisy (physical and ground issues) computer (and I've built quiet computers before) to my audio system is just contradictory.