Squeezebox Touch or Sonos ZonePlayer


I'm looking at streaming my digital music (FLAC audio files) from my HP EX490 server running Windows Home Server (WHS) to various sections of my home.

I was very close to getting the Sonos solution when I came across an article on the Squeezebox Touch in Stereophile magazine.

Unlike the Sonos ZonePlayers, the Squeezebox Touch also plays hi-rez FLAC downloads.

In terms of sound quality, would anyone know which of the two sounds better?

I'm looking at connecting the media player via digital coax to an external DAC in my living room to my dedicated stereo music system while for the other rooms the media player would connect to various "portable" boomboxes/radios via analog RCA cabling.
agiaccio

Showing 1 response by idfnl


I bought a Sonos last night. Nice quality, easy to setup.

2 major problems though:

There is a 65,000 track limit on any 1 share. Mine has over 100k tracks. The only way around it is to segment the music on 2 shares.

Next, 24 bit is not supported... what a letdown. I am also seeing file play problems. In Tag and Rename a classical music file shows up as

Bitrate: 1221 kbps
Channels: stereo
Samplerate: 44100

This is odd. By definition the maximum bitrate for the Redbook standard is:

2 channels x 44,100 samples per second per channel × 16 bits per sample = 1,411,200 bit/s = 1,411.2 kbit/s.

At 1221, this file should play!