Sonos Home Entertainment - Is it Worth it?

fred246

MattMattMattUK said:

I do not personally think Songs is worth it, however I do use Google Home instead, with a Home, or Home Max Pair in every room. My main TV is a Sony Bravia with a soundbar which I can also control via Home.

I would say with Sonos you are paying for the brand, the functionality is less than with Google Home, the price is higher, but if you want some of the very specific things Sonos offers then you might go down that route.

What are the 'very specific things that Sonos offers'?

RumRat

MattMattMattUK said:

I do not personally think Songs is worth it, however I do use Google Home instead, with a Home, or Home Max Pair in every room. My main TV is a Sony Bravia with a soundbar which I can also control via Home.

I would say with Sonos you are paying for the brand, the functionality is less than with Google Home, the price is higher, but if you want some of the very specific things Sonos offers then you might go down that route.

Two Sonos ones would be cheaper than a pair of Home max speakers and they have Google and Alexa built in.........Yes, the Google/Nest home speakers would cost less, but wouldn't necessarily sound better than the Sonos, although, this is completely subjective.

fwor

fred246 said:

What are the 'very specific things that Sonos offers'?

Here are a couple of examples: If you have a record deck, you can connect it (via a phono stage) to an input on a Sonos device and it can then be set up to send that to other zones in the house. Or if you have an amplifier with 12V trigger input, you can set up a Sonos device to switch the amp on automatically, so you don't have to leave it on all the time and waste energy.

To be clear, there is almost nothing about Sonos that you cannot do any other way. For the last few years I've been using Rythmbox as a local playback app, accessing my music library on a Linux-based file server via NFS. You can do pretty much the same as Sonos like that, or via numerous other methods, but some things - such as time synchronised multi-room - are much harder to achieve (I did it using multiple DACs, chained together with S/PDIF over dedicated coax).

IMO, Sonos makes a pretty good job of integrating it all into a few boxes plus an app - as does Bluesound, which is even more expensive (but in fairness has more features). Other companies such as Roon license the software part and (mostly) leave it to the customer to buy the processing hardware. In some respects there is too much choice!

fred246

The whole point of vinyl is that it is analogue. So you just want to amplify the sound straight into speakers. If you change the analogue signal into digital to pass it across wifi there is no point having a turntable. Better just to stream digital music. Do you really want to listen to a turntable in a different room. You are going to have to keep walking between the 2 rooms every twenty minutes and keep searching for the right record. You can only be in one room at a time. Does everyone in the house want to listen to your music? Remember you can't skip the rubbish tracks without going to the turntable. Isn't it easier to just turn your own amplifier on & off. I want to listen to music - turn amp on. I have finished now - turn amp off?

MattMattMattUK

RumRat said:

MattMattMattUK said:

I do not personally think Songs is worth it, however I do use Google Home instead, with a Home, or Home Max Pair in every room. My main TV is a Sony Bravia with a soundbar which I can also control via Home.

I would say with Sonos you are paying for the brand, the functionality is less than with Google Home, the price is higher, but if you want some of the very specific things Sonos offers then you might go down that route.

Two Sonos ones would be cheaper than a pair of Home max speakers and they have Google and Alexa built in.........Yes, the Google/Nest home speakers would cost less, but wouldn't necessarily sound better than the Sonos, although, this is completely subjective.

The Google Home Max is more comparable to a Sonos Five (£449) than a Sonos One. I would say that the Sonos One offers slightly better sound than the Google Home, but the Google Nest Audio (it's replacement) offers comparable sound to the Sonos One. My Sony soundbar that I can control via Google Assistant (Android TV) sounds as good at the Sonos soundbar, although is considerably cheaper.

I accept that sound is often subjective and can vary significantly depending on what music you listen to and even room furnishings, but I just think that Sonos is expensive for what it offers and you are largely paying for a brand, rather than the product itself. 

MattMattMattUK

fred246 said:

The whole point of vinyl is that it is analogue.

For many people who now collect vinyl it is not about the audio, it is about having a physical thing to hold and interact with. That is exemplified by the fact that more than 20% of people who buy vinyl lack a record player to listen to it on.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/one-in-five-vinyl-buyers-has-no-record-player-k8wcd8850

fwor

fred246 said:

The whole point of vinyl is that it is analogue. So you just want to amplify the sound straight into speakers. If you change the analogue signal into digital to pass it across wifi there is no point having a turntable. Better just to stream digital music. Do you really want to listen to a turntable in a different room. You are going to have to keep walking between the 2 rooms every twenty minutes and keep searching for the right record. You can only be in one room at a time. Does everyone in the house want to listen to your music? Remember you can't skip the rubbish tracks without going to the turntable. Isn't it easier to just turn your own amplifier on & off. I want to listen to music - turn amp on. I have finished now - turn amp off?

As I said earlier, different people want different things.

You say that the whole point about vinyl is that it's analogue, but everything starts and ends as analogue anyway. How much of the vinyl that you can buy does not get converted to digital at some point during the production process? I'll give you a clue: none, as near as makes no difference.

Does everyone in my house want to listen to my music? Yes - I live alone. It's not hugely unusual these days. Do I sometimes want different music depending on what room I'm in? Yes - if I'm in the gym I'll listen to completely different music.

And yes, Ok, a turntable was just an example. Vinyl isn't something that interests me because I no longer want to use a medium that steadily destroys the recording as you listen to it. I moved to non-contact media long ago, and I don't intend to go back!

missile

fwor said:

.... the things that a good amp-based system don't do - unless you add a streamer - is to give you direct access to thousands of internet radio stations, and dozens of subscription-based media services. Most of the radio stations are free - some are even advert-free. ........

My Denon amp does all of that and more

RumRat

MattMattMattUK said:

RumRat said:

MattMattMattUK said:

I do not personally think Songs is worth it, however I do use Google Home instead, with a Home, or Home Max Pair in every room. My main TV is a Sony Bravia with a soundbar which I can also control via Home.

I would say with Sonos you are paying for the brand, the functionality is less than with Google Home, the price is higher, but if you want some of the very specific things Sonos offers then you might go down that route.

Two Sonos ones would be cheaper than a pair of Home max speakers and they have Google and Alexa built in.........Yes, the Google/Nest home speakers would cost less, but wouldn't necessarily sound better than the Sonos, although, this is completely subjective.

The Google Home Max is more comparable to a Sonos Five (£449) than a Sonos One. I would say that the Sonos One offers slightly better sound than the Google Home, but the Google Nest Audio (it's replacement) offers comparable sound to the Sonos One. My Sony soundbar that I can control via Google Assistant (Android TV) sounds as good at the Sonos soundbar, although is considerably cheaper.

I accept that sound is often subjective and can vary significantly depending on what music you listen to and even room furnishings, but I just think that Sonos is expensive for what it offers and you are largely paying for a brand, rather than the product itself. 

Google Home max, debatable on comparison. I've not tried the new Nest Audio, so can't really comment on that. My Sonos Beam sound bar has Google assistant built in so can be controlled via that, although, I never do.
I don't disagree that you are paying for the brand name, that, however, is true of all brands. If the brand is known for great sound and build quality of it's products then they will be more expensive....Look at the likes of KEF, Bowers and Wilkins, B&O, Polk etc. etc. Most people won't appreciate or be able to tell the difference. Even some who talk the talk can't always tell.
Personally I'm in the process of moving to AudioPro for my multiroom, not necessarily for the sound quality, as good as it is, but, because I like the speakers.

Mickey666

fwor said:

fred246 said:

The whole point of vinyl is that it is analogue. So you just want to amplify the sound straight into speakers. If you change the analogue signal into digital to pass it across wifi there is no point having a turntable. Better just to stream digital music. Do you really want to listen to a turntable in a different room. You are going to have to keep walking between the 2 rooms every twenty minutes and keep searching for the right record. You can only be in one room at a time. Does everyone in the house want to listen to your music? Remember you can't skip the rubbish tracks without going to the turntable. Isn't it easier to just turn your own amplifier on & off. I want to listen to music - turn amp on. I have finished now - turn amp off?

As I said earlier, different people want different things.

You say that the whole point about vinyl is that it's analogue, but everything starts and ends as analogue anyway. How much of the vinyl that you can buy does not get converted to digital at some point during the production process? I'll give you a clue: none, as near as makes no difference.

That's a fair point.

I have around 100 vinyl albums (or did have until I started to sell them off after digitising them) but have always found them to be an inconvenient format. Even when I started buying LPs back in the 70s, pretty much the first thing I did was record them onto tape (first on reel-to-reel tape and later cassette tape), so that I could play an entire album through without having to turn the LP over after 20 mins, or to compile mix tapes, or for playing in the car (cassettes only, obviously!).  So most of my LPs were played less that 10 times, sometimes only once or twice.  When it became feasible to digitise music, I was on it like a shot and very quickly filled my 1st gen iPod.

So vinyl has never been about being analogue for me, though I know it is for some people.