Is Sonos a good fit?

[Paul Siu]

I have been recently been thinking about setting up one of the multi-room system. I looked into some of the various eco-system out there including Sonos, Heos, Yamaha's multicast, Bose, and Bluesound. I notice Amazon and Google has some product in this space.  It appears that most of the system are expensive, though Bluesound is really expensive. After reviewing the system, it appears that Sonos appears to be ahead of the other and have been around a long time.

• Bluesound appears to be the best sounding (or at least more audiophile), but my family are not audiophiles.
• Heos, Yamaha, and Bose are comparable to Sonos in price and performance, but Sonos eco-system appears to be more refined.
• I am not sure I trust google products, if they are anything like their phone products (hangout, etc), they feel more like a giant beta testing site than a product. Are there speaker product better?
• How does Amazon's multiroom or google multiroom compare to Sonos?
• One attraction to Sonos actually they seemed a bit platform neutral. They have compatibility with many services. If I get Amazon and google products, they tend to favor their own services.

Here's what I am shooting for:

• A nice sounding set of speaker that sounds pretty good, but does not have to be audiophile quality. I am pretty sure I would be OK with a Heos, Bose or Sonos quality speakers (haven't heard Alexa Echo or Google). Personally, I favor natural sounding speaker and dislike what i term booming artificial bass.
• A way of streaming music from a streaming service like amazon music and local drive with ripped music. I tend not to buy digital music and prefer physical media because of the fear that the vendor would suddenly close down my account. A fear that started when Amazon froze my account several times for several months due to accounting errors.
• Should support multiple platform. I use Android and Windows. My wife uses iOS.
• I do not need Alexa or SIRI or voice assistance.
• A way of setting up speaker group and stream to them through an app.
• I like a company that will stuck around and have speakers that won't sunset one day.
• May be ability to do some home automation one day, but I haven't seen a need for this feature. For example, a light switch is a pretty simple product, I don't see much value of increasing the complexity so I can control it through my phone for example. A more useful feature would be to turn off the lights when no one is around because I can't get the family to turn off the lights after they leave the room.

 

Opinions?

 

Paul

 

[Paul Siu]

One issue I have found is that Sonos Beam much to my surprise did not support Dolby Digital Plus, This is a big issue since I do most of my streaming through netflix, which uses DD+ 5.1. You would think that DD+ would be downconverted to DD.

* A TV may downconvert DD+ to DD, but usually only for broadcast TV. Most won't downconvert HDMI streams.

* A roku Streaming Stick+ has been tested to no be able to downconvert. If I select Dolby Digital, on the HDMI port, Netflix stop offering an option for 5.1 stereo.

* Most audio extractors will not downconvert either, mostly because there is additional licensing fee.

 

As a result, Netflix streaming and hulu will come in as stereo on the beam, which is not cool.

Paul

[circeseye]

actually no. netflix supports basic dolby up to atmos if the movie supports it. just because the movie says its a higher dolby like atmos doesnt mean it wont play it in basic dolby. it will
something is glitched with your set up. my tv i cant set it to dolby on hdmi arc, it has to be pcm because the receiver is doing the decoding.. set your tv to pcm and let the bar do the decoding. that im guessing is why netflix is throwing a fit because when you set the tv as dolby the tv becomes the decoder and that is usually through toslink (optical) not hdmi arc

[Paul Siu]

Here's why I think it won't do dolby digital basic.

• Netflix website only list dolby digital plus in their surround on help page.
• Netflix does support Amos on some of their title, but they only do so at the super premium $16 a month level. My roku does not stream at 4k, so the subscription would be useless. Atms option never appears.
• Roku allow you to change the HDMI port to auto-detect or specific audio format. When I change my the setting to Dolby Digital, I expect the roku to down convert the DD+ to DD. It does not do that. Instead it outputs in 2 channel stereo. The 5.1 option disappears on the movie title.
• On DVD player, if you play your DVD out of the digital out, most of the DVD players will down convert DD+ to DD. This is not true for television. Many TV will only pass surround info for tuners content, but  HDMI audio gets output in stereo. There are a lot of DVD these days with no digital out.
• Conversely, Roku Ultra used to convert DD+ to DD,  but the recent model stop doing that. The only model that appears to convert are PS4 and may be some models of fire tv.
• There are numerous threads on the Sonos forum about the issue of not being able to decode DD+ and issues with netflix.
• There are numerous threads on various AV forums on DD+ conversion for older receiver that don't support DD+.  I supposed this is a similar problem to Sonos not supporting dd+

Sonos product are sold as a premium product, so in my opinion,a customer should not have to jump through the hoops to play surround through netflix, something a average customer is expected to do. I think Sonos is expecting the TV manufacturer to behave and down convert DD+ to DD on their tV, but not every set will do that.

 

Paul

 

[circeseye]

hmmm interesting....so in that regards all those basic surround systems that only support basic dolby are screwed with netflix 5.1 sound. and will need better decoders.

if this is the case thats messed up.

[Paul Siu]

I was reading this article:

https://blog.son-video.com/en/2018/03/does-your-av-receiver-handle-dolby-digital-plus/

 

So yes, it is a mess. Netflix started using DD+ a while back, so it's not a new issue. Most people probably won't even notice because they don't have a surround setup or they think they are getting surround because of upconvert.

 

Paul