Sonos Connect & DAC?

[ParanoidAndroid]

Hi chaps,

After some advice. Looking to get a Sonos Connect so I can stream to my existing hifi setup in the lounge. Have other Sonos products so would be great to hook this in as well. Have a lot of music stored on my NAS (HP Microserver) which I can access using Sonos and also make a lot of use of Spotify.

Question I have is should I be looking to put a DAC in between the Sonos Connect and my amp (Cambridge Audio Azur 651A)? If so can anyone recommend one? Budget I guess will be up to £300 but could stretch a bit.

Cheers
Graham

[nyt]

I have a fried that uses: http://schiit.com/products/bifrost and swears by it.

But, as you have an Cambridge audio, perhaps: http://www.richersounds.com/product/dacs/cambridge... or evenhttp://www.richersounds.com/product/dacs/cambridge-audio/dacmagic-plus/camb-dacmagic-plus-b would remove compatibility worries?

Why not just connect the sonos to the amp and see if you're satisfied with the sound

[ParanoidAndroid]

Thanks for the reply, I do intend to see how I get on with the Connect first but just wondered what others had done and whether adding a DAC was a noticeable improvement.

[GTRmad]

This would make a lovely addition if you can find a bit more £££
http://www.audiot.co.uk/products/naim-dac-v1-dac-5...

[ParanoidAndroid]

GTRmad said:

This would make a lovely addition if you can find a bit more £££
http://www.audiot.co.uk/products/naim-dac-v1-dac-5...

That's some budget creep!

[ParanoidAndroid]

This looks interesting.

http://www.arcam.co.uk/products,rSeries,Wired-DACs...

[Autopilot]

nyt said:

Why not just connect the sonos to the amp and see if you're satisfied with the sound

I'd start here!

I have a reasonable setup at home and having Sonos devices in most rooms, the Connect was the obvious choice to get my hi-fi gear in on the action!

The Good Bits:

Well, it does what it says on the tin and it does it well. I only use a standard Spotify Account and my own media downloaded or ripped from CD, but quality is good and the device doesn't seem to introduce any reduction in sound quality.

When used on its own, it's a brilliant bit of kit!

The Bad Bits:

The issue I have with the Connect is the delay that the Amp introduces (even in Direct mode). I have a stereo pair (Play:1's) in the kitchen and when played in conjunction with any other Zone (using a Play Device) they are in perfect synch.

It's a Victorian house so has a long kitchen which you access via the living / dining room. Due to the close proximity of the two zones, because of them being slightly out of synch, I cannot play the same music through these two zones at the same time, it sounds awful!! It's a bit annoying as it's these two zones that I want to play the same music at the same time in but can't.

If it was a high priority to use the zone run by the Connect device at the same time as other zones nearby, then in my experience it just doesn't work. If you just want to get your music collection to your existing hi-fi then you can't fault it.

There have been people who've not had problems and seems like people on the Sonos forums have been pestering for a delay function on other devices on a mesh network to slow them down a bit and keep it all in synch.

[ParanoidAndroid]

Thanks Autopilot, I'd not even thought about that. It won't be an issue at the moment as I've only got a Play 1 we use upstairs in the bedroom and intend to add the connect to the lounge hi-fi. However have plans to add a couple of Play 1's in the kitchen at some point so we may see this if playing multi-room with the connect in the lounge. I've just ordered the Connect so will have a play around with my existing play 1 once it arrives to see if there is any noticeable delay.

[JimbobVFR]

Autopilot said:

The Bad Bits:

The issue I have with the Connect is the delay that the Amp introduces (even in Direct mode). I have a stereo pair (Play:1's) in the kitchen and when played in conjunction with any other Zone (using a Play Device) they are in perfect synch.

I'm guessing yours is an AV Amp, this probably means and ADC is used to allow the amp to deal with speaker crossover settings and redirecting stuff to the sub. You may be able to change that in the amps settings but it would mean your sub would be completely unused for stereo. I don't believe the OP would have the same issues with an analogue stereo amp, although potentially a separate DAC might also introduce a small delay.

I'm very surprised the software doesn't have any settings for delay, guess that's 1 more reason to add to my list of reasons I keep my Squeezebox family of devices rather than change to Sonos.

[Autopilot]

JimbobVFR said:

I'm guessing yours is an AV Amp, this probably means and ADC is used to allow the amp to deal with speaker crossover settings and redirecting stuff to the sub. You may be able to change that in the amps settings but it would mean your sub would be completely unused for stereo. I don't believe the OP would have the same issues with an analogue stereo amp, although potentially a separate DAC might also introduce a small delay.

I'm very surprised the software doesn't have any settings for delay, guess that's 1 more reason to add to my list of reasons I keep my Squeezebox family of devices rather than change to Sonos.

It is indeed an AV Amp and thinking about it, you may be right, an Analogue Stereo Amp might not suffer the same problems. The delay seemed to be fairly common and while I don't remember what amps were being used, I do remember that a lot of them seemed to be AV Amps and not a dedicated Stereo amp.

I've recently moved all my gear around so would be quite easy to add a Stereo Amp to the collection...hmm

[ParanoidAndroid]

Just to add, picked up my connect on Saturday. All working very well, easy to setup and whilst early days the sound quality appears to be very good. I did have a play with grouping my existing Play 1 and the connect and there doesn't appear to be any noticeable delay so maybe as mentioned it's to do with the type of Amp.

[sparkyhx]

I'm with jimbob on this as well.
I have a connect and bought a 2nd hand dacmagic. As I didn't have an optical lead I've never actually tried it. Ive had it over a year now. Ho hum

[Frances The Mute]

Do you have Naim equipment? The Naim Dac is great but I'd recommend you look at a Beresford DAC (particularly with the Gator board upgrade) as these are hugely capable.

I have one in my Naim rig which takes feeds from my DTV & PC and it sounds superb - particularly when you consider the modest cost.