help me make sonos better

I am in the boat with you. I am diving into the Bryston BDA-1 to Improve the sound. The sonos is easy and fun $1,700 for the Bryston....outstanding reviews. But I we will see.

I also feel your pain! For the past year I have been planning on a music server rather than purchasing a new CD deck. Couldn't decide between a stand alone like a Fireball or building a PC/MAC something, however I did not want it based on iTunes. I'm just not comfortable with it for a server, although I use it to move files to my iPhone. The Sonos also looked interesting.

No matter the system, I got started ripping CD's to files since that's the majority of the work. To date I have about 2650 CD's converted or about 30,000 FLAC files. A fair piece of work if I do say so.

One of this years Christmas gifts for my wife was a Sonos for music in the kitchen. I bought a Sonos bridge and a Sonos S5 speaker system and have it running from the home computer and wireless network. We each have an iPhone so they became instant controllers. She likes it so much, that I added another S5 for the bedroom. Nothing like a quick "Moody Blues" before bed! I also added a 1TB Seagate NAS drive for all the albums... easy and works.

So today the Sonos is working great, but I'm still listening to "Vinyl" on my "big" system and ready to add Sonos to it. I put a lot of time and effort (and $$$) into the Vinyl playback quality, just not sure how far to go adding the Digital. I was thinking about...

1. Cullen modified ZP-90 with a modded PS Audio DAC or one of the soon to be released Wyred4sound (Cullen) Dac's. Maybe even a Benchmark DAC. Probably $2000.00 cost.

2. Or the cheap approach. A standard ZP-90 with a DacMagic for about $750.00. It's 1/3 the cost and probably sounds good. Question is, just how good. Probably better than a majority of CD players, but would I be happy with it? For the money saved, I can buy a lot of new Vinyl albums.

Let me know your thoughts...

Paul

Guys,
Up until about a month ago I was running a Sonos through a Dac Magic, and I was very happy with the quality of the music, which we used primarily for background and casual listening. Certainly not at the level of your vinyl playback, but still very enjoyable.....and at a relatively low cost.

I've since purchased an Esoteric SA-50 which allows me to run the Sonos through its DAC. The quality of the Sonos music is now on par or better than most CD players I've ever heard. The DAC and a good cable make a world of difference. Sonos + good music files + good DAC + good cable = good music that is limited only by your other components.

The level of quality you choose to attain is limited only the amount of money you wish to spend. Good luck in reaching your respective decisions.

Hi Bobf1717 and Pkubica,

I have the ZP90 feeding the Monarchy DIP Classic (non-upsampling) and DacMagic (at Min filter setting), pulls lossless content from a NAS, and reproduction is fantastic!!! And as Larryski2 says, with a decent cable it's hard to beat. It's a single-zone setup so my ZP90 is wired directly to the router to ensure it can handle the large lossless files. I'm very satisfied with the result.

Thought you may want to try this setup before you dive into more costly mods and options.

Would be happy to hear your feedback whatever you decide to implement.